Between the amateur and the professional . . . there is a difference not only in degree but in kind. The skillful man is, within the function of his skill, a different psychological organization. . . . A tennis player or a watchmaker or an airplane pilot is an automatism but he is also criticism and wisdom.

History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.

Sure the people are stupid: the human race is stupid. Sure Congress is an inefficient instrument of government. But the people are not stupid enough to abandon representative government for any other kind, including government by the guy who knows.

The achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire.

You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there.

Art is man determined to die sane.

The mind has its own logic but does not often let others in on it.