It is almost a general rule that nations do not decline gradually. Instead they fall abruptly from their greatest heights.

Corrupt men are always liars. Lies are their instruments, their pleasure, their solace. In time they come to believe their lies, or rather to half-believe them.

Fragmentation occurs when a civilization is in decline.

Uncorrupted man, with God's blessing, advances across the fields of the universe as though he were walking down a country lane.

The United States is dangerously close to being a plutocracy. A third of the private wealth is owned by less than 5 percent of the population.

The small Hitlers are around us every day.

All is forgiven to kings and popes. History grants them immunity, even a full pardon, even when they admit their crimes and glory in them.

It is no more rational to have lawyers in positions of power than it would be to have garbage collectors in positions of power. And in human terms garbage collectors would be preferable.

Conquest, tyranny, treachery, and the clash of cultures bring about corrupt societies, and so does old age. Sometimes the five faces of corruption are visible at the same time.

The corrupt, when found out, become especially good moralists.

A totalitarian dictatorship cannot explain; it can only suppress.

Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

Life is filled with rhythms-day and night, hot and cold, summer and winter, spring and fall, cloudy and clear. Likewise in a relationship, men and women have their own rhythms and cycles.

I would never call people that are born in America who are from Mexico terror babies.

People who don't fit the mold are treated differently than those who do.

I keep telling myself I should try very hard to write a novel of about 210 pages... I don't seem to be capable of it, but I keep hoping it will happen.

Buddha renounced every worldly happiness because he wanted to share with the whole world his happiness which was to be had by men who sacrificed and suffered in the search for truth.

It's always money no matter kind of budget you have, though, it forces you to be creative and not take anything for granted.

Billy Strayhorn wrote Multicolored Blue. Billy to me is the boss of the arrangers.

His eyes, I’d long since discovered, could be as eloquent and expressive as his pen. The messages they sent me now hardly seemed decent for a public setting.

I have learned that the cost of everything from a royal suite to a bottle of soda water can be halved by the simple expedient of saying it must be halved.