a problem that presents itself as a dilemma carries an unfortunate prescription: to argue instead of act.

We haven't come a long way, we've come a short way. If we hadn't come a short way, no one would be calling us baby.

Mythology is like gravity, inconvenient at times, but necessary for cohesion.

I have a problem about being nearly sixty: I keep waking up in the morning and thinking I'm thirty-one.

Creeds and causal systems have argued with each other for millennia, and even so we and our ancestors have managed to live in a world of differing opinions. Philosophical disputes don't often affect the price of fish or wine.

If there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, there is nothing more ubiquitously pervasive than an idea whose time won't go.

Great writers leave us not just their works, but a way of looking at things.