The biggest big business in America is not steel, automobiles, or television. It is the manufacture, refinement and distribution of anxiety.
Next to power without honor, the most dangerous thing in the world is power without humor.
The five happiest people I have ever met all had this strange little quirk of referring to their jobs as a ‘calling.’
The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they follow. Bigness means weakness.
Tenacity is a pretty fair substitute for bravery, and the best form of tenacity I know is expressed in a Danish fur trapper’s principle: “The next mile is the only one a person really has to make.”
It is only people with a sense of personal responsibility who can help others. It is only people with a sense of personal responsibility who can be helped in a lasting way.
There are only two kinds of people in the world, suckers and people that can be had. Everyone can be had, but a sucker will always bet you $50 that he can’t be had. Maybe magicians are around to remind us we can all be had, so we don’t become suckers.
Men want power in order to do something. Boys want power in order to be something.
Wisdom is essential in a president, the appearance of wisdom will do in a candidate.
Saints are usually killed by their own people.
People, if given the choice between anarchy and dictatorship, will always choose dictatorship because anarchy is the worst dictatorship of all.
Dealing with network executives is like being nibbled to death by ducks.
The most distinguished hallmark of the American society is and always has been change.
I’m sort of a pessimist about tomorrow and an optimist about the day after tomorrow.
Brotherhood is not so wild a dream as those, who profit by postponing it, pretend.
Consultant: an ordinary guy more than 50 miles from home.
For children, Christmas is anticipation. For adults, Christmas is memory.
You can’t know who you are, as a nation or a people, unless you know where you’ve been.
No man was ever more than about nine meals away from crime or suicide.
Words themselves become beings, sentences becomenatural vegetation to be guided by the gardener’s hands.
I have never quite grasped the worry about the power of the press. After all, it speaks with a thousand voices, in constant dissonance.