After May 1940, the good times were few and far between; first there was the war, then the capitulation, and then the arrival of the Germans, which is when the trouble started for the Jews.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

Won’t it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

The terrorist action of 9/11 gave birth to President Obama’s entry to the White House. Not directly, but indirectly.

World War II broke out in 1939, and many people credit that war with saving the economy.

There is no education like adversity.

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

Losing is tough.

When it all got taken away, I was becoming a young man. So I had to sacrifice to leave my family… Sleeping in my car, getting an apartment for a month and getting evicted the next month. Staying in the $25, $50 hotels.

When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they may put up.

The man who has no problems is out of the game.

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.

The eagle has no fear of adversity. We need to be like the eagle and have a fearless spirit of a conqueror!

You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‚Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.‘ See the positive in negative events.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

Since the time of the witch burnings, the grandmothers and the healers and the midwives have been systematically targeted. And burned at the stake for hundreds of years, decimating whole communities.

Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.

Good luck has its storms.

In Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war; have not yet been republished there.

The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man… It is more powerful than external circumstances.

You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty. As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty.

My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions. There are a good many points about which I may be diffident, but when it comes to questions of Truth and intellectual independence, there is no holding me – I can envisage no finer end than to sacrifice oneself for a conviction.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.

God never promised us a trouble-free life.

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things. If you follow the trail, it led to kicking Europeans out of Asia – that saved tens of millions of lives in India alone.

My father Ted fought in North Africa, Italy, and Germany during World War II. My grandfather survived the horrors of the trenches in World War I. I truly believe that one of the E.U.’s greatest achievements is that it has kept its members out of conflict in Europe.

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.

I’m not the sort to back away from a fight. I don’t believe in shrinking from anything. It’s not my speed; I’m a guy who meets adversities head on.

Auschwitz stands as a tragic reminder of the terrible potential man has for violence and inhumanity.

The only black battalion on Iwo Jima was a small munitions supply unit that came to the beach.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil’s propagation.

Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

People want you to fail.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

As a global society, we do not have to agree, endorse or condone the lifestyle choices of others. However, history has taught us that we equally cannot and should not excuse those who would hide behind religion or misuse God’s word to justify bigotry and persecution.

After Hiroshima was bombed, I saw a photograph of the side of a house with the shadows of the people who had lived there burned into the wall from the intensity of the bomb. The people were gone, but their shadows remained.

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

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.

Twenty-six million Russians died in the defense of their homeland against the Nazis.

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.