My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.

The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn or lighthearted dramatic performance.

They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society.

When the Greeks said, Whom the gods love die young, they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die; young and playful.

In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling.

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.