I actually feel like women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don’t have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children. That’s hard.

I thank God I’m myself and for the life I’m given to live and for friends and lovers and beloveds, and I thank God for knowing that all those people have already paid for me.

I was very worried about my mother, growing up – a lot. I do not want my children to be worried about me.

I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.

Modern cynics and skeptics… see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.

We are anthill men upon an anthill world.

It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

‚Thank you‘ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.

When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he’s doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

They might not need me; but they might. I’ll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.

My husband’s a pediatrician, so he and I talk about parenting all the time. You can’t raise children who have more shame resilience than you do.

My doorman is more important to me than any head of any company. He keeps us safe.

I’m not somebody that thinks about destiny and fate, but I don’t walk away from it when something unfolds.

My mother told me, ‚Son, nobody else but God knows.‘ And that’s what I’m about – reaching out to the people, crying with them, giving them hope. Visiting the hospital, visiting the kids with cancer, visiting the adults, and stuff like that. That’s what I do.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

Nobody enjoys the ‚little show about nothing‘ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

I wake up every day inspiring myself, because God gave me life.

He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

Scoutcraft is a means through which the veriest hooligan can be brought to higher thought and to the elements of faith in God; and, coupled with the Scout’s obligation to do a good turn every day, it gives the base of Duty to God and to Neighbour on which the parent or pastor can build with greater ease the form of belief that is desired.

I love being American, and I love family. I love having a family, and I feel so blessed, and I feel like God gave me exactly what I wanted, so now I have to do the right thing in God’s eyes also. Just follow what God wants me to do.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

We just cannot worry about ourselves.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

Test a servant while in the discharge of his duty, a relative in difficulty, a friend in adversity, and a wife in misfortune.

Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you. Go outside and turn your attention to the many miracles around you. This five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced in television.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

Like every parent, when you start your family, your life completely changes. And you completely live for someone else. I find that the most extraordinary thing. Your life is handed over to someone else. From that moment on, they come first in every choice you make. It’s the most wonderful thing.

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.

Anybody who has been discriminated against, who comes from a group that’s been discriminated against, knows what it’s like.

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings – to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

Little things affect little minds.

I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and ocean in the world, were united to support me in the task to which I have now been dedicated with such solemnity.

I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

I think any life can be interesting, any surroundings can be interesting. I don’t think I could have been so brave if I had been living in a town, competing with people on what can be called a generally higher cultural level.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness.

Men freely believe that which they desire.

These wretched babies don’t come until they are ready.

I see the world in black and white, and I don’t like compromising.

I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.

I had very good support from Democrats and Republicans all throughout my administration. I had a very high batting average. We added more jobs per year in my four years than any other president since the Second World War.