“There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.”

Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.

Liberalism itself has failed, and for a pretty good reason. It has been too often compromised by the people who represented it.

Those who fail to learn from the brutal stompings visited on them in the past are doomed to be brutally stomped in the future.

Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.

Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life.

In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.

Freedom, Truth, Honour, you could rattle off a hundred such words and behind every one of them would gather a thousand punks, pompous little farts, waving the banner with one hand and reaching under the table with the other.

Words are such a poor medium when you really want someone to feel something.

My greatest talent is in my ability to choose good friends. It’s about as important as things get.

The pleasure is in the path, the search for something good.

There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.

In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone.

All political power comes from the barrel of either guns, pussy, or opium pipes, and people seem to like it that way.

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot – and it’s only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.

These things happen. One day you run everything, and the next day you run like a dog.

Hope rises and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness thinks of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain.

I have a very strong opinion. I’m absolutely against it. I’m against the challenge system. I’m for the way it is right now. Don’t change that.

It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged.

Don’t get hung up on the hard times, the challenges. Tell your story by highlighting the victories. Because it’s your victories that will inspire, motivate, encourage other people to live their stories in grander ways.

Your daily challenge to not be like a boss, but the boss, in all things you.

When I am wrong, I will learn the lesson and move on to face other challenges. For me, that’s what creating your own life is. Doing your best work while being your best self.

That’s kind of the challenging thing about writing an inaugural poem. You’re speaking to everyone, but you don’t also want to speak for everyone.

We develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and obstacles.

But, most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.