There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

Beauty and folly are old companions.

It’s easier to aim to please and say what others want to hear than to form an opinion and fight for it, even if it means taking a risk or losing your job.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot – and it’s only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.

To compromise simply means that you go a tiny bit below what you know is right.

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

The only answer to fear is faith in God, knowing He loves you unconditionally and individually.

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

If it wasn’t for the fun and money, I really don’t know why I’d bother.

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

I’m afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn’t fit that will become unnecessary.

Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.

You do the policy, I’ll do the politics.

A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

He who has faith has… an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well – even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.

I’m not frightened of appearing vulnerable.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.

Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, ‚I forgive. I’m finished with it.‘

Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.

No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone’s imagination.

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

The advice I’ve been giving to people all my life – that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can’t give up politics, it won’t give you up – was the advice I should have been taking myself.

A director makes 100 decisions an hour. Students ask me how you know how to make the right decision, and I say to them, ‚If you don’t know how to make the right decision, you’re not a director.‘

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts; in a uniform manner.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.

Nixon represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.