The classroom should be an entrance into the world, not an escape from it.

Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.

The constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.

Honesty: The ability to resist small temptations.

Conviction is possible only in a world more primitive than ours can be perceived to be. A man can achieve a simply gnomic conviction only by ignoring the radical describers of his environment, or by hating them, as convinced men have hated, say, Darwin and Freud, as agents of some devil.

Tell me how much a nation knows about its own language, and I will tell you how much that nation knows about its own identity.

I'm smiled out, talked out, quipped out, socialized so far from any being, I need the weight of mortal silences to get realized back into myself.