We must steel ourselves against utopias and be content with a slightly better state.

When a band of flute players attempted a musical concert at a triumph in 167, the audience forced the musicians to change their performance into a boxing match.15 In the widening middle classes commercialism

Peace is war by other means.

When Germany defeated Napoleon it was a disastrous to culture as when Luther defeated the Church.

Democritus (460-360 B.C.)— "in reality there is nothing but atoms and space.

By 1911 I found it impossible to continue my pretenses to orthodoxy;

[S]hame is a child of custom rather than of nature.

Not to be occupied, and not to exist, amount to the same thing," he said. "All people are good except those who are idle.

[W]orship, if not the child, is at least the brother, of fear.

Death like style is the removal of rubbish.

Let us trust to ourselves, see all with our own eyes; Let these be our oracles, our tripods and our gods.

He who leaves his home in search of knowledge walks in the path of God … and the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr”;

A disintegrating individualism had weakened the Athenian character, and left the city a prey at last to the sternly-nurtured Spartans.

What I am not,” he says, most truthfully, “that for me is God

Radicalism is a luxury of stability; we may dare to change things only when things lie steady under our hands.

He is his own best friend, and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy, and is afraid of solitude.59 Such

Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law. Co-operation

If you look at a map of Europe you will observe that Greece is a skeleton-like hand stretching its crooked fingers out into the Mediterranean Sea.

There his chief enterprises are reading and doing nothing.

It'd be great to be in a position where you can make choices regardless of money. My tastes are always gonna lead me to go for the amazing project where I'm being paid in Turkish cantaloupes.

I live by 'Earnin' and burnin'.' Meaning, I like to make money and spend it before I even have it. That's the way I live my life.

There's always going to be someone as funny as you or funnier.

Inappropriate behavior makes me laugh.

There are a lot of really funny guys who are very natural in what they do: Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Seth Rogen.

Happens I am very political. I have deep political instincts.

I might be more fluent in Swedish than I am in Spanish. My wife speaks it to our kids, and they're fluent so I hear it all the time, so I've got that under my belt.

It's very easy for me to play silly, but to reveal something closer to you, that's so much harder.

I'm the minority in my house sometimes. My wife is Swedish, and we go to Sweden and everyone is rattling off in Swedish. It's like, 'OK, I can just read a book.'

I speak as much Spanish as anyone who has grown up in Southern California or Texas or Arizona. I had my three years of high-school Spanish and a couple of semesters in college.

I would love to play Simon Cowell in a movie - heck, I would love it. It would be my dream role.

Molly Shannon and I used to always talk about that we really felt strongly that we were comedic actors, that we weren't comedians. You just played things real and the comedy came out of the context.

When a dramatic actor does a funny film, people are like, 'Wonderful! I didn't know he was funny!' But when it flips, people can get really thrown by it.

I think 'SNL' was such a unique thing because it was material you created and you're very comfortable with it, even though the setting was pressure-packed.

You tend to get reluctant to talk about anything until the day before filming.

You still have that competitive thing where you want to try to make hits. That won't go away, unless the mayor of show business says my time's up.

I've always had, when I needed it, an extreme amount of focus that I could put into something. That has served me well.

I will watch a movie that is quote unquote dark and not get the qualification of what is dark and what is not.

I still regret that I never played soccer in high school. I chose basketball over soccer.

One of my first memories of being a kid was, 'I want to have a real job when I grow up.' And to me that meant you wear a suit and a hat and carry a briefcase and go to your job.

Enjoy the little fun things - like taking your kids to school - before they're all grown up.

When you hear that you're going to be working with a first-time director, sometimes that can be a concern to people.

I've never had a yard sale, ever, in my life. I don't know if I ever thought about stuff I would get rid of.

My dad turned me onto Peter Sellers as a kid. I loved the fact that he was a unique combination of being extremely subtle and over-the-top all at the same time, and that's a hard thing to do. I admire that.

I've always loved watching the news on TV. As a kid, I loved watching Walter Cronkite, for some reason.

I grew up in an entertainment family, and so I saw how susceptible you are to the ups and downs of this business.

I know the nature of comedy, and you never know what will happen with the next movie or whether people will find it funny.

I was a strange kid in that, while most kids hate school and want to turn 18 or 21, I loved high school.

I left home to go to college, and then I moved back home. I moved back for three years from 21 to 24.

The funny guy doesn't get the girl until later in life. High school, college, everyone still wants the brooding, dangerous guy you shouldn't have.

Members of the Senate and House, if they want to send troops into war, should be forced to send a family member. That would really make everyone stop and go, 'Ohhh-kaaay.'