Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

Horses make a landscape look beautiful.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

Girls are soft and pretty.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can’t afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.

The society in ‚The Handmaid’s Tale‘ is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is beauty in the character. When there is beauty in the character, there is harmony in the home. When there is harmony in the home, there is order in the nation. When there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

In this country, it doesn’t make any difference where you were born. It doesn’t make any difference who your parents were. It doesn’t make any difference if, like me, you couldn’t even speak English until you were in your twenties.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

Africa is probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

The very word ‚secrecy‘ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

I should be a postage stamp, because that’s the only way I’ll ever get licked. I’m beautiful. I’m fast. I’m so mean I make medicine sick. I can’t possibly be beat.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

If a man reaches the heart of his own religion, he has reached the heart of the others, too. There is only one God, and there are many paths to him.

We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.

There is a group of people that I think in good faith honestly believe that further curtailing our Second Amendment rights will enhance public safety. But there’s another group that just hates the Second Amendment.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but what I also believe is that we have an obligation to make sure that gays and lesbians have the rights of citizenship that afford them visitations to hospitals, that allow them to be, to transfer property between partners, to make certain that they’re not discriminated on the job.

Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.

In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.

Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

I’m interested in that drive, that rush to judgment, that is so prevalent in our society. We all know that pleasurable rush that comes from condemning, and in the short term it’s quite a satisfying thing to do, isn’t it?

My heart aches for America and its deceived people.

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.

There’s people that appreciate what I do; there’s people that criticize it.

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.