The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.

Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

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

Right now it’s only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.

Our diplomacy and development budget is not just about reducing spending and finding efficiencies. We need a frank conversation about what we stand for as that ‚shining city on a hill.‘ And that conversation begins by acknowledging that we can’t do it on the cheap.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look – for dizzier heights.

I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to.

The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

Power is the measure of the degree of control you have over circumstances in your life and the actions of the people around you. It is a skill that is developed by a deep understanding of human nature, of what truly motivates people, and of the manipulations necessary for advancement and protection.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

The Medici created and destroyed me.

Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.

America is not nearly done. We’re only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows… what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants – if they survive that long – will see.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

Revolutions go not backward.

This President is going to lead us out of this recovery.

It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.

Electricity is really just organized lightning.

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

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

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

The day will come – and it is not far off – when the legacy of Lincoln will finally be fulfilled at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when a black man or woman will sit in the Oval Office. When that day comes, the most remarkable thing about it will be how naturally it occurs.

Today we say that the law of relativity is supposed to be true at all energies, but someday somebody may come along and say how stupid we were.

We don’t mature momentarily, but over the long-term.

The over-all point is that new technology will not necessarily replace old technology, but it will date it. By definition. Eventually, it will replace it. But it’s like people who had black-and-white TVs when color came out. They eventually decided whether or not the new technology was worth the investment.

If you’re teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.

What medicines do not heal, the lance will; what the lance does not heal, fire will.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance – the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do. And I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things over the years.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole.

As scientists, we step on the shoulders of science, building on the work that has come before us – aiming to inspire a new generation of young scientists to continue once we are gone.

A lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren’t dependent on Washington doing something different.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

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.

Men are what their mothers made them.

The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.

The best road to progress is freedom’s road.

I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.

Newspaper readership is still growing in India.