Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.

Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well; but their manners should be of the greatest concern.

If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.

I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.

Genius is sorrow's child.

It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors.

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

Get off your butt and join the Marines!

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.

We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

Enthusiasm... the sustaining power of all great action.

I have only ever read one book in my life, and that is White Fang. It's so frightfully good I've never bothered to read another.

What's with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast

A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you.

Once you label me you negate me.

Domination delegates the physical violence on which it rests to the dominated.