quotes of day Sunday, August 30, 2026

“Most people see what is, and never see what can be.”

“There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them.”

“Man is but mortal: and there is a point beyond which human courage cannot extend. Mr. Pickwick gazed through his spectacles for an instant on the advancing mass, and then fairly turned his back and-we will not say fled; firstly, because it is an ignoble term, and, secondly, because Mr. Pickwick's figure was by no means adapted for that mode of retreat-he trotted away, at as quick a rate as his legs would convey him;.”

“Now, today, some children are enrolled in excellent programs. Some children are enrolled in mediocre programs. And some are wasting away their most formative years in bad programs....That's why I'm issuing a challenge to our states: Develop a cutting-edge plan to raise the quality of your early learning programs; show us how you'll work to ensure that children are better prepared for success by the time they enter kindergarten. If you do, we will support you with an Early Learning Challenge Grant that I call on Congress to enact.”

“The more boring a newspaper is, the more it is respected. The most respected newspaper in the United States is The New York Times, which has thousands of reporters constantly producing enormous front-page stories about bauxite...The [New York] Post would write about bauxite only if famous celebrites were arrested for snorting it in an exclusive Manhattan nightclub.”

“The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows.”

“Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.”

“Our conflict is not likely to cease so soon as every good man would wish. The measure of iniquity is not yet filled; and unless we can return a little more to first principles, and act a little more upon patriotic ground, I do not know when it will.”

“There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.”

“We are all wired into a survival trip, now.”

“Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her.”

“Portable property is happiness in a pocketbook.”

“From politics, it was an easy step to silence.”

“It is almost as safe to assume that an artist of any dignity is against his country, i.e., against the environment in which God hath placed him, as it is to assume that his country is against the artist.”

“The difference between a republic and an empire is the loyalty of one's army”

“The hardest thing [for me] is to 'just' agree, and that is what sparks creativity, the feeling that something can be better, the feeling that something's missing, the feeling that something's needed.”