It is liberalism, whether people like it or not, which has animated all the years of my life. What on Earth did conservatism ever accomplish for our country?

The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.

When we become a really mature, grown-up, wise society, we will put teachers at the center of the community, where they belong. We don't honor them enough, we don't pay them enough.

It was cold out there, bitter, biting, cutting, piercing, hyperborean, marmoreal cold, and there were all these Minnesotans running around outdoors, happy as lambs in the spring.

Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.

...Pomeranians speak only to Poodles and Poodles speak only to God.

It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals.

There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority.

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.

The sparrows are preparing for winter, each one dressed in a plain brown coat and singing a cheerful song.

When you take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.

Such beautiful strength lives in uncompromising humility.

Forgive and be happy.

Shirtless, they’d stretch out in the long grass and take the healing brunt of a noontime sun that gave no clue of the thunderheads it already, in secret, had begun to breed.

Homer is new this morning, and perhaps nothing is as old as today's newspaper.

It is almost always wrong that the time isn't ripe to decide something. That is always said of difficult problems.

To yield readily--easily--to the persuasion of a friend is no merit.... To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.

I want to start by saying something nice about President Bush. Of all the presidents we've had with the last name of Bush, his economic plan ranks in the top two.

Why didn’t you talk about whether women are funny or not? I just felt that by commenting on that in any real way, it would be tacit approval of it as a legitimate debate, which it isn’t.

Everything is governed by one law. A human being is a microcosmos, i.e. the laws prevailing in the cosmos also operate in the minutest space of the human being.