My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.

Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt.

My anger is more likely to do me more harm than your wrong.

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.

Revenge and retaliation always perpetuate the cycle of anger, fear and violence.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

Anybody can become angry—that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master.

Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.

The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understand and touch another person. When this is done, I feel contact has been made.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg crackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.

The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

If you have overcome your inclination and not been overcome by it, you have reason to rejoice.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.

God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: "This is my country."

You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

It is a socialist idea making profits is a vice. I consider the real vice is making losses.

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.

I shall work for the Republican party and call on all women to join me, precisely…for what that party has done and promises to do for women, nothing more, nothing less.

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason.

No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed, nor will we go upon him nor will we send upon him, except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Liberty only survives when it is defended.

Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.

Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Surely what a man does when he is in an uncomfortable situation is the best evidence for the sort of man he is.

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.

The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.

Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they will.

At the center of your being you are the answer. You know who you are, and you know what you want.

Either you will control your government, or government will control you.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

To change your mind and to follow him who sets you straight is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.

When one remains silent in the face of oppression, one is on the side of the oppressor.

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defence.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. . . . I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.

All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.

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.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

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.

The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

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.

The No. 1 reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors.

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

Most conversations are just alternating monologues. The question is, is there any real listening going on.

Meaningful silence is better than meaningless words.

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.

Nowadays the world is becoming increasingly materialistic, and mankind is reaching toward the very zenith of external progress, driven by an insatiable desire for power and vast possessions. Yet by this vain striving for perfection in a world where everything is relative, they wander even further away from inward peace and happiness of the mind.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

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

When civil fury first grew high, and men fell out they knew not why.

Racism must be opposed by all means that humanity has at its disposal.

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.

In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

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.

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government—lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.

The generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

The greatest evils in the world will not be carried out by men with guns, but by men in suits sitting behind desks.

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

O beautiful for spacious skies, For Amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!