Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid ... because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

Cruel men believe in a cruel god and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case.

Apparently, I have a totally different sense of humour.

You can't argue with what is.... Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer.

Between 1994 and the year 2000, when the Republican majority was in control of the House of Representatives, President Clinton played House Speaker Newt Gringrich like a violin!

New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

I am a control freak.

And that's why people read comics, to get away from the way life works, which is quite cruel and unheroic and ends in death.

A lot of songs you write are just for exercise - just pencil sharpeners.

The day when we plan seriously to start living either never comes or it comes too late.

It's always a good collaboration between the actor and the writer and the director to try stuff out, during the process.

The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.