Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome.

Sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud; and after summer evermore succeeds barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold: so cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.

Old age is no place for sissies.

A series of failures may culminate in the best possible result.

Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.

The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.

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

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

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.

Films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.

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!

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

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

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

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.