The ‚free-floating intellectual‘ may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.

Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.

If you are part of a religion that very strongly insists that you believe then to decide not to do that is quite a big hurdle to jump over. You never forget the thought process you went through. It becomes part of your whole intellectual picture.

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.

I believe in love at first sight. You want that connection, and then you want some problems.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

I’m not going to stop having problems.

I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.

The Second Amendment is just as important as all the other Amendments.

Corruption is one of the most common reasons I hear in views that criticize aid.

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.

My dad kind of liked racing and motorsports, but wasn’t a big fan, it wasn’t like he watched every race or whatever.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.

There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.

My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

But if you – if what – the reports are true, what they’re saying is, is that as a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that’s going to increase our costs, we knew that.

If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if – the probable outcome is failure.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

My principles are more important than the money or my title.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any forum that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

While some doubted that connecting the world was actually important, we were building. While others doubted that this would be sustainable, you were forming lasting connections. We just cared more about connecting the world than anyone else. And we still do today.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.

Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.

An intellectual is a person who’s found one thing that’s more interesting than sex.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don’t see why anybody does.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

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

Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.

If I like a thing, it just sticks after once reading it or hearing it.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

I don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.

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

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

Study men, not historians.

For those of you who do not know Him, choosing your eternal home is the most important decision you will ever make.

The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

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.

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.

Well, when you come down to it, I don’t see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?

‚Kiss Land‘ is like a horror movie.

‚I am‘ is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that ‚I do‘ is the longest sentence?

There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, and wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

I like to speak on matters which matter to human beings, and almost everything matters to human beings.

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

We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

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

I’m not a supermodel. That’s not what I do. What I do is music. I want my fans to feel the way I do, to know what they have to offer is just as important, more important, than what’s happening on the outside.