My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

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

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else. That would be our first priority. So I didn’t understand how that added up.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

Whether or not I like a piece of data has very little bearing on whether or not I am likely to accept it.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

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.

Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

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

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

People have been fed this diet of pabulum, rights, and impulsive freedom. There’s just an absolute starvation for the other side of the story.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

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.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

Youth is wasted on the young.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

Measure your wealth by what you’d have left if you lost all your money.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

This is not a bad life.

Life is a song to me.

It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

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

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.

What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.

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

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.