Even for the world's only superpower, the ends don't always justify the means.

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.

What are the things that you can't see that are important? I would say justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, love...They're the guiding lights of a life.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

The test of a government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who must depend on it.

America has no functioning democracy at this moment.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.

I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly-line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.

The written revelation of God is in the world, but men heed it not. Instead, they look for knowledge where it is not to be found.

If I'm in the country, my big idea is to do nothing. It means talking, it means cooking with the leftovers in the fridge - l'art d'accommoder les restes - it means gardening.

Superstition is rooted in a much deeper and more sensitive layer of the psyche than skepticism.

There seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done.

I am shocked that we seemed to have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from Vietnam.

I'm not good at being static. I have to be climbing a mountain.

If bigots behave like bigots, it's not a huge surprise.

Sitcom hours are silly easy compared to drama. Whenever an actor on a sitcom complains, I feel like smacking them!

We're all swimming in this digital revolution that we live in.