Characters last. Beautiful writing lasts. A compelling narrative lasts. Art survives long after ideas go extinct.

The Enron scandal calls into question the integrity of the entire capitalist system, which previously we assumed was based on honest, straightforward greed.

There is nothing scarier than a mediocre man with a mission.

Uncertainty is inevitable at the frontiers of knowledge.

Most geniuses are just talented people who get up really early in the morning.

Coffee is one of the special things I have, instead of a social life.

A country road, a gravel road, is a sign of civilization, sure, but it’s just a farm, an easy conquest. Iron means a stronghold, people who can defend what’s theirs.

To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need.

When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.

I see woefully obscure poetry as simply a kind of verbal rudeness.

I always think extremism is basically a reaction out of fear. What we seem to be experiencing is polar extremism that keeps people from coming together.

This is excellence - the following of anything for its own sake and with its own integrity.

I hate every violent overthrow, because as much is destroyed as is gained by it.

The thing itself is one; the images are many. What leads to a perceptive understanding of the thing is not the focus on one image, but the viewing of many images together.

Morality is an utterly meaningless term unless defined as the good one does to others, the fulfilling of one's function in the sociopolitical whole.

One can never win an argument with ignorance.