In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.

Land was created to provide a place for boats to visit.

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.

Don't be condescending to unskilled labor. Try it for a half a day first.

It seems not to have been written. It is the quintessence of life. It is the basic truth.

Bureaucracies are designed to perform public business. But as soon as a bureaucracy is established, it develops an autonomous spiritual life and comes to regard the public as its enemy.

Poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.

Say "Yes" to the seedlings and a giant forest cleaves the sky. Say "Yes" to the universe and the planets become your neighbors. Say "Yes" to dreams of love and freedom. It is the password to utopia.

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.

Every man with an idea has at least two or three followers.

The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.

It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.

My life has been, I suppose, the most incredible series of highs and lows.

I have selective hearing.

No noble man ever hated good wine.

Whatever the medium, if you have great taste and not very much skill, you can still make something great.

Victory is for those who can say "Victory is mine". Success is for those who can begin saying "I will succeed" and say "I have succeeded" in the end.

What is accidented is reality.

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.

I'm the first one in my family born with all my rights. I'm a ninth generation American.

Political elections are a good deal like marriages, there's no accounting for anyone's taste.