Grades really cover up failure to teach.

Stuckness shouldn’t be avoided. It’s the psychic predecessor of all real understanding.

The idea that “all men are created equal” is a gift to the world from the American Indian.

The solutions all are simple—after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are.

Not sure of much of anything these days. Maybe that’s why I talk so much.

The past cannot remember the past. The future can’t generate the future. The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is.

When any distribution is locked into a rigid sequential format it develops Joes that dictate what new changes will be allowed and what will not, and that rigidity is deadly.

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in.

You always suppress momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate.

We always condemn most in others, he thought, that which we most fear in ourselves.

It is a kind of nowhere, famous for nothing at all and has an appeal because of just that.

You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge.

Do what is “reasonable” even when it isn’t any good.

Whole community of millions of living things living out their lives in a kind of benign continuum.

That’s the way the world keeps on happening. Be interested in it.

The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality.

The stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep.

It’s important now to just live with this and not fight it mentally…mind control….

Familiarity can blind you

He came to see his early failure as a lucky break, an accidental escape from a trap that had been set for him, and he was very trap-wary about institutional truths for the remainder of his time.

Metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it.

To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting. Drifting is what one does when looking at lateral truth.

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire.

That's the way it is. The intelligence of the mind can't think of any reason to live, but it goes on anyway because the intelligence of the cells can't think of any reason to die

Mental reflection os so much more interesting than tv [that]it's a shame more people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant, but it never is.

When you’ve got a Chautauqua in your head, it’s extremely hard not to inflict it on innocent people.

The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling.

It’s an old split. Like the one between art and art history. One does it and the other talks about how it’s done and the talk about how it’s done never seems to match how one does it.

Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.

I am a pioneer now, looking onto a promised land.

To the ocean. That sounds right. Where the waves roll in slowly and there’s always a roar and you can’t fall anywhere. You’re already there.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

I wish people weren't so set on being themselves, when that means being a bastard.

Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.

This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight.

This is one of the cruelties of the theatre of life; we all think of ourselves as stars and rarely recognize it when we are indeed mere supporting characters or even supernumeraries.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.

It was as though she was an exile from a world that saw things her way

One learns one’s mystery at the price of one’s innocence.

Money, it is often said, does not bring happiness; it must be added, however, that it makes it possible to support unhappiness with exemplary fortitude.

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.

Everything matters. The Universe is approximately fifteen billion years old, and I swear that in all that time, nothing has ever happened that has not mattered, has not contributed in some way to the totality.

I was afraid and did not know what I feared, which is the worst kind of fear.

Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt.