“That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.”

The United States is the only civilized country in the world to class its teachers at the bottom of the social scale.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you’re a great writer, you must say that you are.

What I am is something unbearable for the world of journalism and the world of cliches. I’m a realist.

I’m exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.

It is true, as Sartre once wrote, referring to French Army atrocities in Algeria, that the real tragedy in our time is that any of us can be, interchangeably, victim or torturer.

You cannot deprive somebody of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, because that is a right – constitutional right.

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

When I say ‘president,’ I still mean Roosevelt – wisely, I think.

Everything’s wrong on Wikipedia.

I hate nobody.

I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

It is always a delicate matter, when a friend or acquaintance becomes president.

You hear all this whining going on, ‘Where are our great writers?’ The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

Imprisoned quacks are always replaced by new ones.

One leak will sink a ship: and one sin will destroy a sinner.

Women are one and all a set of vultures.

A person himself believes that all the other portraits are good likenesses except the one of himself.

The Alliance for Progress is an alliance between one millionaire and many beggars.

One does not fight to influence change and then leave the change to someone else to bring about.

Always remember that you belong to no one, and no one belongs to you. Reflect that some day you will suddenly have to leave everything in this world – so make the acquaintanceship of God now.

The same inexpressible Truth is experienced in two ways: as Self-luminous Silence, or as the Eternal Play of the One.