“Winter came and the city [Chicago] turned monochrome -- black trees against gray sky above white earth. Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds” 

“I thought I could start over, you see. But now I know you can never start over. Not really. You think you have control, but you are like a fly in somebody else’s web. Sometimes I think that’s why I like accounting. All day, you are only dealing with numbers. You add them, multiply them, and if you are careful, you will always have a solution. There’s a sequence there. An order. With numbers, you can have control….” 

“There's nobody to guide through the process of becoming a man... to explain to them the meaning of manhood. And that's a recipe for disaster.” 

“In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.” 

“Where there is no experience the wise man is silent.” 

“For half of the world's population, roughly three billion people around the world living on less than two dollars a day, an election is at best a means, not an end; a starting point, not deliverance. These people are looking less for an "electocracy" than for the basic elements that for most of us define a decent life--food, shelter, electricity, basic health care, education for their children, and the ability to make their way through life without having to endure corruption, violence, or arbitrary power.” 

“But who can recount all 595 the high daring in the will of man, and in the stubborn hearts of women the all-adventurous passions that couple with man’s overthrow.” 

“Commander against commander, brother against brother, enemy against enemy, I will take my stand. Quick, bring my greaves to protect against spears and stones!” 

“What suckling craved the creature, born full-fanged?” 

“But you cannot speak of any glory for happenings that are at once evil and held in dishonor.” 

“But concern not thou thyself vainly with matters that are of no advantage.” 

“I have not need to promise what I cannot do.” 

“Who acts, shall endure. So speaks the voice of the age-old wisdom.” 

“When one is wise, it's wisest to seem foolish.” 

“A great ox stands on my tongue.” 

“PROMETHEUS: 'Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers” 

“Call no man happy till he is dead.” 

“Zeus, first cause, prime mover; for what thing without Zeus is done among mortals?” 

“Memory is the mother of all wisdom. ” 

“They sent forth men to battle, But no such men return; And home, to claim their welcome, Come ashes in an urn” 

“There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain.” 

“It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.” 

“Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes).” 

“I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view.”