Society and the World

Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of Nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him.

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating.

When men and women pick one another up for just a bit of fun, they find they’ve picked up more than they bargained for, because men and women have a top story as well as a ground floor, and you can’t have the one without the other.

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is just too much fraternizing with the enemy.

The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we’re visiting, life.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought , and attended to my answer.

All of man’s life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ears of others.

A family library is a breeding-place for character.

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world.

There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

Knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.

and observe for himself, and who has hunger for it.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge—broad, deep knowledge— is to know true ends from false, and lofty things from low.

So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs.

So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty.

When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason had left them.

When large numbers of people share their joy in common, the happiness of each is greater because each adds fuel to the other’s flame.

The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.