The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won’t be a world – at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian – I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

We are a forward-looking people, and we must have a forward-looking government.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Well, I thought the deal was, when you went to work for the government you weren’t supposed to make money!

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.

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.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Religion, born of the earth’s need for the disclosing of a god, is related to and co-extensive with not the individual man, but the whole of mankind.

I believe in the Golden Rule – The Man with the Gold… Rules.

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

In my country we go to prison first and then become President.

I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.

A large part of mankind is angry not with the sins, but with the sinners.

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

Every sin is the result of a collaboration.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

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

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there’s no question about it.

Liberals are not always so liberal with people who disapprove – disapprove of their point of view.

Many religious confessions share common values. They teach that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

To some degree it matters who’s in office, but it matters more how much pressure they’re under from the public.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.

I think that the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin, but the Bible also teaches that pride is a sin, jealousy is a sin, and hate is a sin, evil thoughts are a sin. So I don’t think that homosexuality should be chosen as the overwhelming sin that we are doing today.

Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet – the only one in the whole Milky Way – with a century of transportation whoopee.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

I think governments can’t do much.

Every religious group, while perhaps a majority somewhere, is also inevitably a minority somewhere else. Thus, religious organizations should and do show tolerance toward members of other religious denominations.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

A very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it, too. But the government won’t allow it.

If I studied all my life, I couldn’t think up half the number of funny things passed in one session of congress.