As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

As if one could know the good a person is capable of, when one doesn't know the bad he might do.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.

Pessimists are not boring. Pessimists are right. Pessimists are superfluous.

There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.

He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.

Whenever you observe an animal closely, you feel as if a human being sitting inside were making fun of you.

Most religions do not make men better, only warier.

The fear of burglars is not only the fear of being robbed, but also the fear of a sudden and unexpected clutch out of the darkness.

There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.

One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.

Words are not too old, only people are too old if they use the same words too frequently.

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.

When you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other well.

Success is the space one occupies in the newspaper. Success is one day's insolence.

Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

One should use praise to recognize what one is not.

Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves.

Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.

It doesn't matter how new an idea is: what matters is how new it becomes.

Justice requires that everyone should have enough to eat. But it also requires that everyone should contribute to the production of food.

People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.

The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.

A "modern" man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.

Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk upright and with open eyes into their misfortune?

Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf.

Whether or not God is dead: it is impossible to keep silent about him who was there for so long.

People's fates are simplified by their names.

The planet's survival has become so uncertain that any effort, any thought that presupposes an assured future amounts to a mad gamble.

The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure.

His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations.

A 'modern' man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice.

A crowd exists so long as it has an unattained goal.

The crowd is the same everywhere in all periods and cultures it remains essentially the same among men of the most diverse origin education and language.

The credibility of the teller is the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition.

I'm not the guy with the enormous comedy nose or the big feet or the bad posture or the whatever; a physical comic has certain things.

Practice what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know.

I'm not interested in wasting money on a project.

The thing is most people are afraid to step out, to take a chance beyond their established identity.

After all these years of saying the same thing about the Alvin Ailey company - terrific dancers, awful repertory - I'm finally accepting the inevitable: I'm not going to change my mind, and they're not going to change their ways. And why should they, given their juggernaut success all over the world?

I never got into the horror genre, and action was fine, but I just loved comedy. Any comedy I could get my hands on, I would. I watched 'Saturday Night Live' religiously.

Wisconsin's a special place.

We are working with the communities in building institutional relationships with local governments and businesses to create ways to get value from the Amazonian area in order to keep the forest as the forest. This makes sense for us from the perspective of climate change and of poverty.

I think the only way we can really get you to laugh hard is if we take it to a deep psychological place. It has to resonate with you on a really deep level in order for you to really do that good guffaw.

If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen

Exercise is done against one's wishes and maintained only because the alternative is worse.

Getting things straight in your head is a major achievement because there's so much clutter out there. You've got to push aside the static to really hear the music.