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.

He that blows the coals in quarrels that he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face.

If you compromise your own conscience, you will weaken your conscience. Soon your conscience will fail to guide you and you never will have real wealth based on peace of mind.

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace, and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.

Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

We have more machinery of government that is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

It was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall be given a square deal.

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?

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one is useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.

I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.

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.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within solitude of his own heart.

The overwhelming importance of the atmosphere means that there are no longer any frontiers to defend against pollution, attack, or propaganda. It means, further, that only by a deep patriotic devotion to one’s country can there be a hope of the kind of protection of the whole planet, which is necessary for the survival of the people of other countries.

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

Diversity of opinion within the framework of loyalty to our free society is not only basic to a university but to the entire nation.