Simple English is no one’s mother tongue. It has to be worked for.

The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.

Education in the United States is a passion and a paradox. Millions want it, and commend it, and are busy about it. At the same time they degrade it by trying to get it free of charge and free of work.

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.

Of true knowledge at any time, a good part is merely convenient, necessary indeed to the worker, but not to an understanding of his subject: One can judge a building without knowing where to buy the bricks; one can understand a violin sonata without knowing how to score for the instrument. The work may in fact be better understood without a knowledge of the details of its manufacture, of attention to these tends to distract from meaning and effect.

Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.

Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from drudgery but where human judgment abdicates. The smoothest machine-made product of the age is the organization man, for even the best organizing principle tends to corrupt, and the mechanical principle corrupts absolutely.