The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

[A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

Adoption is grief in reverse.

A lot of my nonfiction is very strong environmental stories - I was the first guy to write about the dolphin killings in Japan.

Take me home," Snow White said. "Take me home instantly. If there is anything worse than being home, it is being out.

If you walk into a coffee shop in 1903 Vienna, you might find at the same table the artist Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud, Leon Trotsky and possibly Adolf Hitler, who lived in Vienna at the same time.

I think we may very well, in many areas, get likelihood, but not certitude. We don't want certitude anyway, do we?

Exposure to a diversity of disciplines has been exceptionally helpful to me.

The real meditation practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment to moment.

In America the word revolutionary is used to sell pantyhose.

If we are transparent, with nothing to hide, the gap between language and being disappears. Then the Muse can speak.

Never forget who was there for you when no one else was.