The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best.

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity – or it will move apart.

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

Ever since the morning of May 29, 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and I became the first climbers to step onto the summit of Mount Everest, I’ve been called a great adventurer.

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.

We need enlightenment, not just individually but collectively, to save the planet. We need to awaken ourselves. We need to practice mindfulness if we want to have a future, if we want to save ourselves and the planet.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

I really do encourage other manufacturers to bring electric cars to market. It’s a good thing, and they need to bring it to market and keep iterating and improving and make better and better electric cars, and that’s what going to result in humanity achieving a sustainable transport future. I wish it was growing faster than it is.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

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

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

The function of posterity is to look after itself.

The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.

We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.

I wanted in my lifetime to vote for a radical Native American woman, since my vision of any future that we might have is that it will be led by women and older women.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the goings-on in one’s own town.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

A piece of spaghetti or a military unit can only be led from the front end.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

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

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

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.

You know, you can only lead them from behind.

I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here.

My business is to prevent the future.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

When at last we are sure, You’ve been properly pilled, Then a few paper forms, Must be properly filled. So that you and your heirs, May be properly billed.

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them.

In every parting there is an image of death.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.

I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.