Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. ...The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.

Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.