The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.

We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.

The post-assassination Lincoln took on a greatly amplified importance to much of the American public, probably the president most deeply reviled in his lifetime and mostly highly regarded after his death.

Following graduation from high school in 1948, I attended Harvard University where I became a physics major. Having grown up in a small town, I found Harvard to be an enormously enriching experience. Students in my class came from all walks of life and from a great variety of geographical locations.

The short story and the truth is that I was taking vocal lessons here in New York... One day, instead of my lesson, the piano player and I went into a studio... and we put down some demos... Those demos got to Quincy Jones through an agent... He listened to them, he called me, and we started to record.

The United States is no longer first in the world in upward mobility. We can reverse that trend by giving our young children an equal start in life as they begin their journey to fulfill the American Dream.