Those who give the orders are not the ones to die The people who are doing the work and the fighting and the dying, and those who are doing the talking, are not all the same people.

Education must be taken out of the hands of rich illiterates, third rate politicians, and put where it belongs: in the care of scholars. At present the whole University system is rotten to the core, and an appalling waste of time, energy and money.

Life is a game of piquet played in a bramble bush in very bad weather.

Every young artist has to do it one way, his [or her] way, and the hell with patterns. Remember who you are and where you are and what you are doing.... And never take advice, including this.

Grant that the idea of God is the most splendid single act of the creative human imagination, and that all his multiple faces and attributes correspond to some need and satisfy some deep desire in mankind; still, for the Inquirers, it is impossible not to conclude that this mystical concept has been harnessed rudely to machinery of the most mundane sort, and has been made to serve the ends of an organization which, ruling under divine guidance, has ruled very little better, and in some respects, worse, than certain rather mediocre but frankly manmade systems of government.

I get so tired of moral bookkeeping.

Evil is dull, that is the worst of it.