“The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.”

Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that in the Lord’s Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.

The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them.

The man who has no vision will undertake no great enterprise.

To conquer with arms is to make only a temporary conquest; to conquer the world by earning its esteem is to make a permanent conquest.

No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States.

“Genius is divine perseverance.” Divine patience I believe he originally used, perseverance is better in my opinion. Genius I cannot claim nor even extra brightness but perseverance all can have.

We are intensely proud of their noble record and are glad to have had the whole world see how irresistible they are in their might when a cause which America holds dear is at stake. The whole nation has reason to be proud of them.

One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.

Hunger does not breed reform; it breeds madness and all the distemper’s that make an ordered life impossible.

What every man seeks is satisfaction. He deceives himself so long as he imagines it to lie in self-indulgence.

Benevolence does not consist in those who are prosperous pitying and helping those who are not. It consists in fellow feeling that puts you upon actually the same level with the fellow who suffers.

No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know

A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about.

The use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.

It is the object of learning, not only to satisfy the curiosity and perfect the spirits of ordinary men, but also to advance civilization.

The truth is we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless.

By the force of our demands, our determination, and our numbers, we shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them together in the image of God and democracy

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world : My own Government, I can not be Silent.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Voting is an integral part of our democracy.

All people are born alike except Republicans and Democrats.

Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.