As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

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

If I am judged for my work, many myths about me as an autocrat or otherwise would become clearer. I feel false propaganda will not last, and truth will ultimately prevail.

I’m hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.

For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

‚You are no saint,‘ says the devil. Well, if I am not, I am a sinner, and Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Sink or swim, I go to Him; other hope, I have none.

He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

My number one thing? Don’t overleverage yourself. Don’t say you can do something when you really can’t.

I do not pilfer victory.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

Common sense is not so common.

It’s easier to aim to please and say what others want to hear than to form an opinion and fight for it, even if it means taking a risk or losing your job.

We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.

Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

I wish that the Indians believed me a god, for upon the report of an enemy’s valor oftentimes depends the success of a battle, and false reports have many times done as great things as true courage and resolution.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

When one has finished building one’s house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way – before one began.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

Time travel was once considered scientific heresy, and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a ‚crank.‘

All missionaries, younger and older, serve with the sole hope of making life better for other people.

Integrity means that you are the same in public as you are in private.

In a false quarrel there is no true valor.

Marriage is the death of hope.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.

I don’t mind telling a dark side.

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I’ve had and also the people I’ve had around me. I want to stay hopeful, even though I get scared about why we’re even alive at all.