The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

Bad news isn’t wine. It doesn’t improve with age.

I’m not going to get somewhere and say, ‚OK, I’m done.‘ Success is never final; I’ll just keep on going. The same way as failure never being fatal. Just keep going. I’m going to the stars and then past them.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

A man who has no office to go, to I don’t care who he is, is a trial of which you can have no conception.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‚I’m with you kid. Let’s go.‘

I’m considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I’ve never been bored in my life.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You’re trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren’t very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.

There is no education like adversity.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.

I try to make it look easy, but the behind-the-scenes stuff is the challenge.

I can’t jump the highest. I’m obviously not the biggest, not the strongest.

With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.

Sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side.

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

Sometimes you have to take two steps back to take ten forward.

I struggled with being a broke college graduate, and while all my friends were getting career jobs, I was working horrible part-time jobs. That’s why now, even when I get tired, I think, ‚This is what I asked for.‘

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

I firmly believe that unless one has tasted the bitter pill of failure, one cannot aspire enough for success.

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.

I don’t believe in the school of hard knocks, although I’ve had them. All that stuff about whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is so not true. Do you know what makes you stronger? When people treat you and your art with dignity.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.

Why is it that although it takes us years to get into our messes, we expect God to get us out of them in a few days?

When I wake up, I expect things to be good. If they’re not, then I try to set about trying to make them as good as I can ‚cause I know I’m gonna have to live that day anyway. So why not try to make the most of it if you can? Some days, they pan out a little better than others, but you still gotta always just try.

One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

It always seems impossible until it’s done.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

Jesters do often prove prophets.

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

I consider wisdom supernatural because it isn’t taught by men – it’s a gift from God.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.