“There are many emotions we have to resist, but happiness is not one of them! So go ahead and be as happy as you can possibly be.”

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

“Earth is the insane asylum of the universe.”

“‎We must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.”

“I am fond of saying that if two people think and say the same thing about everything, then one of them is not necessary.”

“Enough or not...it will have to do”

“As our case is new, we must think and act anew.”

“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!”

“Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.”

“God wants to use you as a divine show room, where the poor, the wearied and the depressed will find comfort and recreation! You got to be kind. It's a sign that you have conquered greed!”

“The devil will give up when he sees that you are not going to give in.”

“We live in a hostile world that constantly seeks to pull us away from God.”

“George Washington famously warned against ... 'ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear”

“All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you. I never had a selfless thought since I was born. I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through: I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn. Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek, I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin: I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek-- But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin. Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack. I see the chasm. And everything you are was making My heart into a bridge by which I might get back From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking. For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains You give me are more precious than all other gains.”

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even if nobody is watching.”