Democracy is born in dirt, nourished by the digging up and turning over as much of it as can be brought within reach of a television camera or subpoena.

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character.

I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.

I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth.

People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true.

The substitution of meaning accounts for the grasping of misers as well as the extravagance of spendthrifts. Karl Marx well understood this peculiar transformation of flesh into coin.

Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.

The survival of American democracy depends less on the size of its armies than on the capacity of its individual citizens to rely... on the strength of their own thought.

It isn't money itself that causes the trouble, but the use of money as votive offering and pagan ornament.

America is about class. To pretend that it isn't is very ignorant. No society has ever existed without some kind of a ruling class.

Anti-utopianism continues to suffuse our culture...Today few imagine that society can be fundamentally improved, and those who do are seen as at best deluded, at worst threatening.

This is what I want. This is the only thing I've ever wanted. Everything else—every single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss—has meant nothing.

Life gives us many test. We must graciously take each test!

Replace your old books with the book you've always wanted to write.

For so many years, for so long, I have been so many things, so many different men. But here, " he said, so softly I could barely hear him, "here in the dark, with you… I have no name.

You know, a lot of those angry sort of Southern man characters that I've been doing are based on different people I might've had as, like, a soccer coach or as a teacher.

As I get older and I get more of this dialogue and I lose more and more brain cells, it really does become the most difficult part of the job!

I respect the truth too much to drag it out on every occasion.

I have a soul that like an ample shield Can take in all, and verge enough for more.

Nonviolence succeeds only when we have a real living faith in God.

Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker.