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 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.

One of the most serious problems that our country has inherited an unwillingness to talk to anyone who disagrees with us or who won't accept, before a discussion, all the premises that we demand.

Don't die without fulfilling your purpose.

Few can claim a single angel who guards them. But you can.

The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and as the magnet finds the iron so it will find in every hour some heavenly blessings!

We ought not to be looking for a place to hide, but a place to give ourselves as an offering to God.

Fashion is about having a fantasy.

When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won't intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel.

Take more chances than you dare. You'll make more sales than you expect. That's the formula.

Give me silence, water, hope Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.

Not being perfect hurts.

Look at a star in the sky not as something unreachable but as a planet you would visit one day.