America has been a land of dreams. A land where the aspirations of people from countries cluttered with rich, cumbersome, aristocratic, ideological pasts can reach for what once seemed unattainable. Here they have tried to make dreams come true. Yet now... we are threatened by a new and particularly American menace. It is not the menace of class war, of ideology, of poverty, of disease, of illiteracy, or demagoguery, or of tyranny, though these now plague most of the world. It is the menace of unreality.

Henry's universe was modeled on the highball. It was a mixture in which half a pint of the fizziest philosophical and scientific ideas all but drowned a small jigger of immediate experience, most of it strictly sexual. Broken reeds are seldom good mixers. They're far too busy with their ideas, their sensuality and their psychosomatic complaints to be able to take an interest in other people - even their own wives and children. They live in a state of the most profound voluntary ignorance, not knowing anything about anybody, but abounding in preconceived opinions about everything.

Aldous Huxley

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.

George Bernard Shaw

Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes the furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The ?sure thing? boat never gets far from shore.

Dale Carnegie

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it, namely, that, in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

Mark Twain

LIFE: My favorite occupation.

Dirk Benedict

I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

Tony Bennett

Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.

Robert Morgan

Most people aren't appreciated enough, and the bravest things we do in our lives are usually known only to ourselves. No one throws ticker tape on the man who chose to be faithful to his wife, on the lawyer who didn't take the drug money, or the daughter who held her tongue again and again. All this anonymous heroism.

Peggy Noonan

I felt very lonely when they were all there.

Ernest Hemingway

Of all that Orient lands can vaunt, of marvels with our own competing, the strangest is the Haschish plant, and what will follow on its eating.

John Greenleaf Whittier

He had a sense of irony that ruled his life, made it impossible for him to use his considerable brains in any kind of serious job. Kind of like me.

Neal Stephenson

If you will refrain from telling any lies about the Republican Party, I'lll promise not to tell the truth about the Democrats.

Chauncey Depew