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.

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

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.

Children astound me with their inquisitive minds. The world is wide and mysterious to them, and as they piece together the puzzle of life, they ask ‚Why?‘ ceaselessly.

Where every something, being blent together turns to a wild of nothing.

Over the years, people I’ve met have often asked me what I’m working on, and I’ve usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.

I have survivor’s curiosity, I guess.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‚Eureka!‘ but ‚That’s funny…‘

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

In no instance have… the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste.

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.

Folks, I can tell you I’ve known eight presidents, three of them intimately.

The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science – that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

I’m the only person you’ve ever met who has read Longfellow.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.

In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be heroic days.

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

The first scholarly edition of Magna Carta was published by the eminent jurist William Blackstone. It was not an easy task. There was no good text available.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

The best interpreter of the law is custom.

Joan of Arc had style. Jesus had style.

Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.

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

Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

The word ‚good‘ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

Notifying the enemy in advance of our withdrawal dates or reassuring the enemy that we will not use certain capabilities like our ground forces should be avoided.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

I haven’t read Horowitz. I didn’t used to read him when he was a Stalinist, and I don’t read him today.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

I believe you’ve got to do your due diligence.

The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that’s the most interesting: the part that doesn’t go according to what you expected.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that’s what the music is about.

An economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

‚The Lorax‘ book was intended to be propaganda.

OK, so what’s the speed of dark?

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

A punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

I’m not a writer who teaches. I’m a teacher who writes.

Since I was old enough to understand what a songwriter/producer is, I’ve had a curiosity about how Max Martin creates what he creates. I wanted to see that happen. I wanted to be there. I wanted to learn from him.

Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts.

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