I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

Honolulu is a melting pot.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

There is no hierarchy of values any more. Real progress is due mainly to human genius, and that’s rare, and usually stems from a real elite, from a hierarchy.

It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

I found that the corridors of power in Delhi were littered with lobbies of various kinds.

There’s only one thing that can kill the movies, and that’s education.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.

What you’re seeing with Occupy Wall Street and the others are people who are unhappy and they’re directing their unhappiness now toward Wall Street and toward those they think are doing too well in our society.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

There can never be any stop to learn about different cultures by travelling to different places. And whatever comes your way, continue the healthy eating habits.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit sadness that our wonderful airline is merging with another. Because I’m not American, the U.S. Department of Transportation stipulated I take some of my shares in Virgin America as non-voting shares, reducing my influence over any takeover. So there was sadly nothing I could do to stop it.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

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

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

I am the son of a freedom fighter, and a son of a freedom fighter automatically imbibes the value of democracy.

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.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

He who has great power should use it lightly.

I had faith in Israel before it was established, I have in it now. I believe it has a glorious future before it – not just another sovereign nation, but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.

Cinema reflects culture and there is no harm in adapting technology, but not at the cost of losing your originality.

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.

There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a Yeti.

I’m the proof – you can’t throw away tradition.

I have always reckoned the dignity of the republic of first importance and preferable to life.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him.

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

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

London is a roost for every bird.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

Success is always dangerous, and we need to be alert and avoid becoming the victims of our own success. Will we influence the world for Christ, or will the world influence us?

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.

In England, football is a big thing to talk about, but Liverpool, it’s a special place. You feel it when you make your first step.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

‚WASP‘ is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it’s inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not.