War is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcending identification. Without loyalty to tribe, church, flag or ideal, there would be no wars.

Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.

The jester is brother to the sage.

One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.

The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.

The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated.

Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

In any language it is a struggle to make a sentence say exactly what you mean.

I believe that the evidence for telepathy is overwhelming and that it is a part of reality that is above science. Science allows us to glimpse [only] fragments of reality.

She also understood there was a hole in her heart where her son should be, that she was a wicked, selfish woman for wishing him back.

He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.

That's what I'm about -- getting engaged. Too many people don't wade in the mud with the politicians.

We are in the grip of a scientific materialism, caught in a vicious cycle where our security today seems to depend on regimentation and weapons which will ruin us tomorrow.

The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us.

Is the scraping off of a barnacle the destruction of a ship?

Automation and technology don't cure behavioral ruts: they just create new instances of them.

Sometimes my backswing gets long, and I get in bad positions. The club also can get behind me coming down, so I have to flip my hands to catch up to my body.

The beginning of genius is being scared shitless.

I don't write hits. If you just open that door, you're going to get a hit.