If you find it hard to laugh at yourself, I would be happy to do it for you.

Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.

Surely nobody would be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere.

Drummed into me, above all, by my dad, by the whole family, was that without your good name, you would be nothing.

My first advice (on how not to grow old) would be to choose you ancestors carefully.

The rarest of all things in American life is charm. We spend billions every year manufacturing fake charm that goes under the heading of public relations. Without it, America would be grim indeed.

Most of us consist of two separated parts, trying desperately to bring themselves together into an integrated soma, where the distinctions between mind and body, feelings and intellect, would be obliterated.

The woods would be quiet if no bird sang but the one that sang best.

An ocean without unnamed monsters would be like sleep without dreams.

I would not leave anything to a man of action as he would be tempted to give up work; on the other hand, I would like to help dreamers as they find it difficult to get on in life.

I no have education. I have inspiration. If I was educated I would be a damn fool.

If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.

And since the portions of the great and the small are equal in number, so too all things would be in everything. Nor is it possible that they should exist apart, but all things have a portion of everything.

Without pain and suffering, we would be nothing

…I just want to be free of the fears and anxieties and the superstitions of religion. An ‘avenging GOD’? One who created Hell for those who don’t believe? I thought we were the perfect and holy children of GOD? How could any limits possibly be put upon us? Hell.. really? I’m sorry, but… no. Wrong. You’re wrong. That’s an insane GOD and therefore not mine. Because, see, GOD would be very sane, don’t you get it?

I hate war, and I hate having to struggle. I honestly do because I wish I had been born into a world where it was unnecessary. This context of struggle and being a warrior and being a struggler has been forced on me by oppression. Otherwise I would be a sculptor, or a gardener, carpenter – You know, I would be free to be so much more… I guess part of me or a part of who I am, a part of what I do is being a warrior – a reluctant warrior, a reluctant struggler. But I do it, because I’m committed to life.

I think that most Christians would be better pleased if the Lord did not inquire into their personal affairs too closely. They want Him to save them, to keep them happy, and to take them off to heaven at last, but not to be too inquisitive about their conduct or services.

Every company in America should be on its knees thanking Jesus for being born. Without Christmas, most American businesses would be far less profitable. More than enough reason for business to be screaming ‘Merry Christmas.’

Imagine a world in which medicine was oriented toward healing rather than disease, where doctors believed in the natural healing capacity of human beings and emphasized prevention above treatment. In such a world, doctors and patients would be partners working toward the same ends.

If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism.

An artist is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he – for some reason – thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

Nothing is as uncomfortable, dangerous and hurtful as believing that I’m standing on the outside of my life looking in and wondering what it would be like if I had the courage to show up and let myself be seen.

You can always-always-give something, even if it’s a simple act of kindness! If everyone were to give in this way and didn’t scrimp on kindly words, there would be much more love and justice in the world!

I wish more of us could understand that our increasing isolation, no matter how much it seems to express pride and self-affirmation, is not the answer to our problems. Rather, the answer is a revival of our ancient commitment to God, who rules over all the peoples of the world and exalts no one over any other, and to the moral and spiritual values which were once legendary in America. We must reach out our hand in friendship both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy.

I did not know the woman I would benor that blood would bloom in meeach month like an exotic flower,nor that children,two monuments,would break from between my legs.

Every woman while she would be ready to die of shame if surprised in the act of generation, nonetheless carries her pregnancy without a trace of shame and indeed with a kind of pride. The reason is that pregnancy is in a certain sense a cancellation of the guilt incurred by coitus; thus coitus bears all the shame and disgrace of the affair, while pregnancy, which is so intimately associated with it, stays pure and innocent and is indeed to some extent sacred.

For some strange reason murder has always seemed more respectable than fornication. Few people are shocked when they hear God described as the God of Battles; but what an outcry there would be if anyone spoke of him as the God of Brothels.

I was tormented by my desire for a woman … I thought so much about a woman, about women, about all the ones I had known, about all the circumstances in which I had enjoyed them, that my cell would be filled with their faces and crowded with my desires.

It would be gross understatement to say that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of clarity. It is in many important respects a model of ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction.

It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer

An agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.

I believe that many professing Christians are cold and uncomfortable because they are doing nothing for their Lord; but if they actively served him, their blood would begin to circulate spiritually, and it would be well with them.

Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness. To-night at least, I would be her guest-as I was her child; my mother would lodge me without money and without price.