What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

The old-fashioned idea is that responsibility falls upon those who borrow and lend. Money was not borrowed by campesinos, assembly plant workers, or slum-dwellers. The mass of the population gained little from borrowing, indeed often suffered grievously from its effects.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.

I’d have to be superman to do some of the things I’m supposed to have done, I’ve been at six different places at six different times.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation – which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased – only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

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.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

It’s the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change – as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

Often, I can scarcely hear any one speaking to me; the tones yes, but not the actual words; yet as soon as any one shouts, it is unbearable. What will come of all this, heaven only knows!

Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.

When I started my last business, I didn’t receive a paycheck for 13 months. The average person can’t handle that pressure.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Everybody is entertained to death.

Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment you can grow more surely toward the stars.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

People like to talk about war.

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

The white man is destroying the world.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

There’s no doubt that inequality destabilizes societies. I think the social science evidence on that front is crystal clear.

Love other human beings as you would love yourself.

Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life.

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

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.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn’t know it had a name.

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

As a Christian, you forgive, and you feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and you visit the sick and comfort the lonely. If I’m a true follower of my lord and saviour Jesus Christ, I got to do the things you’re supposed to be doing.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

What you’re seeing with Occupy Wall Street and the others are people who are unhappy and they’re directing their unhappiness now toward Wall Street and toward those they think are doing too well in our society.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.

Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life.

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups. And I remain extremely concerned when I see what’s happening in our country, which is in many ways the luckiest place in the world. We don’t seem to be excited about making our country a better place for our kids.

My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, her intelligence reflected in my daughters.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

Peace begins with a smile.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

If people lose faith in their government, the result is the same whether or not the loss of confidence is justified.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri – where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.

America is just downright mean.

You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.

God is patient with us to become the God’s children he wants us to be but you really can see him weeping.