Every accepted public quote

“It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.”

“True knowledge lies in knowing how to live.”

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”

“One glance and I knew exactly who and what he was. The classic alpha male, the kind who had spurred evolution forward about five million years ago by nailing every female in sight. They char...”

“When will you learn that the time to buy a thing is when you find what you want? If you go back the next year and try to get more, they will try to sell you something else.”

“To understand a field, you look at its arts. Arts can be cautionary as well as inspiring.”

“You look around the world in 2013, and you say, 'How many prime ministers or presidents are in prison?' One or two. 'How many generals or bankers?' Two or three. 'But how many writers?' 850...”

“It's easy to say that entrepreneurs will create jobs and big companies will create unemployment, but this is simplistic. The real question is who will innovate.”

“I do not regard it as wrong to take my life, because I simply change my place of residence and go where my wife and baby are.”

“There are so many things that pop up. If you are paying attention, you can learn every second of the day. Life is my guru.”

“But the advice was not taken - Johnstone did emigrate to Canada, and did mortgage his pension; and I fear - though I failed to trace his after history - that he suffered in consequence.”

“I wanted to play drums, and I got a set when I was 14 and just started to play in the house, to the stereo. I liked Ringo Starr, of course. And Sandy Nelson. I had his record, 'Let There Be...”

“You know what's cooler than being the richest guy in the room? Being the toughest guy in the room.”

“The photograph, the clothes, the sets - this was about 1974, and I started hanging out with my friend Richard Sold, who was playing in a band with Patti Smith.”

“Some tracks are with quartet and some tracks are with synthesizer.”

“I've always been drawn to stories involving brothers, which started with my first viewing of Sean Penn's, 'The Indian Runner.' This subsequently lead to my working with my two brothers, Scot...”

“You must learn how to separate a detrimental situation from which you must burn all the bridges from when you must partake in hard work that will provide you with desirable results, where yo...”

“Heritage will remain, first and foremost, a research institute dedicated to impeccable research and data-driven policy analysis.”

“The only way to fail, is when you allow it to happen.”

“Try as I do to comprehend the human project and my part in it, I am further than ever from understanding the monstrous everyday things that seem like self-evident truths and existential nece...”

“I grew up loving Broadway musicals. I'd put on my parents' cast albums and stand on the stool and sing in the mirror.”

“Temptation coaxes us toward sin, and sin leads to sickness and death, and ultimately confinement in the realm of the evil one.”

“The entire educational process must be carried out with love, which is perceptible in every disciplinary measure and which does not instill any fear. And the most effective educational metho...”

“I like the language in Proust but not the context.”

“Sisters have ways of socializing brothers into the mysteries of girls. Brothers have ways of socializing sisters into the puzzle that is boys.”

“A conservative is a Democrat who's been mugged. I think we should just tip the government if it does a good job. Fifteen percent is the standard tip, isn't it?”

“I am a partisan for conversation. To make room for it, I see some first, deliberate steps. At home, we can create sacred spaces: the kitchen, the dining room. We can make our cars 'device-fr...”

“There's a small group of guys in hip-hop that really have money. The whole culture talks about money, but it's a small group that actually has it.”

“When it's foggy in the pulpit it's cloudy in the pew.”

“The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.”

“One of the first exercises we did in acting class my freshman year was to stand in two rows, two lines facing each other as a class, and just make sounds and move in some completely nonsensi...”

“As a policymaker, as a public servant, I come to Washington, D.C., and I make difficult decisions and I make difficult decisions every day. And sometimes those decisions upset people.”

“The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important t...”

“Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.”

“All what we think and know is an illusion. Nothing exists. Everything is an opinion.”

“Mainly, I thought of Barney as a kid. You can always look into the faces of kids and see what they're thinking, if they're happy or sad. That's what I tried to do with Barney.”

“When I ask people to give, I can't be on television if they don't; I can't help people, if I don't - I mean, it takes money.”

“Money is the medium of exchange, and it's how you make things happen. To say you hate it is some farfetched, idealistic crap.”

“For a while, gently bumping into my nightstand meant a pile of 50 books clattering onto my head and the floor. After the 10th time this happened, I moved most of the books to a shelf in the...”

“The first documentary I saw that tried to show the actual experience of being a soldier in combat was 'The Anderson Platoon,' by French director Pierre Schoendoerffer, which won the Oscar fo...”

“I'm not a Tony Blair impersonator.”

“Fate will find a way.”

“That's playoff basketball. Can you not get too happy after a win? Can you understand how determined the team is going to be after a loss and bring the energy you need to bring?”

“To be fair, lying is part and parcel of public life. Every politician has lied about something because they are owned by the special interest groups that finance their elections.”

“If you were half as funny as you think you are, you'd be twice as funny as you really are.”

“Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us on a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very po...”

“I am sorry to say that sometimes matters of very small importance waste a good deal of precious time, by the long and repeated speeches and chicanery of gentlemen who will not wholly throw o...”

“It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.”