If the government ever imposes a tax on books – and I wouldn’t put it past them – I’m in dead trouble.

The Iranian government is undoubtedly a severe danger to its own population, but not beyond that.

The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments‘ plans.

A very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it, too. But the government won’t allow it.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

We have the best government that money can buy.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

The biggest problem that we have is that California is being run now by special interests. All of the politicians are not anymore making the moves for the people, but for special interests and we have to stop that.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.

Well, I have great respect for Senator Hirono.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

How can we help President Obama?

If people lose faith in their government, the result is the same whether or not the loss of confidence is justified.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Shakespeare – I was very influenced – still am – by Shakespeare. I couldn’t believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

By reading, you learn through others‘ experiences, generally, a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.

I think when people mean that Discworld books have become darker they really mean the series is growing up. In ‚The Colour of Magic‘ most of the city is set alight. It’s a joke, in much the same way that the Earth is destroyed almost at the start of Douglas Adams’s ‚The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.‘

I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.

Democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don’t know what you’re doing.

Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed that luxury.

In my opinion eight years as president is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in that capacity.

I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

‚Mystic River‘ just smelled interesting to me. So I read it and liked it right away. Even the dialogue in it was great.

Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring… ‚How to Build a Boat.‘

Certainly I’m not going to sit on the Internet all day and read what Sam from Iowa is saying about me. But I’m a sponge. I’ve always been a sponge.

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

Charlotte Bronte was writing about sex. I supposed Jane Austen was, too. Where do you get a hero like Darcy unless you are writing about sex?

Empire and liberty.

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that’s powerful.

Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other’s speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can’t. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.