Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.

The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.

I received my undergraduate degree in engineering in 1939 and a Master of Science degree in mathematical physics in 1941 at Steven Institute of Technology.

I believe that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot therefore maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.

Government is not reason it is not eloquent it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.