If only every man would make proper use of his strength and do his utmost, he need never regret his limited ability.

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.

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.

Whatever your passion in life is

Morality is what the queen expects from the hive, not from herself.

Success in many of life's most important endeavors begins with a commitment to act like the person you hope to become.

Nixon has enough to overcome in terms of his legacy and his political history. Now he has to overcome the in-fighting between his daughters. It's so sad. There's another obstacle for him to clear.

I like hard work and I don’t like pretending things are perfect.

My own Brubeck Institute in California is turning out fantastic young jazz players, and I know great things will happen.

Writing songs and looking for ideas is like blinking my eyes. It's an involuntary muscle. I do it without thought.

Take away a painter's vanity, said a famous landscape painter, and he will never touch a pencil again.