The world knows that America will never start a war. This generation of Americans has had enough of war and hate… we want to build a world of peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just.

Ninety-nine percent of the men and women of the FBI… are just professionals. I don’t want Americans, if an FBI agent knocks on their door, to have to be worried about well, is he a Democrat or a Republican? He’s an FBI agent.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

The action we take and the decisions we make in this decade will have consequences far into this century. If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. That will not happen on my watch.

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.

I’m from the generation that had the boys‘ door and the girls‘ door when you went to school, and you got in big trouble if you went in the wrong one.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.

Effective action is always unjust.

I have been so great in boxing they had to create an image like Rocky, a white image on the screen, to counteract my image in the ring. America has to have its white images, no matter where it gets them. Jesus, Wonder Woman, Tarzan and Rocky.

Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?

All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

All religions try to benefit people, with the same basic message of the need for love and compassion, for justice and honesty, for contentment.

One of the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement is that when you travel through the South today, you do not feel overwhelmed by a residue of grievance and hate.

The world has not yet reached the point which, in my view, is an essential condition for the survival of our human species: access by all the peoples to the material resources of this planet.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the air will refertilize her womb. I developed a process for this purpose in 1900. It was perfected fourteen years later under the stress of war by German chemists.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

Don’t let anybody make you think God chose America as His divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.

The whole slacker generation totally didn’t apply to us musically.

If social stability goes pear-shaped, you have a choice between anarchy and dictatorship. Most people will opt for more security, even if they have to give up some personal freedom.

In time of war the laws are silent.

So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.

I just think people should invest in the world. Don’t invest in fashion, but invest in the world.

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

I will continue to believe that Israel’s security is paramount.

America is the greatest country in the world.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

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.

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.

America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people.

I think that America’s recovery of a global strategic view is an absolutely essential element of our foreign policy.

We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon – no alternative.

Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.

War settles nothing.

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president’s.

I was arrested three times and tortured once.

Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe.

Peace begins with a smile.

Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.

I would rather have peace in the world than be President.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn’t standing still.

I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

In Europe first and now in America, elected men have taken it upon themselves to indebt their people to create an atmosphere of dependency. And why? For their own selfish need to increase their own personal power.

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?