“Many studies have established the fact that there is a high correlation between vocabulary and intelligence and that the ability to increase one’s vocabulary throughout life is a sure reflection of intellectual progress.”

An honorable man will not be bullied by a hypothesis.

There is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.

That is the essence of a witch-hunt, that any questioning of the evidence or the procedures in itself constitutes proof of complicity.

Stoicism is the wisdom of madness and cynicism the madness of wisdom.

We see what we want to see, and observation conforms to hypothesis.

Most civilized lives are measured out with coffee spoons.

Authors are magpies, echoing each other’s words and seizing avidly on anything that glitters.

For the most part our leaders are merely following out in front; they do but marshal us the way that we are going.

Legislators who are of even average intelligence stand out among their colleagues. . . .

It (the dash ) is a comfortable punctuation mark since even the most rigorous critic can seldom claim that any particular example of it is a misuse. Its overuse is its greatest danger, and the writer who can’t resist dashes may be suspected of uncoordinated thinking.

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning, and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.

A cultured college president has become as much a rarity as a literate newspaper publisher. A financier interested in economics is as exceptional as a labor leader interested in the labor movement.

Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able, and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated by their own inner torments.

Retirement is not in my vocabulary. They aren’t going to get rid of me that way.

Fear is not a part of my vocabulary, actually, and I think that it’s really made me a much smarter, braver for sure, person.

Failure isn’t an option. I’ve erased the word fear from my vocabulary and I think when you erase fear you can’t fail.

We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.

Stay is a charming word in a friend’s vocabulary.

The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.