A wise man makes his own decisions. An ignorant man follows public opinion.

Unsuccessful people make decisions based on current situations. Successful people make decisions based on where they want to be.

I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you are not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do things, we can accomplish those goals.

I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

The hardest thing to explain is the glaring evident which everybody had decided not to see.

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.

Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.

Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man's mind.

What exactly is your 'fair share' of what 'someone else' has worked for?

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

The United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.

O beautiful for spacious skies, For Amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles in the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

The right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most impressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be saturated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.