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

Happiness, in the ancient, noble sense, means self-fulfillment—and is given to those who use to the fullest whatever talents God … bestowed upon them.

I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.

A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.

There was no answer, no solution, no sop, no deliverance. What, then, did I do? I read faster.

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.

Courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.