Josh Billings said, It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient one, too. Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems.

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.

Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.

We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference to standards.

The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.

The [nonprofit] sector is the natural home of nonmajoritarian impulses, movements and values. It comfortably harbors innovators, maverick movements, groups which feel they must fight for their place in the sun, and critics of both liberal conservative persuasion.