There is no greater reason for children to honour parents than for parents to honour children except, that while the children are young, the parents are stronger than children.

Logic must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can.

Experience has taught me a technique for dealing with such people [...] I counter the devotees of the Great Pyramid by adoration of the Sphinx; and the devotee of nuts by pointing out that hazelnuts and walnuts are as deleterious as other foods and only Brazil nuts should be tolerated. But when I was younger I had not yet acquired this technique, with the result that my contacts with cranks were sometimes alarming.

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

Emphatic and reiterated assertion, especially during childhood, produces in most people a belief so firm as to have a hold even over the unconscious.

The experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful.

A proverb is one man's wit and all men's wisdom.