Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.

The purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced – the just demands of peace and security will be met – or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.

I’ve never had a divorce, but I’ve seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can’t write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I’m able to kind of express it, or their joy.

Power and speed be hands and feet.

You pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool! You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better. That’s why I pity them!

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

If everyone does some good, think of what a good world this will be.

A saint is tolerant and is attentive to the pleadings of other human beings, not only to spoken messages but to unspoken messages as well.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

This thing of being a hero, about the main thing to it is to know when to die.

We have observed that, in society and the world in which we live, selfishness has increased more than love for others, and that men of good will must work, each with his own strengths and expertise, to ensure that love for others increases until it is equal and possibly exceeds love for oneself.

Bears are very nice, as long as you are nice to them.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

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.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

When you have enough understanding and compassion in you, then that amount of understanding and compassion will try to express itself in action. And your practice should help you to cultivate more understanding and compassion.

None of us has any personal interest above the interests of the country. Our country is more important than our careers.

A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

It is another’s fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.

If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

It’s good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

The most obvious characteristic of science is its application: the fact that, as a consequence of science, one has a power to do things. And the effect this power has had need hardly be mentioned. The whole industrial revolution would almost have been impossible without the development of science.

If your mom cries a lot, you probably cry a lot. It’s what you learn.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

I don’t join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn’t have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven – that’s none of my business, ultimately. I won’t lecture her on the philosophy of science.

People are terrified of me, and I want them to be.

The law of sacrifice is uniform throughout the world. To be effective it demands the sacrifice of the bravest and the most spotless.

If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

War – An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

You don’t need a lot of credentials to be prison guard in a federal prison. And, you know, you give them a set of keys and a weapon, and they’re in power.

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.

Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.

Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. For remember, you don’t live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too.

It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don’t think anybody has held this job who hasn’t felt personally responsible for those being killed.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself.

There is a power in God’s gospel beyond all description.