Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning, and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.

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

There is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.

Legislators who are of even average intelligence stand out among their colleagues. . . . A cultured college president has become as much a rarity as a literate newspaper publisher. A financier interested in economics is as exceptional as a labor leader interested in the labor movement. For the most part our leaders are merely following out in front; they [only] marshal us in the way that we are going.

It (the dash ) is a comfortable punctuation mark since even the most rigorous critic can seldom claim that any particular example of it is a misuse. Its overuse is its greatest danger, and the writer who can't resist dashes may be suspected of uncoordinated thinking.

We see what we want to see, and observation conforms to hypothesis.

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