There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. Yet that will be the beginning.
Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.
Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.
Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before - it takes something from him.
A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.
A good beginning makes a good end.
To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.
No memory is ever alone; it's at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.
Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. In the one year during which I kept that kind of record, I read twenty-five books while waiting for people. In offices, applying for jobs, waiting to see a dentist, waiting in a restaurant for friends, many such places.
All loose things seem to drift down to the sea, and so did I.
A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination.
Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.
Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content.
No one can get an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process.
I think of myself... as a troubadour, a village storyteller, the guy in the shadows of the campfire.
The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a post office, or even a newsstand.
I'm actually writing history. It isn't what you'd call big history. I don't write about presidents and generals... I write about the man who was ranching, the man who was mining, the man who was opening up the country.
For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.
To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.
He might never really do what he said, but at least he had it in mind. He had somewhere to go.
