In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.

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.

The environment that we call society is created by past generations; we accept it, as it helps us to maintain our greed, possessiveness, illusion.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

If you can build a business up big enough, it’s respectable.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

To me, my house is always recreating what I lost in youth.

Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that’s better left unsaid.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

Genius, when young, is divine.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

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.

Younger people have greatest fears. Why is that? Because they don’t know the plot. They don’t know their own individual plot… they don’t know what’s going to happen to them.

The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it.

The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

Before ever meeting Priyanka Chopra, I had heard her name coming out of Bollywood and was impressed: she was beautiful, talented, had made nearly 50 movies, earned multiple awards – a massive star.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

I knew that I was ‚interesting‘ at 18 because I was aware that I could get away with doing things on stage.

Take me seriously. Take me and my role seriously. Take my talent seriously.

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

A youth, when at home, should be filial and, abroad, respectful to his elders. He should be earnest and truthful. He should overflow in love to all and cultivate the friendship of the good. When he has time and opportunity, after the performance of these things, he should employ them in polite studies.

Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

I would probably have more in common with a whale than with a bourgeois married couple employed at worthy institutions that I would wipe from the face of the earth if it was given to me to do so.

Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don’t buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

Upon the farm of the uncle with whom I lived, we did know of the mortgage as some dreadful damper on youthful hopes of things that could not be bought. I do have a vivid recollection that the major purpose of a farm was to produce a living right on the spot for the family.

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

I respect the fact that many denominations have different points of view with respect to gay marriage and they can hold that in the sanctity in the place of their religion and not bless them or solemnize them.

All of my brothers and sisters are very talented. They all sang all right.

Development of outlook naturally begins with a respect for God… Reverence to God and reverence for one’s neighbor and reverence for oneself as a servant of God.

I’m much more comfortable and confident running out on the field in front of 70,000 people instead of standing in front of a camera trying to say some lines. The people who do that as a profession are very talented because it’s certainly not easy.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

We live in an imperfect world, and imperfect people surround us every day.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

Everybody is entertained to death.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community.

‚Fahrenheit 451‘ postulates a lot of things I didn’t want to have happen.

I don’t think I’m supposed to boss other people around just because I’m a so-called celebrity or star. I hate that when people act that way. No one deserves it. I’ve seen it happen. I don’t call those people out – they know who they are. Some enjoy that reputation.

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.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

It is my absolute belief that Indians have unlimited talent. I have no doubt about our capabilities.

It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.

I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, ‚What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?‘ I get what you’re saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.

I want to thank God, obviously for the health, for the talent He’s given me, for my family who supports me, for the things that basketball’s taught me on and off the court. For the people that I’ve been able to meet through the game of basketball.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.