I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement.

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.

Give yourself permission to dream, to choose, to decide.

Apparently officers are not ‘men’. Officers are ‘officers’.

My job is to find the politicians and the presidents and the pompous people who are telling other people how to live, powerful, visible creatures and ... go at them.

I've had a lot of movies that didn't get great numbers on test screening, but a lot of times the film was able to survive, or the studio still stayed and supported it.

Magnanimity is sufficiently defined by its name, nevertheless one can say it is the good sense of pride, the most noble way of receiving praise.

With a few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.

I've tried to take the opportunity to be as positive a person as I can be, as positive role model as I can be.

I've done an informal, anecdotal survey about marriage, and I've found no evidence that it brings happiness.

I don't fight the suburban areas or collar counties. I get along with them; they're former Chicagoans anyway.

The new soft totalitarianism that is advancing on the left wants to have a state religion. It is an atheist, nihilistic religion - but it is a religion that is obligatory for all