There is no hierarchy of values any more. Real progress is due mainly to human genius, and that’s rare, and usually stems from a real elite, from a hierarchy.

In the past there were people who were not rich but contented with their living style, laughing and happy all day. But when the new rich people appear, people look at them and ask, ‚why don’t I have a life like that too, a beautiful house, car and garden,‘ and they abandon their values.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

Family home evening is more for the purpose of teaching values and gospel principles, displaying talents and enjoying different kinds of family fun and activities.

Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it’s happening.

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.

In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures.

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.

The march of the human mind is slow.

China has to go along with world trends. That’s democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.

I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone – and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

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.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

You simply have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plow right ahead.

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

But there’s so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That’s where we are. We don’t get our hair caught in it, but that’s the level of primitiveness of where we are. We’re in 1908.

The world is not flat, and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs.

We all have a tendency to avoid our weaknesses. When we do that, we never progress or get any better.

Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass; it is almost exactly 13 years since the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland and Northern Ireland voted in favour of the agreement signed on Good Friday 1998, paving the way for Northern Ireland to become the exciting and inspirational place that it is today.

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you’re going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.

I sincerely hope I can contribute to the progress there has been in relations between Jews and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council in a spirit of renewed collaboration.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

I would like to be remembered as a guy who had a set of priorities, and was willing to live by those priorities. In terms of accomplishments, my biggest accomplishment is that I kept the country safe amidst a real danger.

I believe that Catholics involved in politics carry the values of their religion within them, but have the mature awareness and expertise to implement them. The Church will never go beyond its task of expressing and disseminating its values, at least as long as I’m here.

If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.

If we could do high-speed rail in California just half a notch above what they’ve done on the Shanghai line in China, and if we had a straight path from L.A. to San Francisco, as well as the milk run, at least that would be progress.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

The Global Fund is a central player in the progress being achieved on HIV, TB and malaria. It channels resources to help countries fight these diseases. I believe in its impact because I have seen it firsthand.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.

Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment.

I can’t very well be teaching one way and living my life another way. What I do in life must be consistent with the things I say. And the same goes for you.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

The truth of Moore’s law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant.

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things, they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness.

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.

It’s life isn’t it? You plow ahead and make a hit. And you plow on and someone passes you. Then someone passes them. Time levels.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

I have a very good family. I’m very fortunate to have a very good family. I believe very strongly in the family. It’s one of the things we have in our platform, is to talk about it.

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.