Reason is the test of ridicule, not ridicule the test of truth.

Orthodoxy is my doxy - heterodoxy is another man's doxy.

Fanaticism is a fire, which heats the mind indeed, but heats without purifying. It stimulates and ferments all the passions; but it rectifies none of them.

Enthusiasm is that temper of the mind in which the imagination has got the better of the judgment.

High birth is a thing which I never knew any one to disparage except those who had it not; and I never knew any one to make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of.

A lie has no legs, and cannot stand; but it has wings, and can fly far and wide.

The skilful disputant well knows that he never has his enemy at more advantage than when, by allowing the premises, he shows him arguing wrong from his own principles.

The Egyptians, by the concurrent testimony of antiquity, were among the first who taught that the soul was immortal.

Short isolated sentences were the mode in which ancient Wisdom delighted to convey its precepts, for the regulation of life and manners.

Admiration is one of the most bewitching, enthusiastic passions of the mind; and every common moralist knows that it arises from novelty and surprise, the inseparable attendants of imposture.

The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it.

Writing is my primary way of expressing myself.

If there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come that shall set it on fire.

Movie acting is primarily listening. If you're really engaged, that's all a movie audience wants to see is you processing what's happening in your world.

Well, I've got nothing to hide. Absolutely nothing.

Look at the world with the vision of peace, love, and compassion. Then the whole world will appear loving and peaceful.

So try to pursue the very things that you are passionate about- that is the difference between good and great!

If you were not born in this world, there would be no need to die. To be born in this world is to die, to disappear [laughing].

At the end of the day, Obamacare is bad for America. Washington, D.C., exempted themselves. U.S. senators still do not have to be on Obamacare.

I find industrial cities exciting. I like their toughness.