"Most of the things that need to be said about the President are things he can't say himself."

“Anyone who doubts that caffeine is a drug should read some of the prose composed under its influence.”

Source : Anne Fadiman (2008). “At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays”, p.171, Macmillan

“The experience of a century and a half has demonstrated that our system of free government functions best when the maximum degree of information is made available to our people. In fact, free and candid discussion of vexing problems is the bedrock of democracy and it may be our surest safeguard for peace.”

“I read assiduously. I kept in touch with my species.”

Source : Leonard Michaels (1992). “Sylvia: A Fictional Memoir”

“Let's call this then, only half facetiously, a new patristic, in which the intellectual is charged with the task not only to denounce error and unmask illusions, and not only to incarnate the mechanisms of new practices of knowledge, but also, together with others in a process of co-research, to produce a new truth. -- Commonwealth, 118”

“This face was given to me by God!”

“We are in the ordinary position of scientists of having to be content with piecemeal improvements: we can make several things clearer, but we cannot make anything clear.”

“Do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? It is very rare.”

“Most business leaders don't consider their own causality in the creation of problems. They fail to see that their company could have avoided breakdowns if they had acted differently. We tend to see problems as having been created by someone else or by the "economy". It's good to be a little introspective from time to time. Think about how your own behavior might have gotten your company into a problem, and how it may help to get you out.”