I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

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.

The trick is that as long as you know who you are and what makes you happy, it doesn't matter how others see you.

It is one thing to say that something should be done, but quite a different matter to do it.

Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superfluous gayety to the deepest, moat earnest humor.

Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike.

It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. You'd wake up in a concert and think, Wow, how did I get here?

Newt Gingrich never received more than 100,000 votes in his life. He'll never be president.

Sometimes you have to give up on people. Not because you don't care, but because they don't.

No one likes to be pitied for his faults.

The best buy by way of management is brains-at any price.