“Power consists in one’s capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.”

Men are not put into this world to go the path of ease, they are put into this world to go the path of pain and struggle.

A man’s rootage is more important than his leafage.

I am the friend of peace and mean to preserve it for America so long as I am able. No course of my choosing or of their (nations at war) will lead to war. War can come only by the wilful acts and aggressions of others.

You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand

We grow by our dreams.

If you’ve made up your mind you can do something, you’re absolutely RIGHT.

It does not become America that within her borders, where every man is free to follow the dictates of his conscience, men should raise the cry of church against church. To do that is to strike at the very spirit and heart of America.

The cure for bad politics is the same as the cure for tuberculosis. It is living in the open.

You cannot tear up ancient rootages and safely plant the tree of liberty in soil that is not native to it.

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.

Today’s greatest labor-saving device is tomorrow.

To do things today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking.

We have beaten the living, but we cannot fight the dead.

This was not after all a conventional war, a struggle between equally predacious powers; it was a war to end all wars.

Understanding is the soil in which grow all the fruits of friendship.

Any situation that pushes our buttons is a situation where we don’t yet have the capacity to be unconditionally loving.

People always underestimate the ability of earth to increase its carrying capacity.

I’ve never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question.

But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love.

Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises.

Genius is the capacity of avoiding hard work.

Confidence in the human capacity for problem solving, for invention, for innovation.

Too much of the education system orients students toward becoming better thinkers, but there is almost no focus on our capacity to pay attention and cultivate awareness.