Never try to out-stubborn a cat.

The golden sunshine of Italy congealed into tears. Here’s to alcoholic brotherhood … much more suited to the frail human soul, if any, than any other sort.

May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.

Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.

Property is not the natural and obvious and inevitable concept that most people think it is.

Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling.

The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in...

There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.

But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation . . ....

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. From an anthropologist’s view, ‘justice’ is a search for workable...

Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you’re ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don’t need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to...

I told you that ‘juvenile delinquent’ is a contradiction in terms. ‘Delinquent’ means ‘failing in duty.’ But duty is an adult virtue—indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge...