Since every individual is accountable ultimately to the self, the formation of that self demands our utmost care and attention.

Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

Face your fears or they will climb over your back.

Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.

I am not the river I am the net.

Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. Get the rich, the greedy, the criminals, the stupid leader and so on ad nauseam.

Create or arouse such unbridled forces and you built carnal fantasies of enormous complexity. You could lead whole populations around by their desires, by their fantasy projections.

But that’s the trouble with moments—they end." ~Narrator

Thoughts are free, talk is cheap, and action is expensive. What's your worth?

Don't squash creativity, inspire it!

I wanted to connect my guitar to human emotions.

One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel -- the quality of philosophy.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

What can be sustained and repeated without emptying out?

There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.

Isn't it amazing that there are laws of the universe that you can actually find out about, live your life according to and change the world for the better?

A Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me.