I’m the first to admit this whole salary thing is getting out of control. In the final analysis, it’s still about the work.

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

Work alone is noble.

The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with Me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

From infancy, I have relied on the fiercely sweet spirits of black men; and this is abundantly clear in my work.

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

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

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Ever since Newton, we’ve done science by taking things apart to see how they work. What the computer enables us to do is to put things together to see how they work: we’re now synthesized rather than analysed. I find one of the most enthralling aspects of computers is limitless communication.

It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.

Any man can call time out, but no man can say how long the time out will be.

There is no just and serene criticism as yet.

Governments don’t control people like they used to.

We had to go on and do the work of the court and we did.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

There is no gambling like politics.

I love almost everything about my work except conferences. I am too shy in front of an audience. But I love signings and having eye contact with a reader who already knows my soul.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

It’s not simply to say, ‚My colleagues are wrong, and I would do it this way,‘ but the greatest dissents do become court opinions.

We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates – which group they belong to, what is their geographical location, who are the victims. These individual groups or names will keep changing. Today you are looking at the Taliban or ISIS; tomorrow you might be looking at another name.

Widespread use of antibiotics promotes the spread of antibiotic resistance. Smart use of antibiotics is the key to controlling its spread.

Smiling makes me feel weak and not in control and not powerful and small.

The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.

In doubtful cases the more liberal interpretation must always be preferred.

This character feels so much like my brother. He has two children. He has a wife. He works with me. He chooses to stay in New Hampshire because he wants his kids to grow up in the school they started with. He doesn’t want them to lose friends. He is his family’s hero.

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

I don’t mind saying, you know, that I don’t take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books. It’s been printed all over, so I don’t feel like I am hiding anything.

One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.

I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.

The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

I’m very type-A, and many things in my life are about control and domination, but eating should be a submissive experience, where you let down your guard and enjoy the ride.

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we’re not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.

When I was writing the Destiny’s Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn’t know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.

The ‚free-floating intellectual‘ may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.

A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

It is easier to be critical than correct.

Atoms are very special: they like certain particular partners, certain particular directions, and so on. It is the job of physics to analyze why each one wants what it wants.

I don’t think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

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

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

An economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s.

Chinese people need to be controlled; otherwise, they will do whatever they want.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

Today, all physicists know from studying Einstein and Bohr that sometimes an idea which looks completely paradoxical at first, if analyzed to completion in all detail and in experimental situations, may, in fact, not be paradoxical.

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

I only want my work to make people happy.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.