“Let us take things as we find them: let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not… We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them.”

A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.

It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.

Time hath a taming hand.

Evil has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.

Man is emphatically self-made.

Stories aren’t the beauty of what did happen. They’re the beauty of what could happen.

Sir, I wish to understand the true principles of the Government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.

I wish I could take back some of the things I said and some of the things I did. But in the bigger picture,

Hell is full of good wishes or desires.

We will continue to redefine it in any way that we wish, which is a slippery slope with a disastrous ending, as witnessed in the dramatic fall of the Roman Empire.

We came to serve God and to get rich, as all men wish to do.

I wish that I had bridged the feminist movement and the anti-war movement better than I did.

We have all the time in the world to make up our minds as to what is the wise thing to do and then we do the foolish one.

Let us all so live as we shall wish we had lived when we come to die; for that only is well, that ends well.