Within the first few months I discovered that being a president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

a rival line, on his small beginnings out at the dam. Even his tools should be of wood and leather and gut, materials the insects would eat when one day he no longer needed them.

But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?

They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there - and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see.

Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world.

Yet this book is to prove that no matter how you travel, how 'successful' your tour, or foreshortened, you always learn something and learn to change your thoughts.

I've got my full rucksack pack and it's spring, I'm going to go Southwest to the dry land, to the long lone land of Texas and Chihuahua and the gay streets of Mexico night, music coming out of doors, girls, wine, weed, wild hats, viva! What does it matter? Like the ants that have nothing to do but dig all day, I have nothing to do but what I want and be kind and remain nevertheless uninfluenced by imaginary judgments and pray for the light.

I'm back in these regions of fumbling dark uncertain creation, but it's my one and only world, and I'll do the best I can.

With the coming of Dean Moriarity began the part of my life you could call my life on the road.

It made me think that everything was about to arrive—the moment when you know all and everything is decided forever.