I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom... in a clarification of life - not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so.

There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

I always entertain great hopes.

Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.

I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Humor is the most engaging cowardice.

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

The artist in me cries out for design.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.