Speech is highly elliptical. It would scarcely be endurable otherwise. Ellipsis is indispensable to the writer or speaker who wants to be brief and pithy, but it can easily cause confusion and obscurity and must be used with skill.

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.

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.

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

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

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

An honorable man will not be bullied by a hypothesis.