Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.

To a greater force, and to a better nature, you, free, are subject, and that creates the mind in you, which the heavens have not in their charge. Therefore if the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.

There are a thousand excuses for failure but never a good reason.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

Without properly kept accounts it is impossible to maintain truth in its pristine purity.

You can’t change how people treat you or what they say about you. All you can do is change how you react to it.

I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.

The free flow of conflicting ideas and feelings is critical for creative thinking, for discovering new solutions no one individual would have come to on his own.

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.

When elephants fight, ants get killed.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.

Howsoever you may repair it, a rift is a rift.

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

Plans will get you into things, but you have got to work your way out.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

...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 biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.

When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, butt in favors - When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you - When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - You may know that your society is doomed.

When you say 'yes' to others, make sure you are not saying 'no' to yourself.

The purpose of Propaganda is to make one set of people forget that other sets of people are human.

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

This is the thing that I was born to do.

A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.

My experience has shown me that we win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

Religion is a great force—the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get a man through his own religion and not through yours.

You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.

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.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.

I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.

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

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find a better man.

Madness does not govern a country; discussion does.

Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace, and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.

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.