History, in the end, becomes a form of irony.

What higher obligation does a President have than to explain his intentions to the people and persuade them that the direction he wishes to go is right?

For history is to the nation as memory is to the individual.

Problems will always torment us because all important problems are insoluble: that is why they are important. The good comes from the continuing struggle to try and solve them, not from the vain hope of their solution.

Brave men earn the right to shape their own destiny.

Excellence is the eternal quest. We achieve it by living up to our highest intellectual standards and our finest moral intuitions. In seeking excellence, take life seriously-but never yourself!

What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous.