Nietzsche had a little one-liner on how to choose a wife. He said, ''Are you willing to have a conversation with this woman for the next forty years?'' That's how to pick a wife.

There was no immunity to cuckoo ideas on Earth.

He did not think of himself as a writer for the simple reason that the world had never allowed him to think of himself in this way.

All this happened, more or less.

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."

The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.

The economy is a thoughtless weather system.