Wisdom

Modern sovereignty, whether expressed through killing in battle or the torture of suspects, brings together the desire to build up and the desire to destroy, to let Aid Agencies offer charity (in its original meaning of 'love') while the military offers death. The two are intrinsically connected.

For paranoia was Zig's late style: How else but through networks and conspiracies could he fashion a target big enough for his outrage? Richard usually found paranoia uninteresting, insofar as it swept away the incidental, which was the real grist of history.

Loneliness is a failure to appreciate others.

There is no need to upset about the fact that our ancestors were monkeys, because they are capable chaps! Don’t be sad about the truth, just understand the truth!

Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts.

There are many things evil people can take from you. However, they can never steal your ability to laugh and laugh loud.

What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things.

I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.

Science fiction is not about the future but about the possibilities inherent in the present.

Humility is a virtue, not a neurosis.

Of course you don't believe in fairies. You're fifteen. You think I believed in fairies at fifteen? Took me until I was at least a hundred and forty. Hundred and fifty, maybe. Anyway, he wasn't a fairy. He was a librarian. All right?

The things that happen in the night are hidden even from the night.

Grace is the divine assistance that gives you advantage over those who are better than you.

Jesus was not a Christian, nor was Marx a Marxist.

Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and apsirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry or savour their songs. I again realized that we were not different people with separate languages; we were one people, with different tongues.

We live by revelation, as Christians, as artists, which means that we must be careful never to get set into rigid molds. The minute we begin to think we know all the answers, we forget the questions, and we become smug like the Pharisee who listed all his considerable virtues and thanked God that he was not like other men.

The level of Personal Responsibility in developed countries is averagely much higher than is seen in developing nations.

How much more infinite a sea is man? Be not so childish as to measure him from head to foot and think you have found his borders.

Besides, if there were no dragons of flesh and blood and fire, whence would come the idea for these stone carvings?

To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.