The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

People sometimes attribute my success to my genius; all the genius I know anything about is hard work.

Give all the power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all the power to the few, they will oppress the many.

When a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense — to fight the government.

One great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are.

I think the first duty of society is justice.

There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.

Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence.

It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government.

I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.

Life, is energy. It is the energy that makes your heart beat and makes you breathe, that causes the cells of your body to automatically grow and reproduce the moment you are conceived!

There are no winners in battle. Just survivors.

One can never pay in gratitude one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life.

In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.

Time flies, though, huh? But I feel young. And do you know how I stay feeling young, ladies and gentlemen? I'll share my secret with you: I live in a senior citizen retirement community.

I think I've learned that if you want to be successful, you have to tell your story honestly and from your heart - and I think a healthy sense of humor doesn't hurt either.

God is in all things, but so far as God is Divine and so far as He is rational, God is nowhere so properly as in the soul - in the innermost of the soul

That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it.

It was a small thing, but it was a thing, and things have a way of either dying or growing, and it wasn’t dying.