I’ve invested years of my life in building a haven here, and here I will remain among my friends as each day we grow older and each month some of us … - James A. Michener

I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behaviour of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson — the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

But it was strange — generation after generation these quiet women with their demure bearing and fearless intelligence seemed to make the lasting wives. Their husbands appeared to love them as much at seventy as they had at seventeen: I wonder if there’s something to the way they’re brought up? Always speaking their minds and taking part in things?

this manner the legend was born that a Canadian warship had saved Alaska for the United States when no American agency was brave enough to assume responsibility.