Speech, after all, is in some measure an expression of character, and flexibility in its use is a good way to tell your friends from the robots.

The professionals resemble and recognize each other by virtue of the stigmata that their trade has left upon them. They are like the dog in the fable, whose collar has made an indelible mark around his neck. The amateur is the shaggy wolf whom no dog had better trust too far.

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

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.

Above all, the ability to feel the force of an argument apart from the substance it deals with is the strongest weapon against prejudice.

When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.

Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens - all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate.