Statistics are no substitute for judgment.

Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees. And both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.

Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.

Let him who elevates himself above humanity . . . say, if he pleases, "I will never compromise"; but let no one who is not above the frailties of our common nature disdain compromise.

An oppressed people are authorized whenever they can to rise and break their fetters.

The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity.

The time will come when winter will ask what you were doing all summer.

It is better to fall short of a high mark than to reach a low one.

Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.

I cannot believe that the killing of 2,000 Englishmen at New Orleans qualifies a person for the various difficult and complicated duties of the Presidency.

I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.

...We'll exchange rings, we'll throw rice. We'll put down roots.'We don't have roots. We're network people. We have aerials.

I'm an optimist, but an optimist who carries a raincoat.

In conclusion, I invite the media to all grow a pair. And if you can't, I will lend you mine.

The surest way to get a job done is to give it to a busy man. He'll have his secretary do it.

Self-conceit is a weighty quality, and will sometimes bring down the scale when there is nothing else in it. It magnifies a fault beyond proportion, and swells every omission into an outrage.

Honesty of thought and speech and written word is a jewel, and they who curb prejudice and seek honorably to know and speak the truth are the only builders of a better life.

When you see how you react when you suffer that's when you know what you are made of.

When you read about the end of the Soviet Union, it's always about the "death of socialism." They never say "the death of democracy." But it makes about the same sense.

Iceland is fascinating; really an amazing place to visit, and great for a film to go there.