“And this has had a strong tendency to dampen serious discussion of theological issues in most groups, and hence to strengthen the general anti-intellectual bias.”

Journalism, like history, has no therapeutic value; it is better able to diagnose than to cure, and it provides society with a primitive means of psychoanalysis that allows the patient to judge the distance between fantasy and reality.

When myth meets myth, the collision is very real.

Discipline means protection from one’s own wanton interest.

The United States grants the favors of the second, third, or fifty-seventh chance, and its citizens remain free to invent for themselves whatever character draws a crowd or pays the rent.

Walk in awe, wonder, and humility. Walk at all times of day. In the early morning when the world is just waking up. Late at night under the stars. Along a busy city street at noontime.

Some idea of inflation comes from seeing a youngster get his first job at a salary you dreamed of as the culmination of your career.

The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions.

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.

As surely as you are a living man, so surely did that spectral anatomy visit my room again last night, grin in my face, and walk away with my trousers: nor was I able to spring from my bed, or break the chain which seemed to bind me to my pillow.

Most of us wait until we’re in trouble, and then we pray like the dickens. Wonder what would happen if, some morning, we’d wake up and say, “Anything I can do for You today, Lord?”

Because, as we are told-a sad old joke, too- Ghosts, like the ladies, never speak till spoke to.

Democracy in Yemen did not stop, instead it is in a continuous development, there is no other way to follow rather than democracy, it is our national way for building up our country, it was not imposed on us by others.

Great power constitutes its own argument, and it never has much trouble drumming up friends, applause, sympathetic exegesis, and a band.

The pretender sees no one but himself, Because he has the veil of conceit in front; If he were endowed with a God discerning eye, He would see that no one is weaker than himself.

There is a mighty big difference between good sound reasons and reasons that sound good.

Every time you look at a house in Los Angeles, the real-estate agent will tell you that someone famous once lived there. It always seemed irrelevant to me: Does a property gain value just because Alfred Hitchcock used to eat breakfast there?

Sex has become one of the most discussed subjects of modern times. The Victorians pretended it did not exist; the moderns pretend nothing else exists.

I want art to make me think. In order to do that, it may piss me off, or make me uncomfortable. That promotes awareness and change, or at least some discussion.

The conversation between your fingers and someone else’s skin. This is the most important discussion you can ever have.

An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.

I don’t feel one’s personal medical condition is everybody’s business. It just isn’t something you advertise, and it’s not open to discussion.

Scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society. The discussion in the Houses of Lords or of Commons, which arise on the occurrence of any subjects connected with science, sufficiently prove this fact.

I don’t discuss women at all with anyone. There are good qualities in all women. Some may be lacking in some of these qualities and should have them. I’m liable to say so and hurt their feelings, and it wouldn’t be meant that way at all.

Those from whose pocket the salary is drawn, and by whose appointment the officer was made, have always a right to discuss the merits of their officers, and their modes of exercising the duties they are paid to perform.