I was born during the war and grew up in a time of rationing. We didn’t have anything. It’s influenced the way I look at the world.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

I confused things with their names: that is belief.

For me, there are two types of people: the young and the experienced.

If investments in banks fall, it is a tragedy, and people say, ‚What are we going to do?‘ but if people die of hunger, have nothing to eat or suffer from poor health, that’s nothing.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

My mother would kill me if I posed nude! My mother raised me with certain standards.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

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

It’s a funny old world.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

My great-grandfather and his two brothers fought at Gettysburg. They were in artillery, and they survived the war, thank goodness. So I revere what they did. I think their motivations were honorable when they undertook the war and participated in it along with other Southerners.

The things I talk about and explain couldn’t happen – yet, they don’t seem impossible – you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane – and it’s trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

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

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define.

The will is a beast of burden. If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God wills; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills; Nor can it choose its rider… the riders contend for its possession.

I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it’s how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

You can’t have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.

Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.

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.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

I think the word rich is all relative.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

My mom is very religious – Catholic – and from a young age they brought me to the church.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

History is more or less bunk.

We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

Many people listen to what I have to say and I appear a lot in media, so therefore I influence a lot of people and therefore I have a bigger responsibility because I have a bigger platform.

Washington still refuses to provide evidence to support the claims in 1990 that a huge Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi border justified war.