Fools multiply when wise men are silent.

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

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.

You don't have to be big or well known to be great.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really man it.

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

Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

No matter how outrageous a lie may be, it will be accepted if stated loudly enough and often enough.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support—kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists’.

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

We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green.

Great wisdom is generous, petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech in cantankerous.

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.

Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.

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.

The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.

In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.