Human Spirit Quotes

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit.

We are all capable of much more than we think we are.

Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being?

You know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.

The human spirit is nurtured by praise, as much as a seedling is nurtured by the soil, the water and the sun.

But the human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep one's spirits strong even when one's body is being tested. Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation; your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty.

Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one; it is man and not materials that counts.

The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion.

People are bigger than anything that can happen to them.

The most powerful single force in the world today is neither Communism nor Capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile -- it is man's eternal desire to be free and independent.

It's natural to sit down but the human spirit within us can make us get up.

It is not true that the heart wears out - but the body creates this illusion.

Socialists ignore the side of man that is the spirit. They can provide you shelter, fill your belly with bacon and beans, treat you when you're ill, all the things guaranteed to a prisoner or a slave. They don't understand that we also dream.

Communities should be planned with an eye to the effect on the human spirit of being continually surrounded by a maximum of beauty.

Chairman Mao once said that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. He was only partly right: power that comes from the barrel of a gun can be effective only for a short time. In the end, peoples love for truth, justice, freedom, and democracy will triumph. No matter what governments do, the human spirit will always prevail.

Brute force, no matter how strongly applied, can never subdue the basic human desire for freedom.

It is essential to understand that battles are primarily won in the hearts of men.

There is nothing impossible in all the world except that the heart of man is wanting in resolution.

Laws just or unjust may govern men's actions. Tyrannies may restrain or regulate their words. The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of time. But the soul of man thus held in trance or frozen in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

History doesn't mean dates and wars and textbooks to me; it means the unconquerable pioneer spirit of man.

Because your own strength is unequal to a task, do not assume it is beyond the powers of man.

America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.

The human spirit is more powerful than any drug - and that is what needs to be nourished: with work, play, friendship, family. These are the things that matter.

There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that once unleashed can make any vision, dream, or desire a reality.

Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success - only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, prosperous, progressive and free.

No limit, no definition, may restrict the range or depth of the human spirit's passage into its own secrets or the world's.

The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.