A compilation of what outstanding people said or wrote at the age of 20 would make a collection of asinine pronouncements.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.

Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults.

The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.

The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half.