Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.

A winner never taught me how to quit.

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise.

It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.

If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.

I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

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.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.”

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace.

So long as you are secure you will count many friends; if your life becomes clouded you will be alone.

Life in common among people who love each other is the ideal of happiness.

Friends accept you the way you are.

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies—it is the first law of nature.

I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.

Keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.

A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country.

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.

Most people are on the world, not in it—have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.

Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you do or as fast. There is a time when you didn't know what you know today.

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

We signal that good can be achieved amongst human beings who are prepared to trust, prepared to believe in the goodness of people.

Here must all distrust be left behind; all cowardice must be ended.

Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.

Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures. In the assurance of strength, there is strength, and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their own powers.

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

He who does not trust enough, will not be trusted.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live accordingly to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.