Full quote list

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

Come quickly, I am tasting stars!

Not all who wander are lost.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.

It's silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons.

If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn't hesitate to do so.

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand.

If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated.

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

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

Speak the truth, then leave quickly.

The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.

There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

An optimist is a fellow who thinks a housefly is looking for a way out.

There are books in which the footnotes or comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books.

My belt holds my pants up, but the belt loops hold my belt up. I don't really know what's happening down there. Who is the real hero?

I saw a wino; he was eating grapes. I was like, "Dude - you have to wait!"

I think foosball is a combination of soccer and shish kabobs.

No woman will in my time be prime minister.

All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Three percent exceeds 2 percent by 50 percent, not by 1 percent.

Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

The ultimate moral defense for capitalism is that it stops people like Bill Gates and me from raising armies and starting religions.

To be Ozzy Osbourne, it could be worse. I could be Sting.

The really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting.

Your mind can be changed, your heart can be swayed, but your penis is very stubborn.

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war against brutality and darkness.

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.

There's something about me that makes a lot of people want to throw up.

Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.

Rembrandt painted 700 pictures. Of these, 3,000 are still in existence.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.

These ballot initiatives remind us that America is the land where people are free to dream whatever they want, so long as that dream doesn't make Midwesterners feel icky.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend of the support of Paul.

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

The race may not be to the swift nor victory to the strong, but that's how you bet.

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

And he said to me, "You're really nothing but a one-kick kicker." And I thought: "Yeah, but I kicked it once. What the hell did you do?"

Dressed for the battle but not fatigued, my hat’s made of metal to avoid debris

Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is victory over lesser men.

The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.

All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.