In the increasingly convincing darkness the words become palpable, like a fruit that is too beautiful to eat.

Charity ... is the opium of the privileged.

The traditional ways were wrongly disowned by Christianity - in hindsight, medicine men were not demons but very important counsellors in the community.

There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.

Get off your butt and join the Marines!

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

They have formed their own 4-H club - the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.

A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat.

Thought is free.

Work is the rent you pay for the room you occupy on earth.

You always admire what you really don't understand.

You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

The more intense the nature of a man, the more readily will he find meditation, and the more successfully will he practice it.

Some newspapers are fit only to line the bottom of bird cages.

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

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.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands

I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.