All the Quotes by Author

What blinds us, or makes his­tor­i­cal progress very dif­fi­cult, is our lack of aware­ness that our beliefs have grown obso­lete and should be put aside…. This is I think much of the prob­lem of the mod­ern dilem­ma: Direct expe­ri­ence has been dis­count­ed, and in its place all kinds of belief sys­tems have been erected&helliip;. If you believe some­thing, you are auto­mat­i­cal­ly pre­clud­ed from believ­ing its oppo­site; which means that a degree of your human free­dom has been for­feit­ed in the act of com­mit­ting your­self to this belief.

Hatred is near­ly always honest—rarely, if ever, assumed. So much can­not be said for love.

And then, not expect­ing it, you become mid­dle-aged and anony­mous. No one notices you. You achieve a won­der­ful free­dom. It is a pos­i­tive thing. You can move about, unno­ticed and invisible.

Human his­to­ry becomes more and more a race between edu­ca­tion and catastrophe.

I long to accom­plish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accom­plish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

One must nev­er look for hap­pi­ness: one meets it by the way…

Life does­n’t suck, it is just incon­ve­nient sometimes.

Wise men talk because they have some­thing to say—fools, because they have to say something.

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.

If reli­gion­ists applied rea­son and sci­ence to their faith, their reli­gion would sim­ply die. That’s why faith must oppose sci­ence for its very survival.

You can’t stay in your cor­ner of the for­est wait­ing for oth­ers to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.

…Reli­gious belief has been a mas­sive­ly neg­a­tive force in human his­to­ry, caus­ing great suf­fer­ing and con­flict, and stand­ing delib­er­ate­ly in the way of most of mankind’s efforts at progress, free­dom and flourishing.

What good is a smart bomb if you have a dumb president?

In the right light, at the right time, every­thing is extraordinary.

Stop look­ing at the oppo­site sex as the enemy.

Don’t describe your long-term mar­i­tal ambi­tions on the first date.

We have too many high sound­ing words, and too few actions that cor­re­spond with them.

I am more and more con­vinced that man is a dan­ger­ous crea­ture; and that pow­er, whether vest­ed in many or a few, is ever grasp­ing, and, like the grave, cries, ‘Give, give!’

If par­tic­u­lar care and atten­tion is not paid to the ladies, we are deter­mined to foment a rebel­lion and will not hold our­selves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

Do not put such unlim­it­ed pow­er into the hands of the hus­bands. Remem­ber, all men would be tyrants if they could.

The best index to a per­son­’s char­ac­ter is how he treats peo­ple who can’t do him any good, and how he treats peo­ple who can’t fight back.

Peo­ple who fight fire with fire usu­al­ly end up with ashes.

While for­bid­den fruit is said to taste sweet­er, it usu­al­ly spoils faster.

If you want a place in the sun, you’ve got to put up with a few blisters.

Allow the pres­i­dent to invade a neigh­bor­ing nation, when­ev­er he shall deem it nec­es­sary to repel an inva­sion, and you allow him to do so when­ev­er he may choose to say he deems it nec­es­sary for such a purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

It has been my expe­ri­ence that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

You don’t know a woman until you have had a let­ter from her.

I reject your real­i­ty and sub­sti­tute my own.

God made man, and then said I can do bet­ter than that and made woman.

I think every woman is enti­tled to a mid­dle hus­band she can forget.

Joy seems to me a step beyond happiness—happiness is a sort of atmos­phere you can live in some­times when you’re lucky. Joy is a light that fills you with hope and faith and love.

You don’t man­age peo­ple; you man­age things. You lead people.

I’ve always object­ed to doing any­thing over again if I had already done it once.

If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It’s much eas­i­er to apol­o­gize than it is to get permission.

It is often eas­i­er to ask for for­give­ness than to ask for permission.

The most dan­ger­ous phrase in the lan­guage is, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’

Humans are aller­gic to change. They love to say, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’ I try to fight that. That’s why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.

A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for. Sail out to sea and do new things.

Lead­er­ship is a two-way street, loy­al­ty up and loy­al­ty down. Respect for one’s supe­ri­ors; care for one’s crew.

One accu­rate mea­sure­ment is worth a thou­sand expert opinions.

We’re flood­ing peo­ple with infor­ma­tion. We need to feed it through a proces­sor. A human must turn infor­ma­tion into intel­li­gence or knowl­edge. We’ve tend­ed to for­get that no com­put­er will ever ask a new question.

To me, pro­gram­ming is more than an impor­tant prac­ti­cal art. It is also a gigan­tic under­tak­ing in the foun­da­tions of knowledge.

After all is said and done, more is said than done.

I have some­times been wild­ly, despair­ing­ly, acute­ly mis­er­able, racked with sor­row, but through it all, I still know quite cer­tain­ly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

The best time for plan­ning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.

…but sure­ly for every­thing you love you have to pay some price.

I don’t think neces­si­ty is the moth­er of inven­tion. Inven­tion, in my opin­ion, aris­es direct­ly from idle­ness, pos­si­bly also from laziness—to save one­self trouble.

Where large sums of mon­ey are con­cerned, it is advis­able to trust nobody.

There is noth­ing more thrilling in this world, I think, than hav­ing a child that is yours, and yet is mys­te­ri­ous­ly a stranger.

An archae­ol­o­gist is the best hus­band a woman can have; the old­er she gets, the more inter­est­ed he is in her.