Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?

No house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it, so hill and house could live together each the happier for the other.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism… The one absolutely certain way of brining this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

True success, true wealth, does not come out of the barrel of a gun.

If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you’re allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.

The higher you soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

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.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

A society that tolerates intimidation as a means of settling disputes…loses its moral rights to exist as a social system, and its collapse does not take long to follow.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

You cannot possibly have a broader basis for any government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.

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

Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.