When you close your eyes to tragedy, you close your eyes to greatness.

Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.

We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.

All great power has to do to destroy itself is persist in trying to do the impossible.

Thou shalt not let a day pass without rereading something great.

As a rule, the most dangerous ideas are not the ones that divide people but those on which they agree.

Like all wage slaves, he had two crosses to bear: the people he worked for and the people he worked with

To state a lie firmly, categorically and with great authority, undeterred by the fact that all concerned know it to be a lie, is one of the principal activities defined by the term practising law.

Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.

Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the centre of man's universe is the earth?

The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.

The next time someone chides you for using your intuition, inform them that you are just checking in with the 96 percent of the universe that can’t be counted up, analyzed or measured.

You shouldn't have to settle for rabbits if what you want is deer

The enlightened are superior to the learned.

As an entrepreneur, you have to be OK with failure. If you're not failing, you're likely not pushing yourself hard enough.

By poeticizing love, we imagine in those we love virtues that they often do not possess; this then becomes the source of constant mistakes and constant distress.

Make no mistake, dwarf. I fought for you, but I do not love you'' ''It was your blade I needed'' Tyrion said, ''not your love.

A piece of sculpture can have a hole through it and not be weakened if the hole is of a studied size, shape, and direction.

A good landscape painting is not just a demonstration of competent application of paint. It must offer a feeling of homage to the subject.

Sometimes if something scares me, I lean right into it . I’m not a brave person— I’m more of a fearless idiot.