“The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.”

Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure.

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.

The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.

Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.

Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.

Those which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.

Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.

In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.

In the principle of equality I very clearly discern two tendencies; one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts, the other prohibiting him from thinking at all.

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.

Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.

Slavery…dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.

As the old saw says well: every end does not appear together with its beginning.

My father had a couple of kids at the beginning of the Depression. There was not much employment. Not much welfare. People barely got by. People were tougher then.

I have been at war from the beginning. I’ve never looked back before. I’ve never had the time and it has always seemed so dangerous. To look back is to relax one’s vigil.

Just when you think you’ve achieved something, you realize you’ve achieved nothing. And still you have to go forward just the same – toward a dream so distant that your road has neither beginning nor end.

You don’t have to wait till the beginning of a new year to make resolutions for yourself. It’s all about loving and taking care of the only body you will ever have. Cherish it, love it, embrace it. Because when you do. It begins to show.

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

Let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders that were shown to me by the Lord many years before they happened, who knew everything, even before the beginning of time.

One begins to realize that one is getting old when the birthday candles weigh more than the cake.