America is a Nation with a mission – and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace – a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

Within the soul of America is freedom of mind and spirit in man. Here alone are the open windows through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit. Here alone is human dignity not a dream but an accomplishment. Perhaps it is not perfect, but it is more full in realization here than any other place in the world.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

My first big mission for UNICEF in Ethiopia was just to attract attention, before it was too late, to conditions which threatened the whole country. My role was to inform the world, to make sure that the people of Ethiopia were not forgotten.

We can’t equate democracy with Christianity because the largest democracy on earth is India, which is primarily Hindu. The third largest democracy is Indonesia, which is Islamic. Democracy and freedom are not dependent on Christian beliefs.

I am rather inclined to silence.

In Britain, like most of the developed world, stem-cell research is regarded as a great opportunity. America will be left behind if it doesn’t change policy.

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.

If you want to be a voice for peace in the world, begin by making peace a permanent condition of your own life.

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

A peace is of the nature of a conquest; for then both parties nobly are subdued, and neither party loser.

The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.

Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.

Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.

A private soldier has as much right to justice as a major-general.

If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. ‚Good pride‘ represents our dignity and self-respect. ‚Bad pride‘ is the deadly sin of superiority that reeks of conceit and arrogance.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

Defending peace is the duty of all.

Most employees only want to know how much they get paid and how much time off they get – they probably don’t have the mission in their souls.

Collegiality is crucial to the success of our mission. We could not do the job the Constitution assigns to us if we didn’t – to use one of Justice Antonin Scalia’s favorite expressions – ‚Get over it!‘

Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.

Laughter is America’s most important export.

I came to America to teach my method – not to enter a research experiment.

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

Oh, come, Divine Physician, and bind up every broken bone. Come with Thy sacred nard which Thou hast compounded of Thine own heart’s blood, and lay it home to the wounded conscience and let it feel its power. Oh! Give peace to those whose conscience is like the troubled sea which cannot rest.

The statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his nation’s experience and his vision.

I read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn’t educate America if they started at 6:30.

The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.

All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America. And undocumented immigrants who desperately want to embrace those responsibilities see little option but to remain in the shadows, or risk their families being torn apart.

Are we simply waving farewell to the days when some of the most interesting thinking in Europe and America came to us from our fiction film-makers? BBC2, which once introduced and showed great films, now shows none.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

Loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

I grew up in San Francisco. And so I’m informed in a certain kind of way about, you know, believing in democracy and believing in America. And I’m a very ardent patriot.

Because of my parents‘ love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia – first by Hitler and then by Stalin.

America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.

To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.

A whole people with the ballot in their hands possess the most conclusive and unlimited power ever entrusted to humanity.

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

I’m married. My wife, Stella – a beautiful woman. She’s brought a lot of peace to my life, a lot of wisdom.

We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.