“Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

I must have a prodigious amount of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!

I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.

Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.

Obscurity and a competence – that is the life that is best worth living.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

There’s one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him; if he says yes, you know he’s crooked.

Always good to see the city win.

I wouldn’t mind paying taxes – if I knew they were going to a friendly country.

A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.

If it had been our intention to take Iraq, if it had been our intention to destroy the country, if it had been our intention to overrun the country, we could have done it unopposed.

They turned the country up on its side, and everything loose fell into California.

I wanted Americans to understand that words matter—that the hateful language they heard coming from their TVs did not reflect the true spirit of our country and that we could vote against it.

From the time I was twelve years old until I retired last year at the age of fifty-seven, the Army was my life. I loved commanding soldiers and being around people who had made a serious commitment to serve their country.

Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion.