People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

I don’t watch it, but I know enough to comment on it.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.

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.

I had a much better view with the halo than I expected.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

Contention existed before the earth was formed.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

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.

Europe became rich because it exploited Africa; and the Africans know that.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

Sin is geographical.

I had nearly finished school because I was making effort not that bad on that. But there was a law in Germany after the war. You could not make your final examination before 18, so lots of people who were late because of the way had to do it first.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

Society therefore is as ancient as the world.

John F. Kennedy was the victim of the hate that was a part of our country. It is a disease that occupies the minds of the few but brings danger to the many.

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

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

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.

When General Allenby conquered Jerusalem during World War I, he was hailed in the American press as Richard the Lion-Hearted, who had at last won the Crusades and driven the pagans out of the Holy Land.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

I don’t pretend to understand the Universe – it’s a great deal bigger than I am.

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

I’ve never considered musical equipment very sacred.

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

I don’t have this feeling that 70 is really old.

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.

Science is but an image of the truth.

It’s different from being 21 and you think there’s endless amount of opportunities. At 33, the ending is much, much closer.

The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

Study men, not historians.

When I’m a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It’s somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.