I officially designated every US ambassador on earth to be my personal human rights representative, and to have the embassy be a haven for people who suffered from abuse by their own government.

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.

Our political vagueness divides men, it does not fuse them.

Here you can easily understand the futility of ambitions and achievements, futility of success and failures, futility of wealth and possessions.

They sicken of the calm that know the storm.

Producing food to eat is the single most destructive environmental activity humans engage in.

What do you know about being sad?' 'I know you don't need a reason.

I am a Christian which means that I believe in the deity of Christ, like Tycho de Brahe, Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz, Pascal… like all great astronomers mathematicians of the past.

I'd rather be in trouble for having done something than for not having done anything.

I can't be calm when I drive through sections of Atlanta that look more like Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, than America.

Who would attempt to fly with the tiny wings of a sparrow when the mighty power of an eagle has been given him

People who matter are most aware that everyone else does too.