“Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”

“Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.”

“We hear them continually on TV: hence they occur first when it is our turn to talk. In this regard, talk may be said to be the enemy of writing. If you observe yourself when on the point of writing that the word rising spontaneously to your mind is not the hard, clear words of a lover of plain speech, but this mush of counterfeits and cliches.”

“To delve into history entails, besides the grievance of hard work, the danger that in the depths one may lose one’s scapegoats.”

“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”

“The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.”

“You never step in the same river of thought twice, because neither you nor it are the same.”