I prefer silent prudence to loquacious folly. [Lat., Malo indisertam prudentiam, quam loquacem stultitiam.]

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Yahweh, you are awesome in power!

He who hurries through life hurries to his grave.

His only fault is that he has no fault.

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.

Citizenship has been out of fashion for some decades in our country, but now it is back in fashion. Weekends are for fighting tyranny. And that's why it's going to be really fun to see Democracy Now!

A sermon is no sermon in which I cannot hear the heartbeat.

Shut up in the prison of their own consciences.

I feel better if I exercise and eat healthily.

One gets used to success very quickly. The surprise was how deep and enduringly I was touching people, in such different places and throughout generations.

I could be stranded in any town in the United States with ten cents and within an hour make $20 with the shell game.