A lot has happened over the years. And while this nation has been tested by war, and it’s been tested by recession and all manner of challenges – I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your president, to tell you I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before.

It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business.

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society… shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

If segregationists had their way, I would not be a member of the United States Senate today, I would not be a top contender to be president of the United States.

There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

To some degree it matters who’s in office, but it matters more how much pressure they’re under from the public.

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity – or it will move apart.

If we can boondoggle ourselves out of this depression, that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of the American people for years to come.

Every President I think I’ve ever known, except Truman, has thought they didn’t quite get done what they wanted done. And toward the end of their Administrations, they were disappointed and wished they had done some things differently.

Washington still refuses to provide evidence to support the claims in 1990 that a huge Iraqi military build-up on the Saudi border justified war.

People make a big fuss over you when you’re President. But I’m very serious about doing everything I can to make sure that it doesn’t go to my head.

In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.

I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.

I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.

I want a president who will teach our children that everyone in this country matters, a president who truly believes in the vision that our Founders put forth all those years ago that we are all created equal, each a beloved part of the great American story.

I’m committed to the people of Gujarat. I will devote each and every moment to serve my people of Gujarat.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

Although the life of a person is in a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

The American people are bigger than any president. I suppose I have faith in my country and in what it is founded on and the values we hold dear.

The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others.

When George W. Bush came into office, North Korea had maybe one nuclear weapon and verifiably wasn’t producing any more.

The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed in 1978 or ’79.

If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

The only definition by which America’s best days are behind it is on a purely relative basis.

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think – even the activists – that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: ‚Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn’t stop the war so what’s the use of doing it again?‘

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not.

I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn’t be here. It’d still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.

I don’t believe in pessimism. If something doesn’t come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it’s going to rain, it will.

The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

A piece of spaghetti or a military unit can only be led from the front end.

You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.

There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down. When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I’ll just put the stool out there and I’ll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn’t keep all of the promises he made to everybody.