A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man ... just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.

Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.

The most offensive is not their lying - one can always forgive lying - lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth - what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying.

The first nation to separate Christianity from government produced perhaps the most religious nation on earth.

You sound like a college freshman taking his first philosophy class way too seriously, but that's good.

Excellence is not an art. It is the habit of practice.

The slice of time has become enormous in importance, and its hidden meaning is now perfectly plain, though so complex that it can hardly be written down.

The things we saw happen in the last four years of the Obama administration would all, or many of them, go away under a President Gingrich. It would be a huge setback.

No greater grief than to remember days of gladness when sorrow is at hand.

Prisoners learn how to make do with less, and many of them want to take this ingenuity that they've learned to the outside ... but there's no training, nothing to prepare them for that.

All human interactions are opportunities either to learn or to teach.

Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the civil rights movement would not have been as successful as it has been.

In my early 20s, I didn't even know what the Groundlings was. I had no idea. But I know how to break down a script and work on the character.