Between 1861 and 1865, Americans made war on each other and killed each other in great numbers - if only to become the kind of country that could no longer conceive of how that was possible.

Say this much for big league baseball - it is beyond question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America.

To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it - this is a hard lesson.

Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination, and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made

There is a rowdy strain in American life, living close to the surface but running very deep. Like an ape behind a mask, it can display itself suddenly with terrifying effect.

Progress is the sum of small victories won by individual human beings.

A certain combination of incompetence and indifference can cause almost as much suffering as the most acute malevolence.

Here was the greatest and most moving chapter in American history, a blending of meanness and greatness, an ending and a beginning. It came out of what men were, but it did not go as men had planned.

And there is the headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like all parallel lines, will meet in infinity, which is after all where this train is going.

History does not usually make real sense until long afterward.

Our American heritage is greater than any one of us. It can express itself in very homely truths; in the end it can lift up our eyes beyond the glow in the sunset skies.

A drainless shower of light is poesy 'tis the supreme of power 'tis might half slumb'ring on its own right arm.

If you are interested in Taoism, I would suggest that you read the Way of Life by Lao Tsu, the founder of Taoism. I personally prefer the Witter Brynner translation.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

It's like being on Death Row in an American jail. You are waiting for the door handle to turn, not knowing whether it's a reprieve or just your final breakfast before being executed.

Get off my back, save a heart attack, ain't nobody humpin' around.

Some men mistake generosity for charity: these flatter themselves that they are giving gratuitously, whilst they are merely rewarding secret services offered their vanity.

Let's get my incantation right: "I wish I may, I wish I might" Give earth another satellite.

We will not fail your expectations of us as a new nation dedicated to peace, democracy, and freedom.

If wishes would prevail with me, my purpose should not fail with me.