The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think....Let us dare to read, think, speak, write.

Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.

There are innumerable writing problems in an extended work. One book took a little more than six years. You, the writer, change in six years. The life around you changes. Your family changes. They grow up. They move away. The world is changing. You're also learning more about the subject. By the time you're writing the last chapters of the book, you know much more than you did when you started at the beginning.

Love of learning will never let you down. You can have a quest for money, you can have a quest for power, you can have a quest for fame and they are sometimes gratifying and sometimes self-destructive. The love of learning is always gratifying and never self-destructive. The more educated, the more cultivated a society becomes, better off is everybody.

I think the public library system is one of the most amazing American institutions. Free for everybody. If you ever get the blues about the status of American culture there are still more public libraries than there are McDonald's. During the worst of the Depression not one public library closed their doors.

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

...Had proven himself a leader of remarkable ability, a man not only of enterprising ideas, but with the staying power to carry them out.