We are anthill men upon an anthill world.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.

I tried being reasonable, I didn’t like it.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.

‚Pure experience‘ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

I wear a hat on stage so that people won’t be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don’t wear a hat, there’s no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.

I’m astounded by people who want to ‚know‘ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

The name Muhammad is the most common name in the world. In all the countries around the world – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon – there are more Muhammads than anything else. When I joined the Nation of Islam and became a Muslim, they gave me the most famous name because I was the champ.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

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

The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.

Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.

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

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

Go up in an airplane. Go high enough, and it’s like we don’t even exist.

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

Men who have reached and passed forty-five, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this.

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.