“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.

Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose

If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.

I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.

Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.

True freedom is the right to say something that others don’t want to hear.

We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play.

Rich people are poor people with money.

Like the withered roses of a once gay garland, the feelings of youth command in age a melancholy interest.

The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.

I remember when I was 11, I did some Kung-fu demonstrations in Hong Kong in 1974.

There is no doubt that we live in an age of unprecedented, and sometimes terrifying, technological advance where the speed of advance so often outstrips the necessary ethical considerations.

Your inside person doesn’t age. Your inside person is soul, is heart, in the eternal now, the ageless, the old, the young, all the ages you’ve ever been.

The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.

I think we need to recover the depth, the subtlety, the generosity of imagination, the respect for wisdom that so marked Islam in its great ages.

I actually get a lot of messages with people saying, ‘What’s a Marvin Gaye?’ and, I mean… Oh, wow. I must be getting old, because someone who was born in 2004 just asked me what a Marvin Gaye was.