If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.

History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection; it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible substances stolen from distant soils.

The mind tends to run along the groove of one's intention and overlook the actual expression.

I'll read, and then I'll take naps. When I feel sleep coming on, I give in and don't fight it.

The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to solve.

Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony.

Speech, after all, is in some measure an expression of character, and flexibility in its use is a good way to tell your friends from the robots.