Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival.

Of course, socialism is just evil now. It's completely discredited supposedly by the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I can't help noticing that my grandchildren are heavily in hock to Communist China now which is evidently a whole lot better at business than we are.

I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.

If you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, D.C. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington D.C.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

Two radical ideas have been introduced into human thought. One of them is that energy and matter are pretty much the same sort of stuff. That's Einstein. The other is that revenge is a bad idea. Revenge is an enormously popular idea but, of course, Jesus came along with the radical idea of forgiveness. If you're insulted, you have to square accounts. So this invention by Jesus is as radical as Einstein's.