"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."

If you make people laugh or cry about little black marks on sheets of white paper, what is that but a practical joke? All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again.

The world is too serious. To get mad at a work of art-because maybe somebody, somewhere is blowing his stack over what I've done-is like getting mad at a hot fudge sundae.

Let there be nothing harmonious about our children's playthings, lest they grow up expecting peace and order, and be eaten alive.

[Ayres] was our city because we were building it. That's how I felt when I walked around town.

If you want to break the rules of grammar, first learn the rules of grammar.

It's perfectly ordinary to be a socialist. It's perfectly normal to be in favor of fire departments.