It is in your hands to create a better world for all who live in it.

It is the responsibility of leadership to work intelligently with what is given, and not to waste time fantasizing about a world of flawless people and perfect choices.

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.

You and only you are responsible for your life choices and decisions.

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.

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

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself—and be lenient to everybody else.

We all walk in the dark and each of us must learn to turn on his or her own light.

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

Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself.

Next to the assumption of power is the responsibility of relinquishing it.

I never encounter anything except my responsibility.

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?

Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it. All that is not a true change will disappear in the future society.

A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country.

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

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?

Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.

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

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.

To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.

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

No matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.