History does not usually make real sense until long afterward.

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.

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.

Even the most painstaking history is a bridge across an eternal mystery.

Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work.

When the sea goes down, there will come from the mainland boats and men. And they will find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Indian Island.

That's silly talk... Talk to my wife. She'll tell me I need to learn to just put my socks on the hamper.

Hope is not a resting place but a starting point - a cactus, not a cushion

On speaking: first, have something to say; second, say it; third, stop when you have said it; and finally give it an accurate title.

If I want something I do everything to get it.

Soaps are a great springboard for any actor but if you want to be taken seriously, you have to be careful.

I was talking about no nukes, the farm crisis. People said that wasn't stuff that a state auditor was supposed to be talking about. Maybe they were right.

According to a new study, women in satisfying marriages are less likely to develop cardiovascular diseases than unmarried women. So don't worry, lonely women, you'll be dead soon.

The attitude of wanting to win-doing everything in your power except cheating to win.