In America, where the electoral process is drowning in commercial techniques of fund-raising and image-making, we may have completed a circle back to a selection process as unconcerned with qualifications as that which made Darius King of Persia. ... he whose horse was the first to neigh at sunrise should be King.

Wisdom - meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.

Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.

In the search for meaning we must not forget that the gods (or God, for that matter) are a concept of the human mind; they are the creatures of man, not vice versa. They are needed and invented to give meaning and purpose to the struggle that is life on Earth, to explain strange and irregular phenomena of nature, haphazard events and, above all, irrational human conduct. They exist to bear the burden of all things that cannot be comprehended except by supernatural intervention or design.

The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.

I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end.

I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry.