Quote collection
653 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Fence straddlers have no balls. In compensation, however, they enjoy a comfortable seat and can retreat swiftly, when danger threatens, to either side of the fence. There is something to be said for every position."
"We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase to live like men."
"Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate."
"War: First day in the U.S. Army, the government placed a Bible in my left hand, a bayonet in the other."
"The world is older and bigger than we are. This is a hard truth for some folks to swallow."
"Saving the world was merely a hobby. My *vocation* has been that of inspector of desert water holes."
"The industrial corporation is the natural enemy of nature."
"Some people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the second approach the more pleasing."
"Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today."
"A genius is always on duty; even his dreams are tax deductible."
"God is a sound people make when they're too tired to think anymore."
"Running the big rapids is like sex: half the fun lies in the anticipation. Two thirds of the thrill with the approach. The remainder is only ecstasy-or darkness."
"It may be true that my desk here is really 'nothing but' a transient eddy of electrons in the flux of universal process. Nevertheless, I find that it continues to support my feet, my revolver, and my cigars all day long. What happens when my back is turned I don't know. Or much care. That's no concern of mine."
"The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone - and to no one."
"It's a fool's life, a rogue's life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave."
"Why must love always be accompanied--sooner or later--by sorrow and pain? Why not? Because pure bliss is for pure idiots."
"Men have never loved one another much, for reasons we can readily understand: Man is not a lovable animal."
"Is it possible to grow wiser without knowing it? One hopes so. We all hope so."
"If industrial man continues to multiply his numbers and expand his operations he will succeed in his apparent intention, to seal himself off from the natural and isolate himself within a synthetic prison of his own making."
"By the age of forty, a man is responsible for his face. And his fate."