I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard even to vomiting in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart.

Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.

Goals are compulsive cahoots, gnawing at our minds everyday, challenging our abilities and pushing us closer to the curve of compliance.

Part of me likes words as music sabotage, and part of me wonders why anyone would waste their time liking anything to do with sabotage.

Mathematics-a wonderful science, but it hasn't yet come up with a way to divide one tricycle between three small boys.

Faith means the will to avoid knowing what is true.

Each and every day, Israel's very existence is at stake.

When I don't know the answer to something, I write a book about it because it gives me a chance to explore it and go to some people who do have the answers.

J. Paul Getty, who still hasn't been buried - they keep finding oil! Never got a dinner!

Santa Barbara people are conservative-not like in L.A., where everybody wears rhinestones on their glasses to show that they own an airplane factory.

There is no evil without its compensation.

A person can form things in his thought, and, by impressing his thought upon formless substance, can cause the thing he thinks about to be created.