The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

Lincoln was right about not fooling all the people all the time. But Republicans haven't given up trying.

Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.

I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her think she's having her own way. And second, let her have it.

A man can take a little bourbon without getting drunk, but if you hold his mouth open and pour in a quart, he's going to get sick on it.

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.

Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation.

Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact.

Just like the Alamo, somebody damn well needed to go to their aid. Well, by God, I'm going to Viet Nam's aid!

Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.

I always say writing is like dreaming, shooting is like living, and editing is like murder, because you take all these gifts that actors give you, and you cut them.

It is time the clergy are told that thinking men, after a close examination of that doctrine, pronounce it to be subversive of true moral development and, therefore, positively noxious.

You don't want to do what your parents want you to do. You got your own things. And the whole idea of getting a job because of who your father is - that didn't isn't right.

A collection of short stories is generally thought to be a horrendous clinker; an enforced courtesy for the elderly writer who wants to display the trophies of his youth, along with his trout flies.

When you're on an ensemble show and you're messing around with everybody every day and you're not in every scene, and then all of a sudden you're in every scene, it's rough.

The risk of insult is the price of clarity. To be clearly understood one must speak the simple, essential truth as plainly as he is able.

I belong to no religion. My religion is love. Every heart is my temple.

Writing a first novel takes so much effort, with such little promise of result or reward, that it must necessarily be a labour of love bordering on madness.

I believe Jack Smith might have written THE BOOK on writing and revising for publication. Clean, direct, succinct--a book that is full of pure wisdom and truth, but also amazing technical advice.