How good are the best musical imaginations? Can a trained musician, swiftly reading a score tell just how that voicing of dissonant oboes and flutes over the massed strings will sound?

The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

The idea that God is a worthy recipient of our gratitude for the blessings of life but should not be held accountable for the disasters is a transparently disingenuous innovation of the theologians.

Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.

There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.

What you can imagine depends on what you know.

There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.

There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is.

A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.

There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly.

Love is the most valuable gift that you can give to anyone from your heart.

To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult of all.

If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It's better to live somehow than not at all.

A person's life persuades better than his word.

I'm 33...before AC/DC I've played in a lot of bands in Australia. You're never too old to rock and roll.

Good manners are the expressions of benevolence in personal intercourse, by which we endeavor to promote the comfort and enjoyment of others, and to avoid all that gives needless uneasiness.

Boy's natural play is rough and tumble play, it's the universal play of little boys. And it's very different from aggression. And we are a society that's failing to understand the distinction.

The sound of the drum drives out thought; for that very reason it is the most military of instruments.

To no form of religion is woman indebted for one impulse of freedom.

I like playing flawed characters, people who aren't perfect.