"It is a vulgar error to suppose..." - Quote by Oscar Wilde

“I wonder that no criminal has ever pleaded the ugliness of your city as an excuse for his crimes.”

“The fatal errors of life are not due to man's being unreasonable: an unreasonable moment may be one's finest moment. They are due to man's being logical.”

“Bad manners make a journalist.”

“The fact that Americans drag around the world by the busloads to glimpse the past probably has something to do with the youth of our country. We revere anything older than George Burns.”

“The United States presents a value system to the world that is based on democracy, based on economic freedom, based on individual rights for men and women, .. I think that is what makes us such a draw for nations around the world. People come to the United States to be educated, to become Americans. We are a country of countries and we touch every country, and every country in world touches us.”

“The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lit under it, there's no limit to the power it can generate.”

“I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.”

“I remember back in the 1960s - late '50s, really - reading a comic book called 'Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Story.' Fourteen pages. It sold for 10 cents. And this little book inspired me to attend non-violence workshops, to study about Gandhi, about Thoreau, to study Martin Luther King, Jr., to study civil disobedience.”

“I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors as readily as any way .”