War and good health are incompatible. There's no way we can go [eradicate diseases] into an area that is at war.

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.

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.

Even when we seek advice from others, deep inside we wish the advice given to us is the one we are secretly already wishing for in our hearts.

Great things seem complex and cause the nations to rush towards the minor things that seem easy to reach, hence, they perish. And again my memory echoes…my people die for lack of knowledge.

A father's aim is to raise children who themselves raise good citizens.

We need images and myths through which we can see who we are and what we might become.

Except if it has some historical meaning for them to have Tibet under their control. I don't understand why [ Chinese] want it so much.

It's by your own actions you're able to get more in a mess or out of one. It's your own actions that relieve or bind you.

If you want to know what's important to a culture, learn their language.

The president appoints the judges. Your lives and your children's lives can change by all of these appellate court judges who will be appointed who will reinterpret laws, and things can change.

A King should sacrifice the best affections of his heart for the good of his country; no sacrifice should be above his determination.

He may as well not thank at all, who thanks when none are by.