Creative ideas come to the intuitive person who can face up to the insecurity of looking beyond the obvious.

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.

He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.

There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.

When all think alike, then no one is thinking

The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.

The news and the truth are not the same thing.

The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism.

To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.

It is often very illuminating...to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion?

The personal study of Holy Bible is essential to knowing God.

I'm so careless that now i don't even care if i cared for you.

It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

Poetry does need a bit of ferocity. The only way to attend to the fractured world is to write a ferocious kind of music, to sing that volatility.

The best memories are those which we have forgotten.

I spent my first 50 years trying to become known as a writer and the next 30 trying to avoid being famous. I walk down the street or go to a football game and people shout, 'Hey Andy'. I hate that.

Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves.

Japan, Europe, [and] America probably [are] better than last year [2015], not China.

Trying to seduce Alec at all was a waste of time; he came preseduced anyway. Like a microwave entrée. You pressed his buttons, and he got hot.

It is a sobering thought that Gomer Pyle and the Beverly Hillbillies may be among our chief interstellar emissaries.