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.

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?

Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we’ve always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.

In many ways, when you’re a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

I think it’s brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

I’m not a health freak. I just work out every day.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

I think America has always been polarized.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.

Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicization of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanization of politics.

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

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

The American people have not become heartless.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

As a global society, we do not have to agree, endorse or condone the lifestyle choices of others. However, history has taught us that we equally cannot and should not excuse those who would hide behind religion or misuse God’s word to justify bigotry and persecution.

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

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

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

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

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.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

I live in a crazy time.

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

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

I had a good time boxing. I enjoyed it – and I may come back.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Apart from the fact that any hardy exercise conduces much to the training and formation of a soldier, pig-sticking tends to give a man what is called a ‚stalker’s eye,‘ but which, par excellence, is the soldier’s eye.

As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups. And I remain extremely concerned when I see what’s happening in our country, which is in many ways the luckiest place in the world. We don’t seem to be excited about making our country a better place for our kids.

The time to save is now. When a dog gets a bone, he doesn’t go out and make a down payment on a bigger bone. He buries the one he’s got.

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

A good feeling for me is when you train, and then you put on fresh clothes. New clothes after a training session – you have this rush of endorphins from exercise that everybody gets, and then you get that nice feeling of fresh clothes. It’s a double whammy.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

Yeah, it’s pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

Where do the evils like corruption arise from? It comes from the never-ending greed. The fight for corruption-free ethical society will have to be fought against this greed and replace it with ‚what can I give‘ spirit.

The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.

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.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

The mob is the mother of tyrants.

Stop this attitude that older people ain’t any good anymore! We’re as good as we ever were – if we ever were any good.

There has to be a global mission of human progress.

Exercise is really important to me – it’s therapeutic. So if I’m ever feeling tense or stressed or like I’m about to have a meltdown, I’ll put on my iPod and head to the gym or out on a bike ride along Lake Michigan with the girls.

In too much of the West, everyone wants the guarantee of safety, and never having to make any decisions.

It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper.