Never is it more true than in the life of the soul that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the now the primary focus of your life.

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious of the rose.

Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.

Keep your mind off the things you don’t want by keeping it on the things you do want.

Keep your attention focused entirely on what is truly your own concern, and be clear that what belongs to others is their business and none of yours.

Words are a lens to focus one's mind.

Revenge-seeking minds destroy states, while those seeking reconciliation build nations.

Paying attention to simple little things that most men neglect makes a few men rich.

Some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.

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.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

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

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.

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.

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.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly two be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

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."

Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.