For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

John Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m just a guy who can write.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s ‚mature‘ critics often are.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

The economy’s always been the engine for our national security.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.

The label ‚liberal‘ or ‚conservative,‘ any – every time I hear that, I think of the great Gilbert and Sullivan song from ‚Iolanthe.‘ It goes, ‚Every gal and every boy that’s born alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative.‘ What do those labels mean? It depends on whose ox is being gored.

I was adored once too.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

Where every something, being blent together turns to a wild of nothing.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

So many writers don’t like to write… I like to write, and sometimes I’m afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don’t want to leave it. And as a result, I’ll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

Born to a tribal Bedouin family of nomadic desert shepherds in the region of Tripoli, Gaddafi was profoundly anti-colonialist. It is affirmed that his paternal grandfather died fighting against the Italian invaders when Libya was invaded by them in 1911.

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

I read the book of Job last night, I don’t think God comes out well in it.

All I wanted to do was write – at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn’t need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

If you look at the history of our country over the last 100 years, there have been periods where science and research have been celebrated. They were really kind of held up as heroes in society, which encouraged a generation of people to go into these fields.

We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.

Since the time of the witch burnings, the grandmothers and the healers and the midwives have been systematically targeted. And burned at the stake for hundreds of years, decimating whole communities.

The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.

I woke up one day and thought: ‚I want to write a book about the history of my body.‘ I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

People think, because we’re young, we aren’t complex, but that’s not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.