No one even knows one percent of the fabulous history of Man; but thanks to history, we know about occurrences that go beyond the limits of the imaginable.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

I look at athletes in all sports and try to picture what kind of football player they’d be, what position they’d play and so on.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish.

I have fun with ideas; I play with them.

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

I don’t claim to be knowledgeable about theology. Most of my knowledge comes out of my experience and the lessons in the Bible. Every Sunday I’m home I teach 45 minutes and we boiled them down to one page for the new book, ‚Through the Year with Jimmy Carter.‘

Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.

SEALs are human beings. We may all have the same haircuts, but we aren’t robots. Some SEALs are great people. Some are not great people. Some have done unspeakably terrible things. You’re dealing with different people, different dreams, different desires.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past – whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

I never dreamt, in my dream, I’m Dalai Lama.

Science is nothing but perception.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Grace is not part of consciousness; it is the amount of light in our souls, not knowledge nor reason.

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.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous.

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

De Sade is the one completely consistent and thoroughgoing revolutionary of history.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

I praticed making faces in the mirror and it would drive my mother crazy. She used to scare me by saying that I was going to see the devil if I kept looking in the mirror. That fascinated me even more, of course.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

The deceit and distortion surrounding the American invasion of Vietnam is by now so familiar that it has lost its power to shock.

It is difficult to violently suppress people in the long run, as the example of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries has shown.

His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even… knowledge, was foolproof.

My imagination is a twisted place.

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

The 21st century is going to be the American century. Because we lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. That is the history of the journey of America.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us.

The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

It’s good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that’s better than you’d imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn’t be as much fun.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving – as if it were an individual person – its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

The kings of Spain brought us the conquistadores and masters, whose footprints remained in the circular land grants assigned to those searching for gold in the sands of rivers, an abusive and shameful form of exploitation, traces of which can be noted from the air in many places around the country.

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.