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Charles Ives

Stand up and take your dissonance like a man.

American composer and insurance innovator Charles Ives, as quoted in “Charles Ives’ Rambunctious ‘Fourth Of July,’ NPR Music (July 3, 2008).

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Igor Stravinsky

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

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Hubert H. Humphrey

To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.

Oft attributed to Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr., 38th Vice President of the United States.
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Bob Novak

I am proud of my journalistic philosophy — to tell the world things people do not want me to reveal, to advocate limited government, economic freedom, and a strong, prudent America — and to have fun doing it. For the sober-​sided younger generations of journalists, having fun may seem unserious. But it was the kind of journalism that prevailed when I started.

Robert D. Novak, The Prince of Darkness (2007), p. 14.
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Albert Jay Nock

Every government that has cheapened its currency has been knavishly false to a trust; so have those which, like ours, use public funds to subsidize large-​scale gambling and swindling.

Albert Jay Nock, as quoted in Robert M. Thornton, editor, Cogitations from Albert Jay Nock (The Nockian Society, 1970).
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Zora Neale Hurston

I accept this idea of democracy. I am all for trying it out. It must be a good thing if everybody praises it like that. If our government has been willing to go to war and sacrifice billions of dollars and millions of men for the idea I think that I ought to give the thing a trial. The only thing that keeps me from pitching head long into this thing is the presence of numerous Jim Crow laws on the statute books of the nation. I am crazy about the idea of Democracy. I want to see how it feels. 

Zora Neale Hurston, “Crazy for This Democracy,” Negro Digest (December 1945).