Words are one of our chief means of adjusting to all the situations of life. The better control we have over words, the more successful our adjustment is likely to be.

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

Authors are magpies, echoing each other's words and seizing avidly on anything that glitters.

The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.

The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts.

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

That is the essence of a witch-hunt, that any questioning of the evidence or the procedures in itself constitutes proof of complicity.

An honorable man will not be bullied by a hypothesis.

There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead and the ability to lead, and even less the ability to lead somewhere that will be to the advantage of the led.

Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able, and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated by their own inner torments.

Stoicism is the wisdom of madness and cynicism the madness of wisdom.

A person at peace can immediately recognize a consciousness in crisis, whereas those in crisis cannot fully understand themselves or others.

Good deeds are ambassadors from Heaven.

Nothing is crueller than children who come from good homes.

Being president of a major public university is the most political nonpolitical office around.

Right now we have a bipartisan debate commission, when most Americans are not members of the bipartisan establishment.

We could live offa the fatta the lan'.

Everyone wanted his relatives to be proud of him, didn't he?

The children of the Reagan Revolution are ready to assume the mantle of leadership.

Love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible.

Things are never perfect, so I never get too high about things, or get too down about things anymore.