Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.

I will do anything, including highway robbery and murder, to avoid leaving my children in poverty.

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.

I think I got off on the wrong planet. Beam me up Scotty, there's no rational life here.

Taking somebody's money without permission is stealing, unless you work for the IRS; then it's taxation. Killing people en masse is homicidal mania, unless you work for the Army; then it's National Defense. Spying on your neighbors is invasion of privacy, unless you work for the FBI; then it's National Security. Running a whorehouse makes you a pimp and poisoning people makes you a murderer, unless you work for the CIA; then it's counter-intelligence.

There are gods, but there is no God; and all gods become devils eventually.

Most of the characteristics which make for success in writing are precisely those which we are all taught to repress ... the firm belief that you are an important person, that you are a lot smarter than most people, and that your ideas are so damned important that everybody should listen to you.