The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.

Use the smallest word that does the job.

Einstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise. Relativity being not for most of us, we elevate its author to a position somewhere between Edison, who gave us a tangible gleam, and God, who gave us the difficult dark and the hope of penetrating it.

I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend - to make flights, carrying others along if you can manage it. To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit.

Computing machines perhaps can do the work of a dozen ordinary men, but there is no machine that can do the work of one extraordinary man.

A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.

I believe... that security declines as security machinery expands.