We are never as modern, as far ahead of the past as we like to think we are.

Unannounced changes in life's itinerary are like dancing lessons from God.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

You can't fight progress. The best you can do is ignore it, until it finally takes your livelihood and self-respect away.

I was taught in the sixth grade that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that the generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more than a million men under arms and spending all their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it. I got a very good grade.

Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself -- will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows -- some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history -- But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.