I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

By curious accident of history and geography, the world’s major energy resources are located pretty much in Shiite regions. They’re a minority in the Middle East, but they happen to be where the oil is, right around the northern part of the Gulf.

We can fear things into existence. Fear looks into the future and imagines the worst that can happen.

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.

My own dreams fortunately came true in this great state. I became Mr. Universe; I became a successful businessman. And even though some people say I still speak with a slight accent, I have reached the top of the acting profession.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt’s time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it’s different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

We want an Afghanistan that is shaped by the dreams of the great Afghan people, not by irrational fears and overreaching ambitions of others.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.

The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

I had nearly finished school because I was making effort not that bad on that. But there was a law in Germany after the war. You could not make your final examination before 18, so lots of people who were late because of the way had to do it first.

You do indeed have a past, but not now! And, yes, you have a future, but not now! You can consume your now with thoughts of ‚then‘ and ‚maybe,‘ but that will keep you from the inner peace you could experience.

De Sade is the one completely consistent and thoroughgoing revolutionary of history.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

If you desire many things, many things will seem few.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

If you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Measure your wealth by what you’d have left if you lost all your money.

I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

I don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

I perhaps ought to say that individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free republican people on our own model.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

The dreams and passions stored within hearts are powerful keys which can unlock a wealth of potential.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

We can choose a future where we export more products and outsource fewer jobs. After a decade that was defined by what we bought and borrowed, we’re getting back to basics, and doing what America has always done best: We’re making things again.

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.

The child inside of you knows how to take things as they come, how to deal most effectively and happily with everything and everyone it encounters on this planet. If you can recapture that childlike essence of your being, you can stay ‚forever young at heart.‘

I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same time, there’s a real lightheartedness about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they’re not the same, ever again.

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.