The reason why research is like sculpting from memory is that in neither is there a concrete visible subject to copy directly. The subject - as sculptors themselves are fond of saying - is hidden in the block of material.

Finding oneself was a misnomer; a self is not found but made.

Democracy, to maintain itself, must repeatedly conquer every cell and corner of the nation. How many of our public institutions and private businesses, our schools, hospitals, and domestic hearths are in reality little fascist states where freedom of speech is more rigorously excluded than vermin?

By the time I was 9, I had the conviction that everybody in the world was an artist except plumbers or people who delivered groceries.

The sole justification of teaching, of the school itself, is that the student comes out of it able to do something he could not do before. I say do and not know, because knowledge that doesn't lead to doing something new or doing something better is not knowledge at all.

One great aim of revision is to cut out. In the exuberance of composition it is natural to throw in - as one does in speaking - a number of small words that add nothing to meaning but keep up the flow and rhythm of thought. In writing, not only does this surplusage not add to meaning, it subtracts from it. Read and revise, reread and revise, keeping reading and revising until your text seems adequate to your thought.

[T]hat is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand; the original with which to match the copy does not exist.