Commercial society regards people as bundles of appetites, a conception that turns human beings inside out, leaving nothing to be regarded as inherently private.

Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.

Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout 'Bang!'

Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

Ronald Reagan has held the two most demeaning jobs in the country; President of the United States and radio broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs.

The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny "arf" - the sound of a lap dog.

Sports is a moral undertaking because it requires of participants, and it schools spectators in the appreciation of, noble things - courage, grace under pressure, sportsmanship.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.

Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics.

Before the seventeenth century, a child passed directly into the adult world between the ages of five and seven . . . then came the industrial revolution . . .so the child-centered home was born.

What if the drive to survive was a form of faith, a form of prayer?

For me, hearing my voice is sometimes a little nauseating, especially at Christmas.

There is a destiny which makes us brothers none goes his way alone. All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.

I can write the stuff and play it myself and have something in my head, but the best feeling is when somebody else plays it and they're hearing something other than what I'm hearing.

We have to make a sustained effort, again and again, to cultivate the positive aspects within us.

It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.

As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.

Dreams die hard. And sometimes they don't have to die at all.