We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.

The Renaissance was a time of mercenary soldiers, ours is a time of mercenary labor.

Woe to him inside a non-conformist clique who does not conform to non-conformity.

America is still the best country for the common man -- white or black ... if he can't make it here he won't make it anywhere else.

We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief from the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility.

Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.