“An event of colossal and overwhelming significance may happen all at once, but the words which describe it have to come one by one in a long chain.”

It is the music which makes it what it is; it is the music which changes the place from the rear room of a saloon in back of the yards to a fairy place, a wonderland, a little comer of the high mansions of the sky.

All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescabably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.

In a society dominated by the fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power.

The proletarian writer is a writer with a purpose; he thinks no more of art for art’s sake than a man on a sinking ship thinks of painting a beautiful picture in the cabin; he thinks of getting ashore – and then there will be time enough for art.

Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself.

I just put on what the lady says. I’ve been married three times, so I’ve had lots of supervision.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.

I don’t know whether anyone will care to examine my heart, but if they do, they will find two words there- ‘social justice.’ For that is what I have believed in and fought for.

But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.

Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure – such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.

I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.

You can’t make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it.

Wall Street had been doing business with pieces of paper; and now someone asked for a dollar, and it was discovered that the dollar had been mislaid.

The remedy [for the Great Depression] is to give the workers access to the means of production, and let them produce for themselves, not for others, . . . the American way.

Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse.

The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.

Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private revelation.

Reading one book a day to your child can change the trajectory of their future.

People come, people go – they’ll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book.

I was an imaginative child and learning to read was like unlocking another dimension in my mind.

The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers.

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.