Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

The Middle East is hopeful. There’s hope there.

The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.

Everybody is entertained to death.

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

I don’t vote. I don’t do no voting.

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

People do not make wars; governments do.

I’ve always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

I’ve done everything I wanted to do, even if I have had to pay a very high price – which has been the case most of the time.

I think there’s every reason this 21st century will be much happier.

Every utopia – let’s just stick with the literary ones – faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?

I don’t like looking back. I’m always constantly looking forward. I’m not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I’m too busy looking for the next cow.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

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.

NATO’s brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious instrument of repression known in the history of humankind.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

Sadat was a great and good man, and his most bitter and dangerous enemies were people who were obsessed with hatred for his peaceful goals.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence.

Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.

The future will be better tomorrow.

I like America, just as everybody else does. I love America, I gotta say that. But America will be judged.

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.

Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it’s the real test of your character and of your faith to say, ‚Things are not going our way, but I’m still being good to people; I’m still attending church; I still have a good attitude.‘

If workers are more insecure, that’s very ‚healthy‘ for the society, because if workers are insecure, they won’t ask for wages, they won’t go on strike, they won’t call for benefits; they’ll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that’s optimal for corporations‘ economic health.

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

Where there is no opposition to evil, it multiplies.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

Songs don’t have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I’ve done is about alienation… about where you fit in society.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

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.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

I don’t think even ungodly people realize what a society would be like that had no godly influence at all.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

I believe that when you think of the negative, and you get up discouraged – ‚There’s nothing good in my future‘ – I really believe it almost ties the hands of God. God works where there’s an attitude of faith. I believe faith is all about hope.

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

When you tell a recruiter that you’re almost 300 pounds and you want to be a SEAL, it doesn’t go too well. I got hung up on a lot.

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

Any other woman who has to go to work and pick up the kids and make dinner – that’s way harder than what I have to do.

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.