When you automate an industry you modernize it; when you automate a life you primitivize it.

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

Youth itself is a talent, a perishable talent.

Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.

A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.

Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible.

Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.