"I cannot write long books; I leave that for those who have nothing to say."
"Young people wonder how the adult world can be so boring. The secret is that it is not boring to adults because they have learned to enjoy simple things like covert malice at one anothers expense. This is why they talk so much about the value of human understanding and sympathy - it has a certain rarity value in their world."
"The human race believes in not taking its problems seriously enough to solve them."
"Now if you see that it is inconceivable that anything should exist, it is evident that at least one inconceivable fact is there. That is to say, that which exists is not limited to the conceivable. Since the inconceivable is there, it is impossible to set any limit to the quantity of inconceivableness which may be present in the situation. Now were the existence of anything consistently to remind you of the fact of inconceivability, since it is impossible to live without interacting with a large number of existing things, it would be impossible for you to feel in the same way about the conceivable."
"Human nature: vindictiveness lightly coated with dishonesty."
"It is superfluous to be humble on ones own behalf; so many people are willing to do it for one."
"On the face of it there is something rather strange about human psychology. Human beings live in a state of mind called sanity, on a small planet in space. They are not quite sure whether the space around them is infinite or not, either way it is unthinkable. If they think about time, they find that it is inconceivable that it had a beginning. It is also inconceivable that it did not have a beginning. Thoughts of this kind are not disturbing to sanity, which is obviously a remarkable phenomenon that deserves more recognition."