Author Quotes

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

What you discover when you look at creativity from the perspective of the brain is that it is universal. We're all creative all of the time, we can't help but be creative.

If you're trying to be more creative, one of the most important things you can do is increase the volume and diversity of the information to which you are exposed.

I want to give people theories, I want to expose them to scientific stories that force them to re-evaluate the way they use these three pounds of meat inside their head.

I always wanted to be a scientist, I always thought I'd be a scientist, that was the narrative I was carrying around. I worked in a neuroscience lab as an undergraduate and then after, almost five years in total, but I realized I just wasn't good at science. I didn't have the discipline for it.

Every creative story is different. And yet every creative story is the same: There was nothing, now there is something. It's almost like magic.