I've learned to respect the whimsical.

Modern man is probably a more humiliated and depressed creature than he dares to know.

Emotional stability has not been America's gift to the world.

A street full of electric light is a sign of civic failure and is an insulting injury to the soul. Shutting out the night is as disastrous as shutting out the light.

Perhaps the more benign and poetic sense of God is established when we are babies in the moments of primal joy we might call 'the epiphanies of infancy' - the sensation of being blissfully held and feeling complete and at one with everything - yet having no words or no need to say it but instead to just assimilate the feeling.

I'm totally deaf in my right ear, yeah.

An education system suits some more than others. It can lead you out into life or lead you on a wild goose chase. It can help to make you miserable, or dull and nasty and insipid, or profoundly stupid in the special way that 'brainy' people can be.

Every child is a greedy child, I think. I mean, it's healthy to be a greedy child.

I sense that the road to Heaven is paved with dashed hopes.

What a magical thing is the bed, and what a vulnerable, innocent creature is the sleeping human - the human who never looks more truthful or pitiful or benign; the curled-up, childlike dreaming soul who has for a few hours become an angel adrift.

People seem to take as much offence as they possibly can these days - it's almost a new type of greed, a new kind of road rage.

I don't like to brag, but I must tell you that I am regarded in some circles as being in the upper echelons of the elite loony left.

In some ways, calm bodily protest has a nakedness to it that may be deeply embarrassing for observers; an act not unlike the bare-faced Oliver Twist effrontery that stands vulnerably before authority, asking for more or better.

There can be many reasons to travel, but wandering into the world for no particular reason is a sublime madness, which in all its whimsy and pointlessness may depict the story of life - and indeed could be a useful model to keep in mind, seeing as so much of life's ambition comes unstuck or leads to nothing much at all.

All good art is seditious, but the people in authority can never recognise it. I think when you mention sedition, artists are the ones whose eyes light up thinking, 'Oh, yes, I want some of that!'

Avoiding maturity is, for many men, not just a cute hobby, but a life's work - often handsomely rewarded in the infantile popular culture of the West.

Practically every technology that is ever invented is touted as being the new savior, the thing that will bring peace and goodwill to the earth, but immediately it falls into other hands who see it as the opportunity to promote the very opposite.

Humanity hungers for the uncommon.

I had a few ducks as a kid.

There is a central flaw in contemporary culture and a corresponding and related inability to address it. Society seems somehow unable to adequately help or protect itself. Normal citizens feel powerless, isolated and disturbed.

Clever modern man is so witless that he thinks moral silence and empty conscience are an advantage.

Einstein was a great advocate of the notion that good ideas look absurd at the beginning. Camus expressed a similar view.

It is difficult to imagine any time in history when so many people claiming to be so free have lived in so much fear of being unattractive.

All the world loves a young emerging artist, and sometimes it seems that all the world wants to be one - on a bad, gloomy planet, to be colourful and creative seems so promising.

Life seems sadly mishandled by humans, as if it's all too much for them - they spend so much time and energy hurting each other, making things worse, and fouling their own nest, all because they imagine things aren't good enough and should be made much better.

Wisdom may best arise from a humbling reality.

Meat workers may have been looked down upon socially, but at least they were well-paid and were a fit and lively bunch as a result of hard, honest physical work.

When people talk about their God, it is difficult to know what they actually mean, and when people talk about their atheism, it is usually incomprehensible also.

Any cartoon that can be liked by a committee is really not worth drawing; in fact, must not be drawn at all! Better to become a stockbroker.

I give thanks for the fact that I can get this stick with a bit of steel nib on the end, dip it in some black carbon stuff, and draw on paper. Now, people did it the same way 2,000 years ago. And there's something lovely about that play, and making mud pies and a mess. That's a lovely privilege.

I don't think I have spiritual beliefs in the structured sense - but I believe in the absolute necessity of spirit and a healthy spiritual life. It grew inside me by itself, which is surely the very nature of spirit, and instinctively I protected and nourished it. I also absorbed spirituality by osmosis.

For 13 years, I struggled with education and have only just realised that I was actually struggling to protect myself from it. I was trying to protect my soul.

At my advanced age, I know I am not an anti-Semite, not even vaguely or remotely, but others would seem to know better, as false accusers always do.

The creative act is also in a small way a suffering act - we start out with our ego, this hope of making this thing whatever it be, but so often it eludes us and it collapses and we kind of regress into this mental suffering, we can't find what we're looking for.

I think drones are a good tool to go after high-valued targets.

Yemen is one of the most dangerous spots in the world.

We must continue to pursue peace through diplomacy, but we must also not shrink from our responsibility through the option of strength. We must take advantage of internal resistance and change from within Iran to avert this path of mutual destruction.

You can have the best technology, but you if have a corrupted, radicalized, bribed official that has access to the plane to put the bomb in the cargo, as what happened in Sharm el-Sheikh, that's a real problem.

I would like to take a moment of silence to remember all those who lost their lives at the hands of ISIS, especially Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and, most recently, Kayla Mueller.

I don't think we can afford to wait when it comes to cybersecurity. I think that every day we wait, if an attack occurs - and we're getting hit every day - but if a greater attack occurs, it's going to be on the head of Congress for not acting.

A Trump administration will take on this fight and send a clear message to the Islamist terrorists: you may have fired the first shot, but rest assured, America will fire the last.

I think the effective thing is, I passed this bill to combat violent extremism in the United States as effective outreach to the Muslim community, so you can pull the religious leaders really on to our team, if you will, to protect us from radicalization from within those communities.

Texas' and America's farmers are suffering. As the Member of Congress representing the 10th Congressional District of Texas, I have traveled throughout our area and have seen first-hand how the drought has affected our agricultural communities.

Obama is dedicated to a 'drip, drip' doctrine.

We should be careful not to vilify encryption itself, which is essential for privacy, data security, and global commerce.

In my home State of Texas, the Port of Houston operates as the United States' top port for foreign tonnage and our second largest for total tonnage, so I know how important this bill is for the protection of the American people.

The phenomena here is the foreign fighter threat, the revolving door from Europe to the region in Iraq and Syria and back through Turkey, back into Europe. And that's what happened in the Paris attackers.

Because there are little to no consequences for conducting cyberattacks, criminals and nation-states are becoming bolder in their threats and behavior. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are increasingly hacking into U.S. companies and government networks for espionage purposes or financial gain.

We need to look at how we can better fortify our force protection at military installations. But also, how can we deal with these mental health issues with our returning veterans? And our suicide rate in the military is twice as high as the average population.

I think it's important to note that after the airstrikes began in Iraq and Syria, ISIS began a very aggressive social media campaign calling for these types of attacks, these lone wolf attacks.