“He's passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever.”

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, as per Mackay's The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, A Selection of Scientific Quotations (1977), p. 34.
Misattributed

As quoted in Mackay's The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, A Selection of Scientific Quotations (1977), p. 34

The New Yorker (November 1992)

On his points of making Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYL9uuqgwpw

The Analects, The Doctrine of the Mean
Context: The institutions of the Ruler are rooted in his own character and conduct, and sufficient attestation of them is given by the masses of the people. He examines them by comparison with those of the three kings, and finds them without mistake. He sets them up before Heaven and Earth, and finds nothing in them contrary to their mode of operation. He presents himself with them before spiritual beings, and no doubts about them arise. He is prepared to wait for the rise of a sage a hundred ages after, and has no misgivings. His presenting himself with his institutions before spiritual beings, without any doubts arising about them, shows that he knows Heaven. His being prepared, without any misgivings, to wait for the rise of a sage a hundred ages after, shows that he knows men.

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), VI

Source: Opium: The Diary of His Cure

Source: Catch-22

"The South"
Ficciones (1944)
Context: If Dahlmann was without hope, he was also without fear. As he crossed the threshold, he felt that to die in a knife fight, under the open sky, and going forward to the attack, would have been a liberation, a joy, and a festive occasion, on the first night in the sanitarium, when they stuck him with the needle. He felt that if he had been able to choose, then, or to dream his death, this would have been the death he would have chosen or dreamt. Firmly clutching his knife, which he perhaps would not know how to wield, Dahlmann went out into the plain.