The United States is not stingy. We are the greatest contributor to international relief efforts in the world.

To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also.

My mother was a full-time mother. She didn’t have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences… everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving – she’s better than me.

Romania, which had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West. The United States and Britain loved him. He was supported until the last minute.

I was distressed that after 9/11, when the United States was attacked by terrorists, the United States‘ response was to attack Afghanistan, where some of the terrorists had been.

I don’t have freedom in the United States to go into a public school and preach the Gospel, nor is a student free in a public school to pray, or a teacher free to read the Bible publicly to the students. At the same time, we have a great degree of freedom for which I am grateful.

In 1961, the United States began chemical warfare in Vietnam, South Vietnam, chemical warfare to destroy crops and livestock. That went on for seven years. The level of poison – they used the most extreme carcinogen known: dioxin. And this went on for years.

What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me.

People seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That’s because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning.

Right now, when we’re hearing so much disturbing and hateful rhetoric, it is so important to remember that our diversity has been – and will always be – our greatest source of strength and pride here in the United States.

Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action, which produces further confusion, further misery.

I don’t think it is so difficult to solve the problems between Cuba and the United States; it all depends on whether there is a dialogue, a discussion, or if the prejudices and hatred of people like the extremists and terrorists from the Cuban community, who try to impose their policies, prevail.

A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.

Any negotiated, peaceful solution to the problems between the United States and peoples, or any people of Latin America, which does not imply force or the use of force, must be addressed in accordance with international principles and norms.

The United States was seriously defeated in Iraq by Iraqi nationalism – mostly by nonviolent resistance. The United States could kill the insurgents, but they couldn’t deal with half a million people demonstrating in the streets.

When Britain and the U.S. invaded Iraq, it was with the reasonable expectation that it was going to increase the threat of terror, as it has.

Nowhere is it written that there must be conflict between the United States and China.

The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country – I know, because I am one of them.

With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.

Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse.

I think Hillary Clinton is a phenomenal woman, and I’ve gotten to know her, and I think she’s made some pretty major contributions over the course of her life.

My father always taught me that when you help other people, then God will give you double. And that’s what has really happened to me. When I have helped other people who are in need, God has helped me more.

I think America has always been polarized.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

No one has ever become poor by giving.

The Lord commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom he gives nothing else.

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.

If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president’s.

The outpouring of support from millions of people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has been impressive.

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy’s tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

I’m generous. I give good tips. It’s just – the way I live my life, ironically enough, is: I don’t want anything. I’m not a consumer. I don’t crave objects.

You may be rich, but there is one thing you can’t afford – that is, if you are a good sort – you can’t afford to spend money on your own luxuries while there are people around you wanting the necessaries of life.

If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.

You make more money if you’re generous.

In 1979, Iranians carried out an illegitimate act: They overthrew a tyrant that the United States had imposed and supported, and moved on an independent path, not following U.S. orders.

The fact is: It’s true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it.

One-third of the people in the United States promote, while the other two-thirds provide.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

The quality of research in the U.S. is absolutely the best.

The only way to get love is to be lovable. It’s very irritating if you have a lot of money. You’d like to think you could write a check: ‚I’ll buy a million dollars‘ worth of love.‘ But it doesn’t work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get.

When I give somebody something and see their face, it just makes me so happy.

Fidel Castro, whatever people may think of him, is a hero in Latin America, primarily because he stood up to the United States.

People in Ethiopia, the Sudan, etc., don’t know Audrey Hepburn, but they recognize the name UNICEF. When they see UNICEF, their faces light up, because they know that something is happening. In the Sudan, for example, they call a water pump ‚UNICEF.‘

I do not look upon these United States as a finished product. We are still in the making.

I’m going to try to unite all Americans.

I always joke that my kids‘ favorite holiday is Father’s Day. They love the way I celebrate the occasion by writing each of them a thank-you letter and a generous check. It’s my way of letting them know how much I appreciate the great pleasure and privilege of being their dad.

God has given us two hands, one to receive with and the other to give with.

My mother always wanted to give back.

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

It shows nobility to be willing to increase your debt to a man to whom you already owe much.

The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control – ‚indoctrination‘, we might say – exercised through the mass media.

He who obtains has little. He who scatters has much.

Now you have a choice: we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America.

You probably don’t need more weapons than what’s required to destroy every city on earth. There’s only 2,300 cities. So, the United States, by that criteria, only needs 2,300 nuclear weapons – well, we’ve got more than 25,000!

Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot.

Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.

Illinois surpasses every other spot of equal extent upon the face of the globe in fertility of soil and in the proportionable amount of the same which is sufficiently level for actual cultivation.

In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

Funny thing is that the poorer people are, the more generous they seem to be.