Old politicians, like old actors, revive in the limelight. The vacancy which afflicts them in private momentarily lifts when, oncemore, they feel the eyes of an audience upon them. Their old passion for holding the centre of the stage guides their uncertain footsteps to where the footlights shine, and summons up a wintry smile when the curtain rises.

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.

The three most disastrous inventions of our time have been the birth control pill, the camera and nuclear weaponry. The first offers sex in terms of sterility, the second reality in terms of fantasy, and the third security in terms of destruction.

The Sputnik is just to me like a firework, a rocket, a new invention.

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

It is simply that America is very rich and very powerful and generally speaking everybody hates the rich and the powerful.

What will finally destroy us is not communism or fascism, but man acting like God.