Life is not fair... Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.

You don't have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally!

When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

The village is coming back, like it or not.

In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.

Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?

If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I'll bet you'll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science.

I think what we call the dullness of things is a disease in ourselves. Else how could anyone find an intense interest in life? And many do.

Some of my most neurotically fierce bitterness is the result of realizing how untrue people have become.

Youth is the time to study wisdom; old age is the time to practice it.

You will find it a very good practice always to verify your references, sir.

Warmth isn't what minimalists are thought to have.

You don’t want to ask after the health of anyone, if you’re a funeral director. They think maybe you’re scouting for business.

Zen is the game of insight, the game of discovering who you are beneath the social masks.

There is no evil without its compensation.

I recognize now that the conditions that Indians are living in are the conditions that poor people everywhere are living in.

I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me.