Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.

Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.

Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty.

... the habit of literature [is] the best defense against believing the half-truths of ideologues and the lies of demagogues.

Truth is a matter of the imagination.

Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it is heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed.

Scientific truth will out, you can't hide the sun under a stone.