When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.
All the hundreds of millions of people who, in their time, believed the Earth was flat never succeeded in unrounding it by an inch.
Human beings sometimes find a kind of pleasure in nursing painful emotions, in blaming themselves without reason or even against reason.
The human brain, then, is the most complicated organization of matter that we know.
Politically popular speech has always been protected: even the Jews were free to say ‘Heil Hitler.’
If you’re born in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and work in a cell, and vacation in a crowded sun-room, then coming up into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown.
The first law of dietetics seems to be: if it tastes good, it’s bad for you.
No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don’t have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.
Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer should be replaced by a computer.
No one suggests that writing about science will turn the entire world into a model of judgment and creative thought. It will be enough if they spread the knowledge as widely as possible.
I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library.
A fire-eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.
Working ten hour days allows you to fall behind twice as fast as you could working five hour days.
The greatest inventors are unknown to us. Someone invented the wheel – but who?
No matter how carefully records are kept and filed and computerized, they grow fuzzy with time. Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate – like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history – until it degenerates into fables.
If all human beings understood history, they might cease making the same stupid mistakes over and over.
Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.
All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos. That can’t be disproved, but we have no choice but to follow our senses.
Never judge your own writing. You’re not fit to do so.