He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

The United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.

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?

Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.

Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.

Freedom of information is a fundamental human right...for a nation that is afraid to let its people to judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

False leaders rarely engage succession planning for fear of no longer being seen as the leader.

To educate in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves.

I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare—I have no use for him, either.

...the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be...The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self.

The solution to adult problems tomorrow depends on large measure upon how our children grow up today.

I had long since taught myself to follow the inner voice. I delighted in submitting to it. To act against it would be difficult and painful to me.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

I have to face life with a newly found passion. I must rediscover the irresistible will to learn, to live and to love.

I kept always two books in my pocket: one to read, one to write in.

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.

Personal growth is not a matter of learning new information but of unlearning old limits.

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.

There is but one thing of real value—to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.

It's the truth I'm after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.