The best contribution one can make to humanity is to improve oneself.

Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.

My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.

You don't write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you're really doing it, that's all you're doing: writing.

I am like a person whose hands were kept numb, without sensation from the first moment of awareness - until one day the ability to feel is forced into them. And I say "Look! I have no hands!" But the people all around me say: "What are hands?

When you imagine mistakes, there can be no self-defense.

Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.