Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Terry Pratchett
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.
Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.
Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.
This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.
Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.
In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.
I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I'd lay my cards down on that, and say that it's that that I'm trying to do.
The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.
Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.
Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.
He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting 'All the Gods are bastards.'
Freedom without limits is just a word.
It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren't doing.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.
It's useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.
Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.
Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I'm angry about bankers. About the government.
The harder I work, the luckier I become.
Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.
'Educational' refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger.
Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.
Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.
I've often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.
I have, before now, waited for a pen to perform a macro.
'Nation' was one that I'd have killed myself if I hadn't written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.
Journalism makes you think fast. You have to speak to people in all walks of life. Especially local journalism.
I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn't theirs.
Sooner or later we're all someone's dog.
There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.
I don't believe in the war god of the Israelites. He's a bogeyman. Jesus preached the golden rule, by and large.
If the government ever imposes a tax on books - and I wouldn't put it past them - I'm in dead trouble.
Christ managed to boil down an awful lot of commandments to a few very simple rules for living. It's when you go backwards through the 'begats' and the Garden of Eden, and you start thinking, 'Hang on, that's a big punishment for eating one lousy apple... There's a human-rights issue.'
Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about 'Wind in the Willows' and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought - you know about 'The Wind in the Willows.'
What is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you're hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.
The baby boomers are getting older, and will stay older for longer. And they will run right into the dementia firing range. How will a society cope? Especially a society that can't so readily rely on those stable family relationships that traditionally provided the backbone of care?
Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.
I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that's it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called 'The Truth'.
Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: 'Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?'
It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God's waiting room.
