All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

The leech's kiss, the squid's embrace, The prurient ape's defiling touch: And do you like the human race? No, not much.

It isn't a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past.

It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.

...two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.

We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?" asked Bernard. The Savage nodded. "I ate civilization.

Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning, truth and beauty can't.

I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasure. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.