The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.

Lost time is never found again.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

I must be cruel, only to be kind.

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.‘

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

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

The Word of God is active, energizing, sharp and powerful like a two-edged sword.

A right delayed is a right denied.

The Bible tells us to be perfect. This is likely a scary thought for many people. It used to scare me. I didn’t think I could ever get there, no matter how hard I tried.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

I bear a charmed life.

Too many Christians live their lives like slaves – to the devil – because they believe his lies more than they trust God.

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.

I’ve read the last page of the Bible. It’s all going to turn out all right.

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil’s propagation.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

The Bible says that God has a reason for keeping us here; if He didn’t, He would take us to Heaven far sooner.

Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

We think that the world is a solid, vivid place, full of shape and colour and solid objects like this table and this microphone and so on, but we actually create that in our heads out of the bits of information that hit the back of our eyeballs or hit our eardrums or hit our tongues or whatever.

Love is too young to know what conscience is.

A woman is an occasional pleasure but a cigar is always a smoke.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.

To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

I love the melodies in the Old Testament, how preachers highlight them when they read from the Scripture. But I was influenced forever by the New Testament. I love the Beatitudes, informing us that the meek shall inherit the earth.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

The people who were honored in the Bible were the false prophets. It was the ones we call the prophets who were jailed and driven into the desert.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I’d invented it, because it is very true.

Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.

No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

We shouldn’t have to be burdened with all the technicalities that come up from time to time with shrewd, smart lawyers interpreting what the laws or what the Constitution may or may not say.

The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.