“This nation has never lived without independence. We cannot and shall not live without it. Either independence or death.”

A youth with wings are the assurance of our nation’s future. We must start to work right away and make progress so that; if one day Westerners leave their footprints on the moon, we shall place a Turkish one among those.

A nation which makes the final sacrifice for life and freedom does not get beaten.

Concepts of well-being for countries, for peoples and for individuals are changing. In such a world, to argue for rules that never change would be to deny the reality found in scientific knowledge and reasoned judgment.

In order to stave off covetouness, greed, and spite, citizens world over must be educated.

Science is the only true guide in life.

No matter how rich and prosperous, a nation without independence, cannot be subject to any behaviour before the humanity, at a higher level than serving.

Peace at home, peace in the world.

Sovereignty is not given, it is taken.

Authority, without any condition and reservation, belongs to the nation.

The nation has placed its faith in the precept that all laws should be inspired by actual needs here on earth as a basic fact of national life.

In human life, you will find players of religion until the knowledge and proficiency in religion will be cleansed from all superstitions, and will be purified and perfected by the enlightenment of real science.

A nation devoid of art and artists cannot have a full existence.

Freedom and independence form my character.

A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others.

Justice is the infrastructure of proprietorship.

To write history is as important as to make history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to the maker, then it takes on a quality that will confuse humanity.

Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.

First our pleasures die – and then our hopes, and then our fears – and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust – and we die too.

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

When you’re dead, you don’t breathe, you don’t see, you don’t feel, you don’t love.

I like going to areas where the murder rate is high and dropping it.

Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, or unsheathing. The immortal part of man shakes off from itself, one after the other, its outer casings, and – as the snake from its skin, the butterfly from its chrysalis – emerges from one after another, passing into a higher state of consciousness.

Get your priorities straight. No one ever said on his death bed, ‘Gee, if I’d only spent more time at the office.’

As new chapters are born, old chapters die. Everything ceases at some point. I know it’s sad, but life goes on.