Our task must be to free ourselves…by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.

If we are to achieve richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

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.

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.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact—it is silence which isolates.

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.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Wherever there is injustice, war, discrimination against women, gays and the disadvantaged, I did my best to show up and exert moral persuasion.

The overwhelming importance of the atmosphere means that there are no longer any frontiers to defend against pollution, attack, or propaganda. It means, further, that only by a deep patriotic devotion to one’s country can there be a hope of the kind of protection of the whole planet, which is necessary for the survival of the people of other countries.

We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

The welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

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.

I rebel; therefore I exist.

Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.”

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.

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.

The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance.

Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely enjoy exercising authority usually lose it.

Evil comes from the abuse of free will.