“As a captain whose vessel is about to crash on the rocks empties its souls of doubt, so are the hesitant useful for throwing off of an enterprise nearing its end: blame must be cast in failure, profits divided easily in success.”

“Like a valet who commits grand theft auto not to go for a joy ride but to open a used car lot, so do we seize upon love not to revel in its ecstasies but to haggle over its blue-book value.”

“Attacking the person instead of the argument is condemned in logic, widespread in physics, and not used nearly enough in humanism.”

“So many things happen that we can't control, its best not to worry about what we can. Believing you can change the world has a terrible effect on one's ego.”

“One never owns a book. It sits on your shelf in a fine edition like a piece of furniture, and you are its admiring ward until it flies off from you in a time of financial hardship. If it is a tattered paperback, she is your casual mistress you use a few times. If you have read it a hundred times then it is your wife, and a source of infinite mystery.”

“Humor is not an end in itself, but a tool to understanding. A dense head must be tickled with an ax.”

“Buddhism: a violent religion that has compensated for the exploding human population by causing whole species of animal vessels to go extinct.”