If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.

Somehow I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for you, then must you flee that man and save yourself

I learned early to understand that there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety. The damage such perception did to me I have felt ever sinceI could never belong entirely to one side of any question.

We need to restore the full meaning of that old word, duty. It is the other side of rights.

As for inhibitions, I've spent a lifetime developing them, and I don't intend to lose them.

For our democracy has been marred by imperialism, and it has been enlightened only by individual and sporadic efforts at freedom.

the proper place to eat lobster ... is in a lobster shack as close to the sea as possible. There is no menu card because there is nothing else to eat except boiled lobster with melted butter.