You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

With all singers, insecurity is your best security. That’s why we’re such loud people and why we walk all funny. You think, ‚Are people interested?‘ But I think our band has something and they know we don’t just put albums out. We do think about it.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

I never cut class. I loved getting A’s, I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I thought being smart is cooler than anything in the world.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

I think sometimes – not always – I write songs that are accessible.

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

There happen to be a lot of people around who spent an hour on the Internet and think they know a lot of physics, but it doesn’t work like that… There’s a reason there are graduate schools in these departments.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

Shakespeare – I was very influenced – still am – by Shakespeare. I couldn’t believe that a white man in the 16th century could so know my heart.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

A collection is not just one basic idea. It comes from something that is in the air, something you suddenly like and put down on paper and then work out.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

If you are going to write, say, fantasy – stop reading fantasy. You’ve already read too much. Read other things; read westerns, read history, read anything that seems interesting, because if you only read fantasy and then you start to write fantasy, all you’re going to do is recycle the same old stuff and move it around a bit.

I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

Writing a song is so personal. You have to have trust in someone you’re working with; otherwise, you’re not gonna come out with something that’s really you.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

Humor has bailed me out of more tight situations than I can think of. If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes, too.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Well, if Fortune be a woman, she’s a good wench for this gear.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it – the grain, how it feels, the texture.

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

Kathleen Wynne and her band of radical-left cronies think they have a handle on what constitutes human identity and also what should constitute human morality. And I think that that’s being pushed in a manner in schools that’s completely reprehensible. It’s not education, in my estimation. It’s a form of indoctrination.

I have the space and liberty to create.

That government is best which governs least.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‚try to be a little kinder.‘

That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

I believe that in the pursuit of education, individual desire is more influential than institution, and personal faith more forceful than faculty.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

The method of instruction in Scouting is that of creating in the boy the desire to learn for himself.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.