While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… the truly wise person is colorblind.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

The only definition by which America’s best days are behind it is on a purely relative basis.

How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today – and in fact we have forgotten.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

When you are young, you cannot imagine being disabled. You imagine you would conquer it somehow. As I’ve got older, I can imagine it; I can see how life narrows in. I feel compassion for my mother now.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neurone disease. But it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I could still do.

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

I have no further use for America. I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was President.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

Here in England, everyone’s a pop star, innit, whereas in America they believe in the term artist.

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.

Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked.

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

Those who have a true understanding of America know that we have no desire for territorial expansion, for economic or other domination of other peoples. Such purposes are repugnant to our ideals of human freedom.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.

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

There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.

The French are so into themselves that they don’t even notice you.

Yeah, it’s pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

If you would judge, understand.

It’s important that we invest in America – literally. The terrorists wanted to destroy our economy, and we can’t let our system fall apart. We also have to invest in one another.

No matter how bad any situation, cynicism has no positive impact. Watching the news, you might notice that cynicism and victimhood often seem to go hand-in-hand, but not for veterans.

Keep in mind that no matter how perfectly you get your life in order, you will never be rid of all your problems. Problems are a way of life, always have been, always will be. But how you elect to view those problems is all up to you.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

The fault lines are shifting from the boundaries of nations into the web of our societies and the streets of our cities. And, terrorism and extremism are a global force that are larger than their changing names, groups, territories and targets.

North Americans don’t understand… that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.

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

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.

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

The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.