This made him a grad student, and grad students existed not to learn things but to relieve the tenured faculty members of tiresome burdens such as educating people and doing research.

When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.

The difference between stupid and intelligent people - and this is true whether or not they are well-educated - is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.

This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.

You should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake.

To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.

Any property that's open to common use gets destroyed. Because everyone has incentive to use it to the max, but no one has incentive to maintain it.

See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places.

Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whisky, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.

And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all.

The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent.

I surround myself with things that make me happy. Why? Because ... it makes me happy.

What do I think? I think it makes no difference what I think.

These are the moments that make the dot-to-dot pictures of our past

With just a little drop of kindness you can water a whole garden.

I suppose I miss the British cynicism and the humor.

With me, you never know what is going to happen

I don't read, much less follow, the valuations or predictions. I study the numbers.

I own some bugs encased in lucite or something. I also have a big cat's eye - a fake one - made for a taxidermist. I really like animals.

I feel that there's hardly any irony in my work; if there's anything, there'll be sincerity, which people sometimes find hard to deal with.

My dad was very fun and very adventurous, and from a formative age I learned to value men who would do things on a whim.