History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.

All laws are an attempt to domesticate the natural ferocity of the species.

One exemplary act may affect one life, or even millions of lives. All those who set standards for themselves, who strengthen the bonds of community, who do their work creditably and accept individual responsibility, are building the common future.

Some people may have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them. They achieve it. They do not achieve it unwittingly, by “doin' what comes naturally”; and they don't stumble into it in the course of amusing themselves. All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.

Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.

We get richer and richer in filthier and filthier communities until we reach a final state of affluent misery - crocus on a garbage heap.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the [nonprofit] sector is its relative freedom from constraints and its resulting pluralism.