“The American high school graduate is two years behind his English, French or German counterpart; in Alabama, God knows how far behind.”

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice.

I was like everyone else when Obama was elected – optimistic.

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

Baseball is the favorite American sport because it’s so slow. Any idiot can follow it. And just about any idiot can play it.

One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.

Ayn Rand is a rhetorician who writes novels I have never been able to read.

Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Nearly everyone who goes into a campaign is not only eager for the place he hopes to fill but for what might come after.

It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham. He was always so entirely there.

Of all recent presidents, Clinton was expected to behave the most sensibly in economic matters. He understood how the economy works. But because he had used various dodges to stay out of the Vietnam War, he came to office ill at ease with the military.

It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.

I was the most famous kid in the United States. That was 1936.

In writing and politicking, it’s best not to think about it, just do it.

We’re not a democracy.

The unfed mind devours itself.

After graduating, I began auditioning for films while continuing to model. I did a few fashion shows, ad shoots, and even got a few Bollywood offers, but nothing great.

The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well.

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.

History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.

Attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement.

People go to school and get educated, but most people who go to school and become a graduate in eduation still don’t know what the word ‘education’ means. ‘Educo’ means to bring out.

Our fearlessness shall be our secret weapon.

Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved.