Forgiving is not easy. It is not cheap.
Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able, and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated by their own inner torments.
Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.
The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.
Authors are magpies, echoing each other's words and seizing avidly on anything that glitters.
Legislators who are of even average intelligence stand out among their colleagues. . . . A cultured college president has become as much a rarity as a literate newspaper publisher. A financier interested in economics is as exceptional as a labor leader interested in the labor movement. For the most part our leaders are merely following out in front; they [only] marshal us in the way that we are going.
The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts.
In the Bible, there is no mention of the Trinity. . . . We get to know God, not through our proud philosophical concepts, but through Christ.
Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. I had hoped that liberal and enlightened thought would have reconciled the Christians so that their [NOT our!] religious fights would not endanger the peace of Society.
Talking to fans has really blown my mind. It's made me so happy to know my work has touched people.
I would like to assure you that there is no organization or any sort of repression against people who don’t agree with our actions, for example in Ukraine, Crimea, or any other external issue, no one from official government organs do this.