“How far have we come in man’s long pilgrimage from darkness toward light? Are we nearing the light—a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind? Or are the shadows of another night closing in upon us?”

Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.

Pull the string and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or timid.

Through knowledge and understanding, we will drive from the temple of freedom all those who seek to establish over us thought control, whether they be agents of a foreign state or demagogues thirsty for personal power and public notice.

In most communities it is illegal to cry fire in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?

The history of free men is never written by chance but by choice – their choice.

So the world is again faced with the problem of armed aggression. Powerful dictatorships are attacking an exposed, but free, area.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight- it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.

Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book.

Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.

Always try to associate yourself with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you.

The real frienship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darken.

Did you know that in New Orleans they still have brown bag parties? What’s that, you ask? You and I go to a party, and when we get to the door, there’s a brown bag hanging down from the ceiling, and if our skin is darker than the brown bag, we can’t go in.

Let me light my lamp , says the star, And never debate if it will help to remove the darkness

Hold your head high, stick your chest out. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes. Keep hope alive.

The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.

If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door- or i’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

Sometimes, we are stuck in the dark for so long, we sometimes forget what light looks like, what hope and love feel like.

The small wisdom is like water in a glass, clear, transparent, pure. The great wisdom is like the water in the sea: dark, mysterious, impenetrable.