One could not always put safety up front as the prime goal. Do that, and who would ever achieve anything of note?

It is not faith per se that creates the problem; it is conviction, the notion that one cannot be wrong, that opposing views are necessarily invalid and may even be intolerable.

The uplifters are forever running around telling blockheads they would do better if they would believe in themselves. But they already do. That is why they are blockheads.

The measure of a civilization is in the courage, not of its soldiers, but of its bystanders.

... the truth is that when your people don't tell you what you need to know, it's a failure of leadership.

We could never know who we truly were until we heard the whispers of the stars.

Boundaries have no existence save on charts or in small minds. Nature does not draw lines.

Man has always seen himself the peak of creation. The part of the universe that thinks. The purpose for it all. It's no doubt a gratifying view, but the universe may have a different opinion.

Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters.

Universal deities ... never seem to smile. Not in any culture. What's the point of having omnipotence if you don't enjoy it?

The problem is that too often the only people who can act don't want change. Power doesn't so much corrupt as it breeds conservatism.

Back then I could not understand one word of what I read.Reading did, however, give me heart. Even if you cannot understand what you are reading you can get something from books.

The hammer never complains of the noise.

Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.

I had a dream I was walking down the street and didn't have to hold anyone's hand

I'd tell him, though. Soon. Soonish. Eventually.

Everything the Beats stood for was the opposite of the dominant culture today.

What's wrong with musicals now is all the gifted men who've died of AIDS-who would otherwise be here today creating great theater.

I definitely hope to attend UCLA in a year, and major in business.

I can't drown my demons. They know how to swim.

Nothing is more boring than talking to people who share my opinion anyway.