Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
Men make counterfeit money in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.
The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out communication is getting through.
The generality of mankind is lazy. What distinguishes men of genuine achievement from the rest of us is not so much their intellectual powers and aptitudes as their curiosity, their energy, their full...
When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'
Happiness is a direction, not a place.
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
A winner rebukes and forgives a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.
The severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along.
The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, 'Why not?' and the other, 'Why bother?'
But the culture-vultures and the intellectual snobs, and the self-appointed guardians of the Muses, often frighten off the average person from the free development of this appetite.
People who won't help others in trouble "because they got into trouble through their own fault" would probably not throw a lifeline to a drowning man until they learned whether he fell in through his...
We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until... we have stopped saying "It got lost " and say "I lost it."
The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.
The true test of independent judgement is being able to dislike someone who admires us.
But in terms of "psychological" time, most of us are still living in centuries past, stirred by ancient grudges, controlled by obsolete prejudices, driven by buried fears.
A winner knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others; a loser wants to be considered an expert by others before he has learned enough to know how little he kno...