The answer to many of the domestic problems we face is not higher taxes and more spending. It is less waste, more results and greater freedom for the individual American to earn a rightful place in his own community – and for States and localities to address their own needs in their own ways, in the light of their own priorities.

Our diplomacy and development budget is not just about reducing spending and finding efficiencies. We need a frank conversation about what we stand for as that ‚shining city on a hill.‘ And that conversation begins by acknowledging that we can’t do it on the cheap.

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.

The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood – rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky – they all turn out in one day.

Time is the least thing we have of.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems.

Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.

I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.

I mean, I’ve always been a libertarian. Leave everybody alone. Let everybody else do what they want. Just stay out of everybody else’s hair.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.

I want get across to not just the church world. I want to get outside those walls to everyday people.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

What do you think a stimulus is? It’s spending – that’s the whole point! Seriously.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

The citizens of Tumortown are forever assailed with cures and rumors of cures.

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

I entered the diocesan seminary. I liked the Dominicans, and I had Dominican friends. But then I chose the Society of Jesus, which I knew well because the seminary was entrusted to the Jesuits. Three things in particular struck me about the Society: the missionary spirit, community and discipline.

Here at home, when Americans were standing in long lines to give blood after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we squandered an obvious opportunity to make service a noble cause again, and rekindle an American spirit of community.

Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

Self-government does not and should not imply the use of political agencies alone. Progress is born of cooperation in the community – not from governmental restraints.

Today, writers want to impress other writers.

I just want to make sure when I have kids, I can spend time with them. That’s the whole point.

All my adult life people have been helping me.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

When I take my kid to school, all the parents stop and stare.

My real dream is to have a whole, like, buy a whole piece of land. Imagine, like, a long driveway. Like, a cul de sac-type street, with maybe, like, seven houses. Me be right here. Have my mom be able to be right here. My brother over here. My girl’s grandmother and family right here. Friends over there. That’s my real dream.

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Do not be afraid to ask for help. Nobody gets through college on their own.

My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.

Love can do much, but duty more.

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

Nothing is to be rated higher than the value of the day.

I have the people behind me and the people are my strength.

Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.

At the end of the day, your fans are the people who support you in and out. And their opinions matter.

Being part of a community with a church at its centre and singin‘ hymns is a great thing to do.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan’s writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

Every time the Fed implements ‚quantitative easing,‘ a.k.a. printing more money, two things go up: taxes and inflation. When taxes and inflation go up, more jobs are lost.

I just love to shop. If I could, I would shop every single day in every single store and spend all of my money which, you know, I do anyway.

‚Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars.‘ Guess what? Yes, we do in one regard: We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn’t have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super-wealthy. That’s not a tax raise. That’s called fairness where I come from.

A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.

Here in America, we don’t let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes from when we appreciate each other’s strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other, because in this country, it’s never been each person for themselves. No, we’re all in this together. We always have been.

I love being a part of the country-music community.

I do not love to be printed on every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things or to be thought by our own people to be trifling away my time about them when I should be about the king’s business.

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

To me, reading a fashion magazine is the last thing I need to do. I’ve got books I need to read.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.

The suicide-bombing community is not absolutely 100 percent religious, but it is pretty nearly 100 percent religious.

There is no delight in owning anything unshared.

I certainly know that I would not be able to survive if it were not for the fact that I am being upheld by the prayers of so many people.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

If investments in banks fall, it is a tragedy, and people say, ‚What are we going to do?‘ but if people die of hunger, have nothing to eat or suffer from poor health, that’s nothing.

I do not doubt that we would become more useful if we praised God more, and others would join us, for they would see that God has blessed us.

My father used to have an expression. He’d say, ‚Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about your place in your community.‘