Politics quarantines one from history; most of the people who nourish themselves in the political life are in the game not to make history but to be … - Norman Mailer

You carried it alone as long as you could, and then you weren't strong enough to take it any longer. You kept fighting everything, and everything broke you down, until in the end you were just a little goddam bolt holding on and squealing when the machine went too fast.

I am not here only so that the blind might see, but to teach those who thought they could see that they are blind

The concept of hero is antagonistic to impersonal social progress, to the belief that social ills can be solved by social legislating, for it sees a country as all-but-trapped in its character until it has a hero who reveals the character of the country to itself.