“The attempt to regulate, control, and prescribe all manner of conduct and social relations is very old. It was always the practice of primitive people.”

All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.

The higher state to which [America] seeks the allegiance of all mankind is not of human, but of divine origin. She cherishes no purpose save to merit the favor of Almighty God.

Four-fifths of all our troubles would disappear, if we would only sit down and keep still.

Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.

The best help that benevolence and philanthropy can give is that which induces everybody to help himself.

Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years to the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of today is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat.

Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.

Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish interest.

Anytime you don’t want anything you get it.

If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.

You can’t increase prosperity by taxing success.

School is not the end but only the beginning of an education.

Our government rests upon religion. It is from that source that we derive our reverance for truth and justice, for equality and liberty, and for the rights of mankind. Unless the people believe in these principles they cannot believe in our government.

Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control.

The welfare of the weakest and the welfare of the most powerful are inseparably bound together. The general welfare cannot be provided for in any one act, but it is well to remember that the benefit of one is the benefit of all, and the neglect of one is the neglect of all.

American ideals do not require to be changed so much as they require to be understood and applied.

The real affliction of old age is remorse.

Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future.

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know.

And she is going to dance, dance hungry, dance full, dance each cold astonishing moment, now when she is young and again when she is old.

God does not patch up the old life, or make certain repairs on the old life; He gives a new life, through the new birth.

I’ve always liked older ladies, ever since my mother would have B’nai B’rith at our house.

The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.

You will hear words old and spent and useless like costumes left over from yesterday’s parties.