The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers.

The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

And in man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe.

I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

The intelligent man is never bored.