What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

Everything I do, I hope, is that I represent something, and I represent the right things to my children and give them the right sense of what they’re capable of and the world as it should be seen.

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.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.

One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

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.

When you stand for something, you’ve got to stand for it all the way, not half way.

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all time low over the world.

We have no right to express an opinion until we know all of the answers.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.

The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.

If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man’s intelligence and his comprehension… would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

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

The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

Proselytism is solemn nonsense; it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.

Suffering is the positive element in this world, indeed it is the only link between this world and the positive.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.

I just know what is right and I want to do what is right.

Men’s ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

Anywhere I go, there is always an incredible crowd that follows me. In Rome, as I land at the airport, even the men kiss me. I love Rome.

I grew up around lots of men – my father, my brothers, my uncles – so I wasn’t intimidated by them.

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

Our rights are not absolute. Our rights can be curtailed in the interest of public safety.

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

Men freely believe that which they desire.

Some men do think I’m a psycho bunny-boiler.

I don’t care about money.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

If you have a family mission statement that clarifies what your purpose is, then you use that as the criterion by which you make the decisions.

True patriotism is better than the wrong kind of piety.

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, ‚Is it safe?‘ Expediency asks the question, ‚Is it politic?‘ And Vanity comes along and asks the question, ‚Is it popular?‘ But Conscience asks the question, ‚Is it right?‘

Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do. Real brains don’t do that.

All great peoples are conservative.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Society therefore is as ancient as the world.

When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation.

It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.