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.

More significant than the fact that poets write abstrusely, painters paint abstractly, and composers compose unintelligible music is that people should admire what they cannot understand; indeed, admire that which has no meaning or principle.

Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults.

It is a strange thing that both the injurer and the injured, the sinner and he who is sinned against, should find in the mass movement an escape from a blemished life.

A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness.

The purpose of philosophers is to show people what is right under their noses.

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.