Here was the greatest and most moving chapter in American history, a blending of meanness and greatness, an ending and a beginning. It came out of what men were, but it did not go as men had planned.

Say this much for big league baseball - it is beyond question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America.

To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it - this is a hard lesson.

Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination, and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made

There is a rowdy strain in American life, living close to the surface but running very deep. Like an ape behind a mask, it can display itself suddenly with terrifying effect.

Progress is the sum of small victories won by individual human beings.

A certain combination of incompetence and indifference can cause almost as much suffering as the most acute malevolence.

And there is the headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like all parallel lines, will meet in infinity, which is after all where this train is going.

History does not usually make real sense until long afterward.

Our American heritage is greater than any one of us. It can express itself in very homely truths; in the end it can lift up our eyes beyond the glow in the sunset skies.

Even the most painstaking history is a bridge across an eternal mystery.

The(re is no) End

I have never voted in my life.

[We believe that unions have always been about much more than the industries in which they operate.] The fight is never about grapes or lettuce, ... It is always about people.

Forget normal.” He grinned. “We’re going to be extraordinary.

If you don't make up your mind, your unmade mind will unmake you.

It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

I like to put a stake in people, because I know people helped me.

Trust me, I'm going to find out where the money has gone and how it has been spent, and see if we can't get it down there quicker to let that rebuilding start.

Gandhi: Ninny of the 20th Century.

To me, the job of a playwright is to explore and bring to light our lives. You can't hold back; you have to give in to this. Sometimes, you say things people don't want to hear.