To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

Our best thoughts come from others.

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.

You don’t have the same mentality as you did five years ago – even one year. People are always changing, and I believe that everyone deserves the space to change and for people to recognize their change.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

I’m constantly thinking.

Nature is not human hearted.

I second-guess and overthink and rethink every single thing that I do.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

My mother used to tell me man gives the award, God gives the reward. I don’t need another plaque.

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.

No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.

I still close my eyes and go home – I can always draw from that.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

Lord keep us all from sin. Teach us how to walk circumspectly; enable us to guard our minds against error of doctrine, our hearts against wrong feelings, and our lives against evil actions.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

Thirty was so strange for me. I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.

He who does not trust enough, Will not be trusted.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

When you read, I’m sure you don’t realize that your eyes are going backwards and forwards and to this place and that place. Mine don’t do that.

Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

I need one of those baby monitors from my subconscious to my consciousness so I can know what the hell I’m really thinking about.

We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

I had not expected ‚A Brief History of Time‘ to be a best seller.

I could speak three languages when I was six, and when I went to school, I only liked to read and sketch. At five, I could write and everything.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

How great is the mystery of the first cells which were one day animated by the breath of our souls! How impossible to decipher the welding of successive influences in which we are forever incorporated! In each one of us, through matter, the whole history of the world is in part reflected.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

Age doesn’t bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It’s the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.

Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.

I have two pairs of reading glasses. One pair is for reading fiction, the other for non-fiction. I’ve read the Bible twice wearing each pair, and it’s the same.

I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.