The absent are never without fail. Nor the present without excuse.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself.

Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves.

We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?

When you see a good man, try to emulate his example, and when you see a bad man, search yourself for his faults.

You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.

There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

...the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be...The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.

To change your mind and to follow him who sets you straight is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.

Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely enjoy exercising authority usually lose it.