In the cycle of a great civilization, the artist begins as priest, and ends as a clown or buffoon.

The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment.

Tranquilizers to overcome angst, pep pills to wake us up, life pills to ensure blissful sterility. I will lift up my ears unto the pills whence cometh my help.

This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.

Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.

I think that President [Dwight] Eisenhower was... did the most marvelous job in the war, not really a military job: a public relations job, and it was essential that there should be a public relations job done in the post that he had.

I have had my television aerials removed. It is the moral equivalent of a prostate operation.