You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world.

When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman.

Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.

The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar… Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.

People haven’t always been there for me, but music always has.

When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.

Acorns were good until bread was found.

Time is something that interests me a whole lot – past and present, and how the past appears as people change.

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

One lesson that every nation can learn from China is to focus more on creating village-level enterprises, quality health services and educational facilities.

But let me tell you, this gender thing is history. You’re looking at a guy who sat down with Margaret Thatcher across the table and talked about serious issues.

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

As pessimistic as I am about the nature of human beings and our capacity for atrocity and malevolence and betrayal and laziness and inertia, and all those things, I think we can transcend all that and set things straight.

With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.

We may stumble and fall but shall rise again; it should be enough if we did not run away from the battle.

My attitude has always been, if you fall flat on your face, at least you’re moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

Latin America has much richer resources. You’d expect it to be far more advanced than East Asia, but it had the disadvantage of being under imperialist wings.

When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safely through the worst.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

If you have to stand and fight, you train yourself so that you’re able to do it.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

History should be written as philosophy.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neurone disease. But it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I could still do.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

At least the Pilgrim Fathers used to shoot Indians: the Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks.

The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.

To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible. Scientifically speaking, we cannot grasp the absolute beginning of anything: everything extends backwards to be prolonged by something else.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

In fact, my courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of ‚Who do you think you are?‘

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

If you have the ability to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start over, you come out stronger because you learn from whatever mistakes you made.

America has fought five wars since 1945 and has gained its objectives in only one of them, the Gulf War.

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.

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.

The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.

I got no quarrel with them Vietcong.

The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man… It is more powerful than external circumstances.

Real firmness is good for anything; strut is good for nothing.

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.

What an ugly beast the ape, and how like us.

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.

We’ve persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people – a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

I can’t jump the highest. I’m obviously not the biggest, not the strongest.