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.

Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself.

I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.

You can’t change how people treat you or what they say about you. All you can do is change how you react to it.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the induction of a new order of things.

He who blames others has a long way to go on his journey. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived.

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.

Without properly kept accounts it is impossible to maintain truth in its pristine purity.

A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad. . . Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.

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.

Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

When even one American, who has done nothing wrong, is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.

Racial discrimination is not a permissible solution... that can only weaken the principle of equality embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Equal Protection Clause.

They [the Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.

They fear love because it creates a world they can't control.

We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.

We are all one family in the world. Building a community that empowers everyone to attain their full potential through each of us respecting each other's dignity, rights and responsibilities makes thee world a better place to live.

You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible.

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

Champions take responsibility. When the ball is coming over the net, you can be sure I want the ball.