Nothing ever gets settled in this town (Washington). It's not like running a company or even a university. It's a seething debating society, in which the debate never stops; in which people never give up, including me, and that's the atmosphere in which you administer.
The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.
Whoever wants to know the hearts and minds of America had better learn baseball.
Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made him rich.
America... an economic system prouder of the distribution of its products than of the products themselves.
The United States was born in the country and moved to the city in the nineteenth century.
Delaware: a state that has three counties when the tide is out, and two when it is in.
Washington is an endless series of mock palaces clearly built for clerks.
The Americans believe they answered all first questions in 1776: since then they've just been hammering out the practical details.
Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
Americans have a special horror of letting things happen their own way, without interference. They would like to jump down their stomachs, digest the food, and shovel the shit out.
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply 'Ours.'
In the United States 'First' and 'Second' class can't be painted on railroad cars, for all passengers, being Americans, are equal and it would be 'unAmerican.' But paint 'Pullman' on a car and everyone is satisfied.
The true America is the Middle West, and Columbus discovered nothing at all except another Europe.
America once had the clarity of a pioneer axe.
In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is.
You say to your soldier, 'Do this' and he does it. But I am obliged to say to the American, 'This is why you ought to do this' and then he does it.
The greatest American superstition is belief in facts.
America should care more for its poor and reform itself in other ways; but even if it won't do those things, it remains the least constrained society on earth.
Florida: God's waiting room.
