An acute first-class brain is the finest asset anyone can have- and, if we want to be happy, it is an asset we must exploit to the uttermost.

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

We assume that anything that is new to us is new to human society as a whole, and that if we don’t see it reflected in history textbooks and in recent memory then it cannot have existed for long.

Without imagination, there would be no creativity. Without creativity, there would be nothing.

He was close enough now to see that her profile was designed to do dramatic things to hearts: stop them, steal them, break them.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

I don't buy diamonds, I don't buy cars, but I enjoy travelling. I'm not a very possessive person as far as things go.

We are like boxers, one never knows how much longer one has

When everything gets turned upside down, it only leads to better quality stuff.

They always throw around this term 'the liberal elite.' And I kept thinking to myself about the Christian right. What's more elite than believing that only you will go to heaven?

It takes a person who is wide awake to make his dream come true.

The flower which we do not pluck is the only one which never loses its beauty or its fragrance.