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

Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them.

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

The cynic says, "One man can't do anything". I say, "Only one man can do anything."

I think that all human systems require continuous renewal. They rigidify. They get stuff in the joints. They forget what they cared about. The forces against it are nostalgia and the enormous appeal of having things the way they always have been, appeals to a supposedly happy past. But we've got to move on.

It is not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish it after the age of six.

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.