Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.
An honest public servant can’t become rich in politics. He can only attain greatness and satisfaction by service.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. To tell the truth, there’s hardly a difference.
Work Hard. Do your best. Keep your word. Never get too big for your britches. Trust in God. Have no fear; and Never forget a friend.
I sincerely regret the unfortunate choice of language which I used in my letter of August 29 to Congressman McDonough concerning the Marine Corps.
When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth – then all Americans are in peril.
Term limits would cure both senility and seniority- both terrible legislative diseases.
America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.
Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don’t need help. That’s all there is to it.
People write for different reasons. For me, it’s a compulsion.
You have to be on fire with the idea of words.
You need to be in the world and you need to be engaged with the world. It’s my job to collect jokes. It’s my job to collect startling images. And so when I’m out in the world, I’m at work. And I’m a professional.
As a writer, you’re sort of exploiting everybody you come into contact with.
Writing gives you the illusion that you’re in control. But it’s just that: an illusion.
When I’m writing about people I know, I’m trying to celebrate them to the best of my ability.
You need to do the best that you can do, and then you need to take the best that you can do and you need to rewrite it, and rewrite it, and rewrite it.
Most of what I know I learned by going to people’s readings and by taking part in readings.
The danger is writing something that just stops, instead of something that ends.
When the audience laughs, I make notes. And when the audience coughs, it’s like they’re throwing skulls at you. They’re telling you that if this was on the page, they would be skimming now. At the end of the night I’ll lay my story out on the hotel bed and look at my notes, and I’ll notice the flow of the laughter. I want there to be a rhythm to it. I want it to be like a roller coaster that the audience is strapped into.
Around here, however, we don’t look backward for very long. We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
Laughter is timeless, imagination has no age and dreams are forever.
Do what you do so well that they want to see it again and bring their friends.
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.
Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.
All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all the troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me. You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there.
The more you are in a state of gratitude, the more you will attract things to be grateful for.
Faith is the most important thing. If you believe in something, believe it till the end, unequivocally and without hesitation.
Never forget! You can design, create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make a dream a reality.
The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end – you don’t come to an achievement, you don’t come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.
One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.
So, while you are young you must begin to find out what is this strange thing called happiness. That is an essential part of education.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
To have intelligence there must be freedom, and you cannot be free if you are constantly being urged to become like some hero, for then the hero is important and not you.
When you are young you are curious to know all about everything, why the sun shines, what the stars are, all about the moon and the world around us; but as we grow older, knowledge becomes a mere collection of information without any feeling.
If, living in the world, you refuse to be a part of it, you will help others out of this chaos – not in the future, not tomorrow, but now.
To understand ourselves needs no authority either of yesterday or of a thousand years because we are living things, always moving, flowing, never resting.
One of the fundamental causes of the disintegration of society is copying, which is the worship of authority.
The ending is the beginning, and the beginning is the first step, and the first step is the only step.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle–the sheet anchor of American republicanism.
You think slavery is right and should be extended; while we think slavery is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.
This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.
The one victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or one drunkard on the face of God’s green earth.
All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.
Let us remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.
There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.
There is no joy other than the joy of creating. There is no man who is truly alive other than one who is creating. All others are just shadows on the earth with nothing to do with being alive. The joy of living, whether it is love or action, is the joy of creating.
No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books.
To understand everything is to hate nothing.
It is the artist’s business to create sunshine when the sun fails.
One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.
The friend who understands you, creates you.
Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.
Everyone, deep down within, carries a small cemetery of those he has loved.
Any man who is really a man must learn to be alone in the midst of others, to think alone for others, and, if necessary, against others.
Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is. The only function of a school is to make self-education easier; failing that, it does nothing.
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.
People think of education as something that they can finish.
There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don’t come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity.
It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
The day you stop learning is the day you begin decaying.
My feeling is, quite simply, that if there is a God, He has done such a bad job that he isn’t worth discussing.
