Political Figure Quotes

“We have come to accept bigger and bigger things as meaning greater and greater efficiency, more and more prosperity and more and more freedom. The two do not go together of necessity.”

“I found that almost everyone had something interesting to contribute to my education.”

“Franklin's illness...gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons - infinite patience and never ending persistence.”

“There is no more precious experience in life than friendship. And I am not forgetting love and marriage as I write this; the lovers, or the man and wife, who are not friends are but weakly joined together. One enlarges his circle of friends through contact with many people. One who limits those contacts narrows the circle and frequently his own point of view as well.”

“Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart.”

“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”

“Ability is not something to be saved, like money, in the hope that you can draw interest on it. The interest comes from the spending. Unused ability, like unused muscles, will atrophy. It is tragic to realize that the majority of human beings, even the so-called educated, call upon only the smallest fraction of their potential capacity. They leave many talents dormant. They fail to develop their mental qualities. They are almost unaware of the degree of energy upon which they might call to build a full and rewarding life.”

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”

“My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.”

“I feel quite sure that what the American people lack is knowledge.”

“You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.”

“All of life is a constant education.”

“A democratic form of government, a democratic way of life, presupposes free public education over a long period; it presupposes also an education for personal responsibility that too often is neglected.”

“Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.”

“Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people.”

“Once your children are grown up and have children of their own, the problems are theirs and the less the older generation interferes the better.”

“It's your life - but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. 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.”

“Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others.”

“A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.”

“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”

“I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.”

“It is our freedom to progress that makes us all want to live and to go on.”

“Feelings, too, are facts. Emotion is a fact. Human experience is a fact. It is often possible to gain more real insight into human beings and their motivation by reading great fiction than by personal acquaintance.”

“Curiosity must be kept alive.”

“Government exists for one purpose: to make things better for all people.”