“He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away.”

“The man who trims himself to suit everybody will soon whittle himself away ”

“I have noticed that, with few exceptions, men bungle their affairs. Everywhere I see incompetence rampant, incompetence triumphant...I have accepted the universality of incompetence.”

“Peace of mind is attained not by ignoring problems, but by solving them.”

“A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.”

“Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.”

“The man who no longer expects miraculous changes either from a revolution or from an economic plan is not obliged to resign himself to the unjustifiable. It is because he likes individual human beings, participates in communities, and respects the truth, that he refuses to surrender his soul to an abstract ideal of humanity, a tyrannical party, and an absurd scholasticism. . . . If tolerance is born of doubt, let us teach everyone to doubt all the models and utopias, to challenge all the prophets of redemption and the heralds of catastrophe. If they can abolish fanaticism, let us pray for the advent of the sceptics.”