“Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.”

I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

You can only be free if I am free.

For to know all is to understand all, and this leaves no room for judgment and condemnation.

Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.

The most human thing we can do is comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

We know life is futile. A man who considers that his life is of very wonderful importance is awfully close to a padded cell.

No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.

We’re all killers at heart, I have never taken anybody’s life, but I have often read obituary notices with considerable satisfaction.

Everybody is a potential murderer. I’ve never killed anyone, but I frequently get satisfaction reading the obituary notices.

No nation can be really great that is held together by Gatling guns, and no true loyalty can be induced and kept through fear.

It’s not bad people I fear so much as good people. When a person is sure that he is good, he is nearly hopeless; he gets cruel- he believes in punishment.

I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.

The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.

You can’t get to a pleasant place to be at unless you use pleasant methods to get there. When you are dealing with a human society the means is fully as important as the end.

If there is to be any permanent improvement in man and any better social order, it must come mainly from the education and humanizing of man.

Life is a never-ending school, and the really important lessons all tend to teach man his proper relation to the environment where he must live.

My wife wanted my children to have some Chinese culture and education. She believes the children need to learn two languages and two cultures.

I am a better mother for having something in my life and not just my children.

If men gave birth, they’d be less inconsiderate.

Indigo child, you hid secret under graves, picked at the lamb stuck between teeth, felt around for monsters we once reaped. But the monster turned out to be free.

I can’t cultivate a relationship with my child if it’s between takes. I tried that on a movie and realized, ‘This is not going to work.’ It will work some of the year, but not 12 months a year.

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.

My mother is a realist, and she’s had biological and adoptive children, and she said it’s no different: No matter what, they’re putting a stranger into your arms. You don’t know them yet.