I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

I consider myself to be as informed on American foreign policy as anyone in America.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

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

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and easy execution in the proper place, than to expand both indiscriminately.

A lot of people think international relations is like a game of chess. But it’s not a game of chess, where people sit quietly, thinking out their strategy, taking their time between moves. It’s more like a game of billiards, with a bunch of balls clustered together.

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

Nature never breaks her own laws.

I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

It’s a very confusing era that we’re in.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

These young guys are playing checkers. I’m out there playing chess.

I was definitely very much a country boy.

I wasn’t sure of the exact mindset you should have when you go into a Test match. So I probably became too defensive when I played my first Test match. Short balls in one-day cricket, I have never thought of just defending.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

The extreme weakness of quantum gravitational effects now poses some philosophical problems; maybe nature is trying to tell us something new here: maybe we should not try to quantize gravity.

We make war that we may live in peace.

Movies are not novels, and that’s why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can’t be done.

Thinking fragments reality – it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

We all hoped in 2001 that we could put in place an Afghan government under President Karzai that would be able to control the country, make sure al-Qaeda didn’t come back, and make sure the Taliban wasn’t resurging. It didn’t work out.

When California was wild, it was the floweriest part of the continent.

I got to Africa. I got the opportunity to go and learn, not about any animal, but chimpanzees. I was living in my dream world, the forest in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. It was Tanganyika when I began.

The environment is everything that isn’t me.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

I get impatient with people working on a film that have their head in their hands like it’s the most complicated thing in the world.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

Nature teaches us that tens of billions of light years may have passed, and life in all of its expressions has always been subjected to an incredible combination of matter and radiation.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

The U.S. is off the spectrum in religious commitment.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

You know, crankiness is at the essence of all comedy.

I guess every single word I’ve ever said is going to be dissected now.

There’s no doubt that inequality destabilizes societies. I think the social science evidence on that front is crystal clear.

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.

As I’ve said, there were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hopes for Iraqis‘ future.

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

The American claim that the bombing of North Vietnam was directed against military targets does not withstand direct investigation.

If you’re in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect.

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation.

I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.

War is so complex; human nature is so complex. There’s no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the air will refertilize her womb. I developed a process for this purpose in 1900. It was perfected fourteen years later under the stress of war by German chemists.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.