In the light of our culture these are not unreasonable questions and tactics but if once again we try to see the lens through which we look we can see that there is far too great an emphasis placed on the future.

We can choose between the future and the past between reason and ignorance between true compassion and mere ideology.

Cartooning is a wonderful career and I'd like more women to get to have it. I can't think of any reason why we won't see more syndicated female cartoonists in the future.

Man spends his life in reasoning on the past in complaining of the present in fearing future.

What should be the future of Israel? Is the land the most important choice and for that reason to keep the whole of the land at any cost or to have a partition and build the Jewish state on part of the land? And the other part?

I'm sure that there are reasonable people that had some reasonable projections about the future of New Orleans but none of those could include not trying to rebuild the city and make it better than it was before.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can learn what we can improve the solutions and pass them on.

The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was the present worse than it is and the future less resolved than it will be.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it if you have to with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

For some reason people find me funny. It's quite hard to define why a thought is funny. It's even harder to define why a person would be funny. It's a word that I can't define at all. But whether I know quite what it is or not I seem to be it.

I write about wounds the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity.

For some reason and I don't know why but I don't think that I'm funny in California. So I always want to do my movies east somewhere.

I don't believe that anybody has come to a conclusion on why something is funny. It's funny because it's ridiculous and it's ridiculous for different reasons at different times.

I think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.

The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor I'm just gonna tell her 'Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they'll have to hire you they can't really fire you and you don't have to produce that much. It'll be awesome.'

I like funny guys and those for some reason tend to be nerdy guys.

Funny things happen to you in movies for silly reasons.

The reason there are two senators for each state is so that one can be the designated driver.

Ray Bradbury is for many reasons the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be should be and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible willing to tolerate and to teach happy to inspire but also to be inspired.

The dupe of friendship and the fool of love have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.

In the end nature is inexorable: it has no reason to hurry and sooner or later it takes what belongs to it. Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to its own laws it doesn't know art just as it doesn't know freedom just as it doesn't know goodness.

We must plan for freedom and not only for security if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

Obedience is detachment from the self. This is the most radical detachment of all. But what is the self? The self is the principle of reason and responsibility in us. It is the root of freedom it is what makes us men.

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech and which by imposing the most terrible punishments treats each and every attempt at criticism however morally justified and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason is a state that breaks an unwritten law.