"How can you respect the world when..." - Quote by John Updike

“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

“Government money in the arts, I fear, can only deflect artists from their responsibility to find an authentic market for their products.”

“To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client.”

“The educated man is a greater nuisance than the uneducated one.”

“The newer people of this modern age are more eager to amass than to realize.”

“And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaininggross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?”

“The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can't make anybody believe that he has it.”

“Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.”

“That's what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried with them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.”