The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.

Education is the transmission of civilization.

It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.

Today's rebel is tomorrow's tyrant.

No man who is in a hurry is quite civilised.

Man, not the earth, makes civilization.

If you have character, endeavor, personality, courage and the capacity for concentrated labor, you will do what is your destiny – and, perhaps, even do it well.

Only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.

The laws of biology are the fundamental lessons of history.

When his apprenticeship was finished (the candidate for Knighthood) was received into the Knightly Order by a ritual of sacramental awe.

being together… it will never be right. Thought it sure as hell feels like it could. We’d result to train wrecks. We’d cause whirlwinds. We’d start wildfires.

You just like me because I’m safe. There’s no risk. And then you never have to try to have a real relationship, because you can use me as an excuse.

You devise ways to tell a story that complies with your sensibility. Style and method are really extensions of your present sensibility.

I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and no other, Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me.

I think absurdist humor is funny.

Moving forward in science is as much unwinding the distorted thinking of the past as it is putting a clearer idea on the table.

Dürer would have seen a reason for living in a town like this.

Processing the human raw material is naturally more complicated than processing lumber.

That's what the American odyssey is really about: Leaving home. Leaving home and coming home, and trying to understand the difference.

It takes strong men and women to love ... people strong enough inside themselves to love ... without humiliation.