Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn't have the power to say yes.
I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.
In our country we must trust the people to hear and see both the good and the bad and to choose the good.
There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.
I believe that all that we go through here must have some value.
If you believe that a nation is really better off which achieves for a comparative few, those who are capable of attaining it, high culture, ease, opportunity, and that these few from their enlightenment should give what they consider best to those less favored, then you naturally belong to the Republican Party. But if you believe that people must struggle slowly to the light for themselves, then it seems to me that you are a Democrat.
When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else … you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.
We must be willing to learn the lesson that cooperation may imply compromise, but if it brings a world advance it is a gain for each individual nation.
It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.
No one can move without some leadership.
Courage is exhilarating.
It has been a long fight to put the control of our economic system in the hands of the government.
Because they have so little, children must rely on imagination rather than experience.
About the only value the story of my life may have is to show that one can, even without any particular gifts, overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable if one is willing to face the fact that they must be overcome.
If you prepare yourself at every point as well as you can, with whatever means you may have, however meager they may seem, you will be able to grasp opportunity for broader experience when it appears. Without preparation you cannot do it.
Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.
practically nothing we do ever stands by itself. If it is good, it will serve some good purpose in the future. If it is evil, it may haunt us and handicap our efforts in unimagined ways.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
It is a brave thing to have courage to be an individual; it is also, perhaps, a lonely thing. But it is better than not being an individual, which is to be nobody at all.
We must want for others, not ourselves alone.
One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education... The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.
With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me 'understand' something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.
The kind of man who thinks that helping with the dishes is beneath him will also think that helping with the baby is beneath him, and then he certainly is not going to be a very successful father.
Long ago, I made up my mind that, when things were said involving only me, I would pay no attention to them, except when valid criticism was carried by which I could profit.
You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it.
Obedience may have its uses, but it is no substitute for willing, uncoerced co-operation.
One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.
The purpose of life afterall is to live it.
Some people are going to leave a mark on this world, while others will leave a stain.
To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.
A guest is really good or bad because of the host or hostess who makes being a guest an easy or a difficult task.
All human beings have failings, all human beings have needs and temptations and stresses. Men and women who live together through long years get to know one another's failings; but they also come to know what is worthy of respect and admiration in those they live with and in themselves. If at the end one can say, This man used to the limit the powers that God granted him; he was worthy of love and respect and of the sacrifices of many people, made in order that he might achieve what he deemed to be his task, then that life has been lived well and there are no regrets.
No man is defeated without until he has first been defeated within.
Terrific minds focus on tips; average minds go over activities; little minds talk about people today.
One of the blessings of age is to learn not to part on a note of sharpness, to treasure the moments spent with those we love, and to make them whenever possible good to remember, for time is short.
We must know what we think and speak out, even at the risk of unpopularity.
If human beings can be trained for cruelty and greed and a belief in power which comes through hate and fear and force, certainly we can train equally well for greatness and mercy and the power of love which comes because of the strength of the good qualities to be found in the soul of every human being.
No one from the beginning of time has had security.
You can never really live anyone else's life, not even your child's. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you've become yourself.
Mozart, who was buried in a pauper’s grave, was one of the greatest successes we know of, a man who in his early thirties had poured out his inexhaustible gift of music, leaving the world richer because he had passed that way. To leave the world richer—that is the ultimate success.
Anyone who has gone through great suffering is bound to have a greater sympathy and understanding of the problems of mankind.
Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil.
The most unhappy people in the world are those who face the days without knowing what to do with their time. But if you have more projects than you have time for, you are not going to be an unhappy person. This is as much a question of having imagination and curiosity as it is of actually making plans.
People can only make you inferior with your consent.
Nothing was ever accomplished by anyone who said 'It can't be done.'
...conservation of land and conservation of people frequently go hand in hand.
If many of our young people have lost the excitement of the early settlers, who had a country to explore and develop, it is because no one remembers to tell them that the world has never been so challenging, so exciting... Perhaps the older generation is often to blame with its cautious warning: “Take a job that will give you security, not adventure.” But I say to the young: “Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, and imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of a competence.
the term 'young adults' which is so often used today seems to me a misnomer, and one which, if taken seriously, may lead the adolescent into misunderstanding as to his nature and his role in life. 'Young" he is; 'adult' he is not.
Human resources are the most valuable assets the world has. They are all needed desperately.
Unused ability, like unused muscles, will atrophy.
The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.
Nothing we learn in this world is ever wasted.
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says: it can't be done.
When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.
It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know.
Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart.
It is today that we create the world of the future.
Nothing alive can stand still, it goes forward or back. Life is interesting only as long as it is a process of growth; or, to put it another way, we can only grow as long as we are interested.
You rarely achieve finality. If you did, life would be over, but as you strive new visions open before you, new possibilities for the satisfaction of living.
