Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

There is no unique picture of reality.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims, even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

Men freely believe that which they desire.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

A child thinks 20 shillings and 20 years can scarce ever be spent.

I’m not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose… it’ll be much harder to detect.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that – is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

I do believe that in order to be a successful negotiator that as a diplomat, you have to be able to put yourself into the other person’s shoes. Unless you can understand what is motivating them, you are never going to be able to figure out how to solve a particular problem.

Facts are not interesting to me.

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

What air is to the body, to feel understood is to the heart.

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.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

Facts are stubborn things.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

History, a distillation of rumour.

Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

This is not a bad life.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.