The last thing a scientist would do is cling to a map because he inherited it from his grandfather, or because it was used by George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

It is the individual who knows how little they know about themselves who stands the most reasonable chance of finding out something about themselves before they die.

Patriotic societies seem to think that the way to educate school children in a democracy is to stage bigger and better flag-saluting.

Advertising is a symbol-manipulating occupation

If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.

Ever since man began to till the soil and learned not to eat the seed grain but to plant it and wait for harvest, the postponement of gratification has been the basis of a higher standard of living and of civilization.

If everybody is rewarded just for being alive, you get the same sort of effect as you do when you reward every student just for being enrolled. You destroy not only education, you destroy society by giving A's to everyone. This is a philosophical consideration that bothers me very much as I sit in the United States Senate and see the great budget allocations going through.