Smooth functioning of social life has always depended on the recognition of certain basic limits to behavior. We cannot simply say or do anything we wish, or offend people, without paying consequences – isolation, ostracism, etc.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

I feel like the way I was raised was to be able to see through all the titles in this world – from religion to race.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work.

It seems to me that terrestrial beings, as they become more autonomous, psychologically richer, shut themselves up in a way against one another, and at the same time gradually become strangers to the cosmic environment and currents, impenetrable to one another, and incapable of exteriorizing themselves.

Nobody knows me.

Every sin is the result of a collaboration.

You always have to remember that if you say something negative, it’s going to come back to haunt you.

You can’t move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn’t mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

If you’re going to do something tonight that you’ll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.

I don’t want to be fake. I’m just being me. And I have the power to break stereotypes and whatever useless rules that society puts on us.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

Short cuts make long delays.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

When anger rises, think of the consequences.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

There’s no difference between one’s killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It’s exactly the same thing, or even worse.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

Where there is no opposition to evil, it multiplies.

Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed that luxury.

Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that’s important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.

I think Americans generally are not used to working very hard, in terms of working for the collective. I think in our country we have taken individualism to its farthest reaches, possibly.

I didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.

Modern cynics and skeptics… see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.

Sometimes I’ve been to a party where no one spoke to me for a whole evening. The men, frightened by their wives or sweeties, would give me a wide berth. And the ladies would gang up in a corner to discuss my dangerous character.

People are unaware of what is going on. When I talk to people, they know the basics, they know the planet is warming because of greenhouse gases… but they don’t know the actual consequence of that.

Nothing good ever comes of violence.

Sometimes if you jump into something too quickly, you can screw up something that might have been good two years down the road.

He who acts with a constant view to his own advantage will be much murmured against.

I don’t think I could think of a single thing that’s more isolating than being famous.

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

I’ve written some great things. That’s a gift, but there’s consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

Regarded zoologically, man is today an almost isolated figure in nature. In his cradle, he was less isolated.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

Regarding marriage, it – somehow, it didn’t happen. One fellow in such a big family not getting married is not an issue.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.