You must be able to say "I understand, " before you can say "I agree, " or "I disagree, " or "I suspend judgment.

True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.

The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth.

... always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.

The student can read as fast as his mind will let him, not as slow as his eyes make him.

Don't try to resist the effect that a work of imaginative literature has on you.

The reader who fails to ponder, or at least mark, the words he does not understand is headed for disaster.

From your point of view as a reader, therefore, the most important words are those that give you trouble.

Most of us are addicted to non-active reading. The outstanding fault of the non-active or undemanding reader is his inattention to words, and his consequent failure to come to terms with the author.

The mind can atrophy, like the muscles, if it is not used.

In short, we can only learn from our "betters".

With languages, you can move from one social situation to another. With languages, you are at home anywhere.

The only known technique to an imitator is to steal and rephrase, then with a mischievous smile, he said, "i did it", without any confidence and prove.

I absolutely loved being famous. It was all great, up until the point when it wasn't.

Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word 'census', and people fall asleep.

It has been said that the question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is so profound that it would occur only to a metaphysician, yet so simple that it would occur only to a child.

The extreme nature of dominant-end views is often concealed by the vagueness and ambiguity of the end proposed.

Genius may be for an hour or a thousand years; its indispensable quality is continuity with the life-push.

Anything well written with good language and clarity and honesty is worth doing. It comes out of the same tradition as Shakespeare.

There's a lot of evidence in evolutionary sciences that show that altruism and acting in ways that are empathetic to others are actually beneficial on an evolutionary basis.