America is not nearly done. We’re only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows… what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants – if they survive that long – will see.

Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

Certainly it is valuable to a trained writer to crash in an aircraft which burns. He learns several important things very quickly. Whether they will be of use to him is conditioned by survival. Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

Cassius Clay is a name that white people gave to my slave master. Now that I am free, that I don’t belong anymore to anyone, that I’m not a slave anymore, I gave back their white name, and I chose a beautiful African one.

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn’t standing still.

I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New, but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

I never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

Most of the time I spend when I get up in the morning is trying to figure out what is going to happen.

Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.

I don’t think you ever really know what all you’re doing, so you have to act on faith.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.

I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.

America is the greatest country in the world.

Before I became a chief minister, I never thought that one day I’d be the chief minister.

They say cats have nine lives. I’ve had 12 already and I don’t know how many more I’ll 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.

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

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

My heart aches for America and its deceived people.

I nearly failed when Virgin was in its infancy; I nearly failed in the early 1980s, and, of course, I have nearly died more than once trying to achieve a world record for boating or ballooning. But through a combination of luck and planning, both Virgin and I are still here.

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

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

This is not Johnson’s war. This is America’s war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

The action we take and the decisions we make in this decade will have consequences far into this century. If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. That will not happen on my watch.

If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting.

We were old sinners – but when we came to Christ we are not sinners anymore.

I have learned, in my life and work as a sportswriter, that big-time Sports and big-time Politics are not so far apart in America. They are both a means to the same end, which is victory… And why not? Victory is good for you, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

The earth was probably born by accident; but, in accordance with one of the most general laws of evolution, scarcely had this accident happened than it was immediately made use of and recast into something naturally directed.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can’t be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.

Our friends at the Republican convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America, but they didn’t have much to say about how they’d make it right. They want your vote, but they don’t want you to know their plan.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

America’s experience, like many others, teaches us that fostering entrepreneurship is not just about crafting the right economic policy or developing the best educated curricula. It’s about creating an entire climate in which innovation and ideas flourish.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

Everywhere I go I find that people… both leaders and individuals… are asking one basic question, ‚Is there any hope for the future?‘ My answer is the same, ‚Yes, through Jesus Christ.‘

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

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.

At the end of 2003, my game was complete. Shooting, defense, using the dribble, transition, midrange stuff was all there. Then it was about fine-tuning and trying to improve in each area.

To me, we’re marketing hope.