I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

I think any life can be interesting, any surroundings can be interesting. I don’t think I could have been so brave if I had been living in a town, competing with people on what can be called a generally higher cultural level.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

It is not well to make great changes in old age.

America is just downright mean.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

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

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

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

There has to be a global mission of human progress.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

If you talk bad about country music, it’s like saying bad things about my momma. Them’s fightin‘ words.

Human self-understanding changes with time, and so also human consciousness deepens.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

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.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.

I have no further use for America. I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was President.

My musical taste and image is going to change naturally. It’s not forced; I do what comes natural to me. Sometimes, I like to be dark… other times, I like to be really light and ladylike.

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

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

Children are all foreigners.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

People like to talk about war.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes the form of grades. In society, it means money, status, privilege.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things, they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

Applause is a receipt, not a bill.

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

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

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

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.

A lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren’t dependent on Washington doing something different.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.

I think America has always been polarized.

The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

I don’t pretend to understand the Universe – it’s a great deal bigger than I am.

I’ll tell you one thing, since I’m married, single people look absolutely ridiculous to me.