“No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights.”

Commit a child to the care of a worthless, ignorant woman, and no culture in after-life will remedy the evil you have done.

Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance, and industry.

The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved.

The work of many of the greatest men, inspired by duty, has been done amidst suffering and trial and difficulty. They have struggled against the tide, and reached the shore exhausted.

Fortune has often been blamed for her blindness; but fortune is not so blind as men are. Those who look into practical life will find that fortune is usually on the side of the industrious, as the winds and waves are on the side of the best navigators.

Politeness goes far, yet costs nothing.

Obedience, submission, discipline, courage–these are among the characteristics which make a man.

Labor is still, and ever will be, the inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable.

The duty of helping one’s self in the highest sense involves the helping of one’s neighbors.

Self-respect is the noblest garment with which a man can clothe himself, the most elevating feeling with which the mind can be inspired.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy, and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness, and vice.

The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him.

Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.

Any number of depraved units cannot form a great nation.

Green’ issues at last are attracting serious attention, owing to critically important links between the environment and the economy, health, and our security.

Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.

The Communist bloc of old was a study in the failure of failure. Losers in the Soviet economy were the people at the end of the long lines for consumer goods. Worse losers were the people who had spent hours getting to the head of the line, only to be told that the goods were unavailable.

And in the United States with the squeeze on discretionary income and credit that even as the economy comes back there’s probably more of a chance than not that it’ll be a slower recovery on auto sales.

1000 percent or more of GDP, so that every economy starts to have financial systems that resemble recent cases like Switzerland, Ireland, Iceland, or Cyprus. That might be a very fragile world to live in.

It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.

Whatever you tax you get less of.

Need to consider not only the most likely future path for the economy but also the distribution of possible outcomes about that path.