“I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

“I can promise you none of these things. No sphere of usefulness; you are not needed there at all. No scope of your talents; only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmosphere of inquiry, for I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God

“When politicians prioritize local rule instead of trying to force the whole country to agree with them, I think the pursuit of happiness will be within the reach of a far greater portion of our populace.”

“How strange that so few people ever looked up from the spice long enough to wonder at the near-ideal nitrogen-oxygen-CO2 balance being maintained here in the absence of large areas of plant cover.”

“There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way.”

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they've never failed to imitate them.”

“When we don’t have anyone else, we develop a deep relationship with God that will carry us through anything life brings our way.

“It was a full moon and, shining on all the snow, it made everything almost as bright as day -- only the shadows were rather confusing.”

“Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.”

“God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful.”

“Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known.”

“unity is possible among the people of our nation with the right kind of leadership. But we the people must for ourselves determine that we will be indivisible regardless of the leadership, and we must exercise our ability to identify the divisive forces and vote them out of office.”

“They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't want to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives-- although that's what we tell ourselves-- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger. Don't know who I am? I'm an individual!”

“They had supper and went away, and Ivan Ilyich was left alone with the consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of others, and that this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into his whole being.