Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.

You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

There's a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.

You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.

A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

Where does your soul go, when you die in Hell?

Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgotten.

There is no break in the wholeness of time.

They argued because they liked argument, liked the swift run of the unfettered mind along the paths of possibility, liked to question what was not questioned.

He loved Shevek, but he could not show him what freedom is, that recognition of each person's solitude which alone transcends it.

Let us acknowledge the magnitude of Motherhood, by simply honoring all mothers— past & present.

A brand new mediocrity is thought more of than accustomed excellence.

Experience can dull. With most men experience is a series of mistakes; the more experience you have the less you know.

Your allegiance is with your spouse; you cannot break that by showing allegiance to your ex-spouse.

If you can afford...a computer, you can afford to pay $16 for my...CD.

Black and Jewish leaders have been a coalition of conscience.

Without God's Spirit, there is nothing we can do that will count for God's kingdom. Without God's Spirit, the church simply can't be the church.

You become a writer because you like to be alone in a room with your books.

Winning is not everything, but wanting to win is.

Sometimes you have to put your balls on the line.