We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

Human nature is not totally fixed, but on any realistic scale, evolutionary processes are much too slow to affect it.

Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.

The people who turn out best are those people who make the best out of the way things turn out.

A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.

I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

A person's a person, no matter how small.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others, crazy?

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

I despise people who depend on these things [heroin and cocaine]. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree.

Progress of mankind is progress of mind and intellect.

Human history is in essence a history of ideas.

Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

People fall forward to success.

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.

A great man is different from an eminent one in that he is ready to be the servant of the society.

If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.