What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

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

The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn’t been reusable.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

History shows that, more often than not, loss of sovereignty leads to liberalisation imposed in the interests of the powerful.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

I’ll tell you one thing, since I’m married, single people look absolutely ridiculous to me.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

You go back to the 17th century, the commercial and industrial centers of the world were China and India.

Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.

The Joker that Christopher Nolan created in ‚The Dark Knight‘ had the scar across his mouth, and the first time you heard his explanation for it, he makes you believe that’s how he got it. But then you get into the film, and every time he talks about his scar, it’s a totally different story.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.

I don’t look at a man who’s expert in one area as a specialist. I look at him as a rookie in ten other areas.

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history. Thus, the peoples believe less and less in statements and promises.

Every writer has his writing technique – what he can and can’t do to describe something like war or history. I’m not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

If my life was a movie, no one would believe it.

Since the time of the witch burnings, the grandmothers and the healers and the midwives have been systematically targeted. And burned at the stake for hundreds of years, decimating whole communities.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

As I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family – my aunties, grandparents – is in Africa.

The fastest manned vehicle in history was Apollo 10. It reached 25,000 mph.

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

I confused things with their names: that is belief.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.

When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman.

By 1960, the South Africans knew that they were becoming a pariah state.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

Success and failure are equally disastrous.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Everybody is idealistic when you’re a kid.

A writer of fiction is really… a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.