Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

It has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits.

History, a distillation of rumour.

Occasionally the conflict between ‚what we stand for‘ and ‚what we do‘ has been forthrightly addressed.

A mission statement is not something you write overnight… But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.

I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we – we own this country. We – we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.

Part of my ancestry is Cherokee. And in that tradition, you become an adult when you’re 52.

I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us.

I just feel that ‚The Color Purple,‘ which was my 10th book, was a true gift from my ancestors.

If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be ‚Citizens United.‘ 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’m always pushing for human responsibility. Given that chimpanzees and many other animals are sentient and sapient, then we should treat them with respect.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

My principles are more important than the money or my title.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

They’ll forget all the rubbish when I’ve gone, and they’ll remember the football. If only one person thinks I’m the best player in the world, that’s good enough for me.

I will listen to anyone’s convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.

Some mischievous people always there. Last several thousand years, always there. In future, also.

I don’t think even ungodly people realize what a society would be like that had no godly influence at all.

You’ve got to vote, vote, vote, vote. That’s it; that’s the way we move forward. That’s how we make progress for ourselves and for our country.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

I used to carry my father’s Bible and put it on the pulpit so he could preach.

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too.

I have such respect for ‚Democracy Now!‘

Morality is contraband in war.

Woz is living his own life now. He hasn’t been around Apple for about five years. But what he did will go down in history.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

If you look at the history of our country over the last 100 years, there have been periods where science and research have been celebrated. They were really kind of held up as heroes in society, which encouraged a generation of people to go into these fields.

The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.

When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

Religion, any religion, no matter what sort of wonderful religion, never be universal. So now education is universal, so we have to sort of find ways and means through education system, from kindergarten up to university level, to make awareness these good things, the values, inner values.

I play a nobody in Japan.

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

If you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.

I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.

Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?

The most talented do not always end up as celebrities, and those with less talent often do. Upsets are written into our history and occur around us every day.

A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.

Europe became rich because it exploited Africa; and the Africans know that.

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.

Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history – revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.

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.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

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