American Quotes

This is essentially a people's contest... whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men - to lift artificial weights from all shoulders - to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all - to afford all, an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life.

I'd rather have a German Division in front of me than a French one behind.

If we try to deny the darkness in our souls then we'll become completely dark.

Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.

Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.

Until I came to New Mexico, I never realized how much beauty water adds to a river.

Most Americans haven't had my happy experience of living for thirteen years in a seventeenth-century house, since most of America lacks seventeenth-century houses.

I am convinced that most people do not grow up ... our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.

Cricket is basically baseball on valium.

I've been around longer than most of my fans have been alive.

Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate.

At the dawn of the 21st century, where knowledge is literally power, where it unlocks the gates of opportunity and success, we all have responsibilities as parents, as librarians, as educators, as politicians, and as citizens to instill in our children a love of reading so that we can give them a chance to fulfill their dreams.

I have always disliked the fierce competitive spirit embodied in that highly intellectual game.

Continually challenge and be willing to amend your best loved ideas.

Do not fear mistakes.

Men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others.

Engineers at General Motors have developed a revolutionary new engine whose only function is to lubricate itself.

Doing the little things can make a big difference.

I follow three rules: Do the right thing, do the best you can, and always show people you care.

Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny. To a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.

The sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken.

The quality of your life is the quality of where you live emotionally

One cannot give what he does not possess. To give love you must possess love. To love others you must love yourself.

Writing should be the settlement of dew on the leaf.

If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare me a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.

Curiosity is a delicate little plant that, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom.

You must master the habit of procrastination and eliminate it from your wake-up. This habit of putting off until tomorrow that which you should have done last week or last year or a score of years ago is gnawing at the very vitals of your being and you can accomplish nothing until you throw it off.

He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

I don't even care what Bill Bryson writes about because he will make it interesting. I love "A Walk in the Woods," about the Appalachian Trail, but his most amazing book is "A Short History of Nearly Everything."

Learn to bend. It's better than breaking.

The voters selected us, in short, because they had confidence in our judgement and our ability to exercise that judgement from a position where we could determine what were their own best interest, as a part of the nation's interest.

I have always believed that a good laugh was good for both the mental and physical digestion.

Only the unprepared are overcome by pressure

The truth of the matter is one knows what it's like being the president. Not I, nor any president to come hence. This is because life, thankfully, offers deeper quandaries. While in office, I would often wake up in a daze, wondering how I could wiggle my toes without even thinking it so, or why hair grows only on certain places and not our entire bodies, or why we aren't completely bald, or why we must close our eyes and sleep every night, or any of the millions of particulars of daily existence, let alone that I was elected the leader of an entire nation.

My work is to be honest. My work is to try to think clearly, then have the courage to make sure that what I say is the truth.

Later he had seen the things that he could never think of and later still he had seen much worse.

The terrorist action of 9/11 gave birth to President Obama's entry to the White House. Not directly, but indirectly.

Most married couples, even though they love each other very much in theory, tend to view each other in practice as large teeming flaw colonies, the result of being that they get on each other's nerves and regularly erupt into vicious emotional shouting matches over such issues as toaster settings.

If all we needed were ideas and positive thinking, then we all would have had ponies when we were kids and we would all be living our "dream life" now.

Life is a kind of Chess, with struggle, competition, good and ill events.

When two people meet, as long as there is any form of rapport maintained, the person with the most certainty will eventually influence ther other person.

I'm a bad guy. But if I was a good guy, nobody would want to pay to see me fight.

He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming.

I really think I am where I am in spite of my training, not because of it. I don't know how unique my work is, because I never compare it.

Arrows of hate have been aimed at me too, but they have never hit me, because somehow they belonged to another world with which I have no connection whatsoever.

All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you believe.

You have to have courage to love somebody. Because you risk everything. Everything.

Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me, I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read.

It's so easy that when you begin you can't stop. You just go on and on doing it always.

Nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of being hanged.

Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.

Humility forms the basis of honor, just as the low ground forms the foundation of a high elevation.

I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.

Don't mistake movement for achievement. It's easy to get faked out by being busy. The question is: Busy doing what?

The globe is shrinking, the information age is bringing a lot of changes. People are anxious about their future and their children's futures.

I know and see too well, when not voluntarily blind, the speedy limits opersons called high and worthy.

One cool judgement is worth a thousand hasty councils.

Authentic freedom is actually the freedom of knowing who you are, why you are here, your purpose in life and where you are going when you leave here.

If I could have dinner with anyone who lived in history, it would depend on the restaurant.

I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak - nothing passive - nothing naïve - in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.