When we have "second thoughts" about something, our first thoughts don't seem like thoughts at all - just feelings.

The truest test of independent judgment is being able to dislike someone who admires us, and to admire someone who dislikes us.

A university is not, primarily, a place in which to learn how to make a living; it is a place in which to learn how to be more fully a human being, how to draw upon one's resources, how to discipline the mind and expand the imagination; how to make some sense out of the big world we will shortly be thrown into.

Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.

The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere; it is not this sort of license that distinguishes New York. It is rather, a lust of the total ego for recognition, even for eminence. More than elsewhere, everybody here wants to be somebody.

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.

A 'penchant for telling the truth' can cripple a candidates chances faster than being caught in flagrante delicto with the governor's wife.