Without gambling, I would not exist.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with with your self-esteem. They’re no good at all.

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

The glamour of it all! New York! America!

I’m not looking to freak people out – eating rodents or bugs. I don’t do that anymore.

I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

Things don’t have to change the world to be important.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

The trouble with Nixon is that he’s a serious politics junkie. He’s totally hooked and like any other junkie, he’s a bummer to have around, especially as President.

At the end of the day, the TV show is the best job in the world. I get to go anywhere I want, eat and drink whatever I want. As long as I just babble at the camera, other people will pay for it. It’s a gift.

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots!

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

If you really love films, and you really want to get the full impact, there’s a huge difference between watching something on a small screen with a mediocre sound system and watching it on a giant screen in a giant theater with a huge beautiful sound system. I mean, the difference is electric.

Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.

I’ve been blessed with talents to play this game and been put on a stage to impact a lot of people. I don’t want to take that for granted.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

No matter how bad any situation, cynicism has no positive impact. Watching the news, you might notice that cynicism and victimhood often seem to go hand-in-hand, but not for veterans.

I don’t know what’s better gettin‘ laid or gettin‘ paid.

Our lifestyle was not in any way a negative. That was not the problem. That is and will remain one of the wonderful opportunities we are able to give our children.

I didn’t have any children of my own.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive – that you can touch the miracle of being alive – then that is a kind of enlightenment.

Here comes 40. I’m feeling my age and I’ve ordered the Ferrari. I’m going to get the whole mid-life crisis package.

Today, we’re very dependent on cheap energy. We just take it for granted – all the things you have in the house, the way industry works.

Bravery never goes out of fashion.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

What I like to do is try to make a difference with the work I do.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

Real life? Well, I just hope mine isn’t investigated. They might find that I don’t really exist – that I’m just a hologram.

All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.

The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.

As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom.

There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.

I feel like a spoilt rapper. I get to pick and choose everything.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I do better with that than I do with torture.

Anyone that’s involved in development has discovered that all the good work that’s been done in development has been undone by the AIDS emergency.

In the usual progress of things, the necessities of a nation in every stage of its existence will be found at least equal to its resources.

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

I’ll live in Puerto Rico until the day I die.

Next to religion, baseball has had a greater impact on our American way of life than any other American institution.

We have to rediscover the eternal values and then live them out.

You don’t even really need a place. But you feel like you’re doing something. That is what coffee is. And that is one of the geniuses of the new coffee culture.

Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.

World War II broke out in 1939, and many people credit that war with saving the economy.