I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.

Defiance, not obedience, is the American's answer to overbearing authority.

You know what you are actually in love with? Integrity. The impossible. The clean, consistent, reasonable, self-faithful, the all-of-one-style, like a work of art.

Rulers exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter.

Men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality.

If you know that this life is all that you have, wouldn't you make the most of it?

Talent alone is helpless today. Any success requires both talent and luck. And the 'luck' has to be helped along and provided by someone.