There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

The idea that God is a worthy recipient of our gratitude for the blessings of life but should not be held accountable for the disasters is a transparently disingenuous innovation of the theologians.

Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.

The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.

What you can imagine depends on what you know.

There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.

There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is.

A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.

There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.

No matter how smart you are, you're smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.

The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real project.

Even an inaccurate missile is quite a deterrent.

I think of myself as a reportage photographer. I like the word. It implies a personal account of an observed event with connotations of subjectivity but honesty. It is eye-witness photography.

The ransoming of captives has been practiced by Jews for many centuries and has been regarded as a greater obligation than charity for the poor.

The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.

Every second you dwell on the past you steal from your future. Every minute you spend focusing on your problems you take away from finding your solutions.

I try getting in front of as many opportunities as possible, but in the late '90s, I had no idea that I'd end up being CFO of a technology company. I'd no idea what venture capital was.

I am who I am; no more, no less.

We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.