"Intelligence alone doesn't mean a damned thing. Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols. But I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn."

"How many great problems have gone unsolved because men didn't know enough, or have enough faith in the creative process and in themselves, to let go for the whole mind to work at it?"

"So many of the ideas on which our psychologists base their beliefs about human intelligence, memory, and learning are all wishful thinking."

"There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection."

"The foolish thing was trying to solve the problem all by myself. But the deeper I get tangled up in this mass of dreams and memories the more I realize that emotional problems can't be solved as intellectual problems are."

"I've got to grow up. For me it means everything..."

"You can't have everything you want in one woman."

"A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger."

"People resent being shown that they don't approach the complexities of the problem — they don't know what exists beyond the surface ripples."

"Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed."

"The meaning of my total existence involves knowing the possibilities of my future as well as my past, where I'm going as well as where I've been."

"Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men."

"Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be."

"The answer can't be found in books — or be solved by bringing it to other people. Not unless you want to remain a child all your life. You've got to find the answer inside you — feel the right thing to do."

"I am not only a thing, but also a way of being — one of many ways — and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming."

"My most absorbing interests at the present time are etymologies of ancient languages, the newer works on the calculus of variations, and Hindu history. It's amazing the way things, apparently disconnected, hang together."

"As when men to keep from being swept overboard in the storm clutch at each other's hands to resist being torn apart, so our bodies fused a link in the human chain that kept us from being swept into nothing."

"You don't know what it's like to have something happening inside you, that you can't see and can't control, and know it's all slipping through your fingers."

"Don't misunderstand me," I said. "Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain."

"I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been."

"It’s a terrible thing, being afraid. It’s like an illness; like wanting to fall down, and not being able to faint. You see you never get used to it. You live with it and live with it and every day it’s worse; and one day it’s the worst of all. I thought, when it...happened, I wouldn’t be afraid. But I was wrong...."

"She stopped dead; and the look in her eyes showed plainly she’d just received the import of a crude lesson in economics."

"“I was arguing with Father Sebastian the other day,” she said thoughtfully. “I quoted the thing about giving all you have to the poor. He said that was all very well but you had to come to terms with the Scriptures and realize there had to be teachers and leaders for the people’s own good. It seemed an awful get-out to me, and I couldn’t help saying so. I told him if the Church would sell half her altar plate she could buy shoes for everybody in the country, and a lot else besides; and that if the Pope would make a start in Rome I’d see about getting rid of a few job lots of furniture down in Corfe. I’m afraid he didn’t take very kindly to it. I know it was wrong of me but he annoys me sometimes; he’s so pious, and it seems to mean so very little. He’d walk miles in the snow to pray for a sick child, he’s a very good man; but if there was more money about to start with, maybe the child wouldn’t have been taken ill. It all seems so unnecessary....”"

"A death was more than an ending; it was like pulling a thread from a richly patterned cloth."

"“Confession,” he said, “must be sincere. It must come from the heart. False confession, made to avoid the pain of Questioning, is useless to Church and God alike. Our aim is salvation; the salvation of the souls of these poor wretches in our charge, if necessary by the breaking of their bodies. Set against this, all else is straw in the wind.”"

"He like the Church he serves is blind and empty and vainglorious. This God they prattle on about, where’s His justice, where’s His compassion? Does it please Him to see dying people hounded in His name, does He snigger at His bumbling priests, is He satisfied when men drop dead chopping stone out for His temples, twisted little God dying tepid-faced on a cross....She thought, I’ll go out and look for other gods, and maybe they’ll be better and anyway they can’t be worse."

"The years had a way of piling themselves one atop the next, unnoticed and uncounted; that was how young men turned into old ones."

"She said faintly, “Are you...real?” Amusement showed in his face. “Real?” he said. “Define reality and I can answer you.” He waved a hand. “Look into solid earth, into rock, and see the galaxies of all Creation. What you call reality melts; there is a whirling, a spinning of forces, a dance of motes and atoms. Some of them we call planets, one of them is Earth. Nothingness within nothingness enclosing nothing, that is reality. Tell me what you want, and I can answer.”"

"The waves were indifferent, and the wind; and the rocks neither knew nor cared who owned them, Christ’s Vicar or an English King."

"She curled her lip. She had discovered cynicism."

"The creature with the strongest armour has the softest innards."

"::::And on the surface of the ancient home, they die in scores of wars and by legions of plagues, and against the poets’ and prophets’ promises for unity born in fear of doomsday, they fight like Tyrannosaurs raging and ripping the life from each other’s scaly necks while the comet smote the firmament, and murdered the skies to doom them all."

"Because there are no second chances. Which is the most tragic sentence I think English can form."

"If everyone’s thinking the same thing, that’s only because no one’s thinking at all."

"There’re two reasons those cubs were able to help anybody. They believed the same thing, and they were organised. That’s the rule of history. Without people, Harq, nothing happens… but without organisation, nothing lasts."

"Pain is too strong and life is too brief, brother, to avoid the pleasures that don’t hurt us."

"“The Astriarchy gives those people a nice story about how they can meet up with their favourite member of the Five Immortals on the ‘Celestial Path.’ So no, don’t worry how bad things are right now in this universe right in front of us, because your reward’s coming later! Might as well drown them.”"

"Her weapon is her mouth. And it’s loaded and fully automatic."

"Violence in the air like the stench of gasoline."

"The more things change, the more the speed up in changing."

"“We have a maxim,” says Thag. “Find the tallest structure, and you will know who runs the world.”"

"I’m not converting to anything, for anybody. Ever."

"Amazing how not censoring myself puts me in a good mood."

"She is being like jewelled dagger. Dazzles eye, but slits throat."

"J*Justice: “Justice is equality of rights in treatment, proportionate compensation for labour and punishment for crime, and compassion and relief for sufferers.”"

"Q*Question: “To question is to seek information so as to expand intelligence. Failing to question is to stagnate or destroy intelligence.”"

"The actual world isn’t solidly real for you if you’ve been treading water in an ocean of lies your whole life."

"T*Truth: “Truth means that which actually is, as opposed to lies, incorrect beliefs, fantasies or foolishness, and exists independently of thinkers.”"

"But why? I asked. Since before I was born, why this mission of destruction? What threat could we possibly pose to him? Anyone who shows he can survive outside the realm of Set, proves it can be done. That another, better world is possible…there is no greater threat to a tyrant than this truth."

"We expect you to debate everything. Question it all. Turn it upside down. They are your tools for investigating the universe. Don’t hide em away. Use them, all the time. The truth can always be questioned. Only lies die in the light."