Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.

I've been doing a lot of learning from mistakes, first and foremost, and building off that.

I feel like I have a new life and I'm going to take full advantage of it.

Your attitude will go a long way in determining your success, your recognition, your reputation and your enjoyment in being a lawyer.

It's not a bad thing fighting for equality and helping the poor. It's not a bad thing to have on your professional tombstone: 'He believed in equality and he helped the poor.'

I was taught that a lawyer was supposed to be a custodian of the community's legal and ethical sense.

For every dollar we have given to athletics, we have given about 27 to higher education or medical research.

Medical research is needed, and I just saw there was a need for help that the government - state or federal - was not spending the taxpayers' money on helping people get through college.

Perfect happiness is a beautiful sunset, the giggle of a grandchild, the first snowfall. It's the little things that make happy moments, not the grand events. Joy comes in sips, not gulps.

I learned to dream through reading, learned to create dreams through writing, and learned to develop dreamers through teaching. I shall always be a dreamer. Come dream with me.

We'll sort of get over the marriage first and then maybe look at the kids. But obviously we want a family so we'll have to start thinking about that.

My relationship with my grandmother has gone from strength to strength. As a shy, younger man it could be harder to talk about weighty matters. It was: 'This is my grandmother who is the Queen, and these are serious historical subjects.'

I hope I'm not a tourist attraction - I'm sure that they come here really because St. Andrews is just amazing, a beautiful place.

My guiding principles in life are to be honest, genuine, thoughtful and caring.

I think friendship is more important than love, but that love that grows out of friendship is the very best of all.

Going through an illness and then death of a close friend has changed my attitudes to friendship enormously.

I have a deep and passionate love of America. It is where I have always thought I would be happiest, and although I miss England desperately, I find that my heart definitely has its home over here.

You always pass failure on your way to success.

Everything is about looking for happiness and God. That was a sentiment shared by my dear friend Ronald Reagan.

Judy Garland was a different type of entertainer. She was a dancer, a singer, and an incurable romantic.

I didn't want to be short. I've tried to pretend that being a short guy didn't matter. I tried to make up for being short by affecting a strut, by adopting the voice of a much bigger man, by spending more money than I made, by tipping double or triple at bars and restaurants, by dating tall, beautiful women.

I tried to make up for being 5 ft. 3 in. by affecting a strut and adopting the voice of a much bigger man... dating tall, beautiful women... But nothing I could do, after Ava had left me, would add a single inch to my height.

Always get married in the morning. That way if it doesn't work out, you haven't wasted the whole day.

I'm the only man in the world with a marriage licence made out to whom it may concern.

I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't drink coffee. Starbucks is not going to make any money on me.

All I want is to live a peaceful life, to regain my life and be happy.

With friendship, it's hard sometimes - you don't outgrow your friends, but you do question how people are friends to you in different ways and how it's okay to cultivate other relationships outside of that.

I remember one summer I played, like, with the granddaughter of this known Klan member. Like, all summer we caught cicadas. And we had grown close, and so it was, like, time for her birthday party and I said 'Oh, like, what time do I come for your party?' And she's like 'Oh, no, you can't come to my house 'cause my parents don't like black people.'

When I first came out, holidays were hard. I reached a point where I didn't go home anymore. I constructed my own, kind of like, family group around Christmas.

It's a failure of imagination if you can only write what you know - we have to be able to imagine different worlds.

I wrote poetry and short stories. I would send them to magazines; they wouldn't get in. But short stories are how I found philosophy and how I'd understand the world.

I kept getting offered all this young adult stuff. I don't want to keep telling teen coming-of-age stories!

There was a time when I thought dudes had friendship all figured out. The focus on eating things in front of giant screens, pretending to punch one another, competing over who can utter the grossest and most profane personal insults imaginable - this struck me as the very apex of human social exchange.

I spent so many years in terror of 'making it legal' because the expression rang all too true - the wedding ritual struck me as nothing but a flowery front for the fulfilment of countless, tedious contracts and obligations.

I've never understood people who treat their loved ones worse and with less respect than they would a total stranger or minor acquaintance.

It's kind of sad, the way we've turned the entertainment of reading into a kind of psychic broccoli - something to feel guilty about if you don't force it on your face-making children while dutifully consuming a few token florets yourself.

Dating, like almost every other male-female interaction in present-day society, is based on outmoded and unequal social roles and expectations.

We live in a society that celebrates familial connection above any other kind of relationship. We are shown photos of our great-grandparents and encouraged to marvel over facial similarities. We are told to take pride in our bloodlines, celebrate our ancestry.

Anger is one of those emotions that doesn't follow the letter of the law. It speaks before it thinks. It rears up on its hind legs and charges.

When you're not sure your anger is justified, the thing to do is ask yourself exactly where it's coming from.

Literary readings aren't going to shake their reputation as the added-fibre of our entertainment diet until the people who organize and participate in them snap out of this mentality.