We live in a highly competitive society, each of us trying to outdo the other in wealth, in popularity or social prestige, in dress, in scholastic grades or golf scores. One is often tempted to say that conflict, rather than cooperation, is the great governing principle of human life.

Notice the difference between what happens when a man says to himself, I have failed three times, and what happens when he says, I am a failure.

It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

Republicans are people who, if you were drowning 50 feet from shore, would throw you a 25-foot rope and tell you to swim the other 25 feet because it would be good for your character. Democrats would throw you a hundred-foot rope and then walk away looking for other good deeds to do.

The traditional educational theory is to the effect that the way to bring up children is to keep them innocent (i.e., believing in biological, political, and socioeconomic fairy tales) as long as possible ... that students should be given the best possible maps of the territories of experience in order that they may be prepared for life, is not as popular as might be assumed.

Learning to write is learning to think. You don't know anything clearly unless you can state it in writing.

If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it.