The decent thing to do is to get rid of some of this money.

I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behaviour of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson - the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.

I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?

I had been educated with free scholarships. I went to nine different universities, always at public expense, and when you have that experience, you are almost obligated to give it back. It's as simple as that.

...when men ignite in their hearts a religious fury, they inflict at the same time a blindness on their eyes.

a soldier lives always for the next battle, because he knows that before it arrives impossible changes can occur in his favor.