Someday, the capitalist system will disappear in the United States, because no social class system has been eternal. One day, class societies will disappear.

The masculine spirit is under assault. It’s obvious.

I don’t believe in the after life, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

The press is still investing itself, it seems to me, in a sort of cynicism. It comes out better for them if they can predict hard times, bogging down, sniping, attrition.

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

Everyone got kind of crazy with me mentioning I was in love with a woman.

A revolution can be neither made nor stopped. The only thing that can be done is for one of several of its children to give it a direction by dint of victories.

I was brought up to understand Darwin’s theory of evolution. I spent hours and hours in the Natural History Museum in London looking at the descriptions of how different kinds of animals had evolved, looking at the sequence of fossil bones looking gradually more and more and more and more like the modern fossil.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

Nothing in the world is irreversible, not even capitalism.

Although the big word on the left is ‚compassion,‘ the big agenda on the left is dependency.

We live in ugly times.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side.

People look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

I don’t think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; that means insects can see the colors. That adds a question: does this aesthetic sense we have also exist in lower forms of life?

The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country – I know, because I am one of them.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

I’m always disappointed when people don’t live up to their potential. I know that a number of people look down on themselves and consequently on everybody who looks like them. But that, too, can change.

Last year we said, ‚Things can’t go on like this‘, and they didn’t, they got worse.

Trying to understand the way nature works involves a most terrible test of human reasoning ability. It involves subtle trickery, beautiful tightropes of logic on which one has to walk in order not to make a mistake in predicting what will happen. The quantum mechanical and the relativity ideas are examples of this.

Soon, I’ll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain.

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

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.

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

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

You tell me: Can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.

‚Hope and change‘ has become a cliche in our nation, and it is daunting to think that any American could hope for change from what God has blessed.

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.

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.

The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America.

A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.

Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.

In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science – really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.

A lot has happened over the years. And while this nation has been tested by war, and it’s been tested by recession and all manner of challenges – I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your president, to tell you I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before.

So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

The march of the human mind is slow.

Right after 9-11, as far as I know, one newspaper in the United States had the integrity to investigate opinion in the Muslim world: the ‚Wall Street Journal.‘

The U.S. – the idea that the U.S. has introduced and imposed principles of international law, that’s hardly even a joke. The United States has even gone so far as to veto Security Council resolutions calling on all states to observe international law. That was in the 1980s under Reagan.

All great change in America begins at the dinner table.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

The mainstream is always under attack.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

We’ve persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people – a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.

Without forgiveness, there’s no future.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

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

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.