Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

To be honest, I think kids have got a lot more going on than adults. They’ve got their heads screwed on a lot better.

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

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

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

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.

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.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

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

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

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.

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

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

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

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

I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

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.

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

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.

In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

If you’re doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality. But you really don’t know what was going on in the person’s mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

It’s presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

In my entire life, any time I’ve ever lost something, I’ve gotten something even better going around the next corner. It’s like one door closes and another door opens. As long as I can walk through the produce section in every grocery store in this country and eat the grapes that they’re going to throw away, I know I can be fine.