The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.

A man has to learn that he cannot command things, but that he can command himself; that he cannot coerce the wills of others, but that he can mold and master his own will: and things serve him who serves Truth; people seek guidance of him who is master of himself.

We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.

If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough.

I dream, I test my dreams against my beliefs, I dare to take risks, and I execute my vision to make those dreams come true.

Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If all people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth.

If you compromise your own conscience, you will weaken your conscience. Soon your conscience will fail to guide you and you never will have real wealth based on peace of mind.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for a trickster and catch him at first attempt, but beware of an honest man.

Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves.

I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.