The most important thing we do is not doing.

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

The most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen.

Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.

Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

The only title in our democracy superior to that of President is the title of citizen.

If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.

I may be helping to bring harmony between people through my music.

There's a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milkshake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner.

With each experience of the unbounded ocean of consciousness, you infuse it into your life and therefore expand whatever consciousness you had to begin with.

I might dream, but I am no dreamer.

If necessity is the mother of invention, conflict is its father.

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.

It is never smart, even in a strong democracy, to declare some debate off limits. In a weakening democracy it is catastrophic.

Nothing costs so little, goes so far, and accomplishes so much as a single act of merciful service.

The act of multitrack recording is the act of arranging.

We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Time will not wait.