Many [of the Americans] polled showed a marked disapproval of the Wallonians, Danerians, and Pirenians. The fact that these minorities were invented by the pollster did not diminish the hostility.

You understand people better if you look at them-no matter how old or impressive or important they may be-as if they were children. For most men never mature; they simply grow taller.

We see things as we are, not as they are.

The purpose of life is not to be happy, the purpose of life is to matter.

If at first you don't succeed, before you try again, stop to figure out what you did wrong.

In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.

First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.