Stand upright speak thy thoughts declare The truth thou hast that all may share Be bold proclaim it everywhere: They only live who dare.

Both my grandmothers had upright pianos and I just knew how to play since I was a child. Nobody taught me. I sounded like a grown-up and then I learned how to read music. I played so well by ear I could fool the teacher to believe I could play the notes. She'd make the mistake of playing the song once and I could play it.

Of course the plea for respect for nonhuman life goes far beyond the scientific delight of familiarity with our planet mates. The nonhuman forms of life with which we 6 000 million talking upright apes share this finite planet are directly or indirectly connected to our well-being.

I was half asleep lying there writing this lyric in my head at about 3:30 in the morning. I woke Steve up with this idea and then we went into the living room where there was a little upright piano and finished the song. I wonder where that piano is now?

Books minister to our knowledge to our guidance and to our delight by their truth their uprightness and their art.

I have met with some of them - very honest fellows who with all their stupidity had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense which cannot be the characteristics of fools.

Hope is a flatterer but the most upright of all parasites for she frequents the poor man's hut as well as the palace of his superior.

Government has the role of suiting people for freedom. People aren't made for freedom spontaneously. There's sort of a 19-year race between when people are born and when they become adults. And government has a role in making them at the end of 19 years suited to be upright trustworthy repositories of popular sovereignty.

My dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years. And when he opened his campaign headquarters back in the early '70s when I was 5 years old my mother wanted me to play the national anthem. And they got an upright piano on the back of a flatbed truck and I played it.

I find fault with my children because I like them and I want them to go places - uprightness and strength and courage and civil respect and anything that affects the probabilities of failure on the part of those that are closest to me that concerns me - I find fault.