Friendship is the only point in human affairs concerning the benefit of which all, with one voice, agree.

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Be a man of value and the universe will pay you for the value you add to it.

Is it possible that mathematical pathology, i.e. chaos, is health? And that mathematical health, which is the predictability and differentiability of this kind of a structure, is disease?

You don't win by being good. You win with hard work and sacrifice. Without that, skill is just potential.

I've gone through the village of my songwriting and my artistry, and I've gone through lots of different phases, including one where it has been very quiet and abandoned me for a few years.

Great talent stands in line to join your team because the culture becomes the stuff of legend.

If you can't dance on it, it isn't coffee.

The writers and producers always have an idea, then they cast the role and the instrument starts to tell them how to play the music.

Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle.

I think for it to be hip to be idealistic is weird, you know? I mean, even all the best rebels to me, had some sense of hope in them.

A preacher who is too big for a little crowd would be too little for a big crowd.