We are America's Great Lakes people, her freshwater people, not an oceanic but a continental people. Whenever I swim in an ocean, I feel as though I am swimming in chicken soup.

One of [ways being lucky] was to go to school during the Great Depression because teaching became a plum job.

See the cat? See the cradle?

The biggest truth to face now - what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life - is that I don't think people give a damn whether the planet goes or not. It seems to me as if everyone is living as members of Alcoholics Anonymous do, day by day. And a few more days will be enough. I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren.

Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

Human beings are about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.

I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty—and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.