Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.

Tocqueville saw the brute repression of deviants as a necessity if men were to keep convincing themselves of their collective dignity through their collective sameness. The "poets of society," the men who challenged the norms, would have to be silenced so that sameness could be maintained.

Issac Stern rule: the better your technique, the more impossible your standards.

Authority is itself inherently an act of imagination.

The pleasures of relaxed chat, of casual conversation, encourage the ethnographer in everyone

Like the Roman town grid, the New York plan was laid down on largely empty land, a city designed in advance of being inhabited; if the Romans consulted the heavens for guidance in this effort, the city fathers of New York consulted the banks.

We are more likely to fail as craftsmen due to our inability to organize obsession than because of our lack of ability.