“Fascism, most of the students agreed, is an extreme form of authoritarian rule. Citizens are required to do exactly what leaders say they must do, nothing more, nothing less.”

To put it mildly, the world is a mess.

I have said this many times, that there seems to be enough room in the world for mediocre men, but not for mediocre women, and we really have to work very, very hard.

I am not a fatalist. I have just been reading War and Peace and Tolstoy is such a fatalist. I think people can make a difference, I am an optimist who worries a lot.

The voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long.

Whatever the job you are asked to do at whatever level, do a good job because your reputation is your resume.

Wilson’s doctrine of self-determination gave a boost to the idea that wherever there dwelled a people, there should be a state.

I think that a president needs to have a variety of views presented. But also, there has to be a team effort, because otherwise, I think it creates a dissonance and difficulty.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

I do not believe that things happen accidentally; I believe you earn them.

To reduce the sum of our existence to a competitive struggle for advantage among more than two hundred nations is not clear-eyed but myopic. People and nations compete, but that is not all that they do.

Good guys don’t always win, especially when they are divided and less determined than their adversaries.

The main thing is to remain oneself, under any circumstances; that was and is our common purpose.

If an advertiser can use that information to home in on a consumer because of his or her individual interests, what’s to stop a Fascist government from doing the same?

Especially when we are afraid, angry, or confused, we may be tempted to give away bits of our freedom—or, less painfully, somebody else’s freedom—in the quest for direction and order.

The main thing is to remain oneself, under any circumstances; that was and is our common purpose.

A spoonful of sugar can be as helpful in dealing with foreign diplomats as it is in child psychology, for these are not unrelated fields.

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.

You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.

This Old Testament – containing error, folly, absurdity and immorality – is by English statute law declared to be of divine authority, a blasphemy – if there were anyone to be blasphemed – blacker and more insolent than any word ever written or penned by the most hotheaded Freethinker.

All my authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Each person is oriented toward a quest for his personal invisible guide, or he entrusts himself to the collective, magisterial authority as the intermediary between himself and Revelation.

Engage with the Bible. Meditate on it day and night. Think and rethink about God’s Word. Let it be your guide. Make it your go-to book for questions. Let it be the ultimate authority in your life.

There is no power or authority without responsibility, and he who accepts the one cannot escape or evade the other.

Rulers who destroy men’s freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. … They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.