“We are not here merely to make a living. We are here to enrich the world.”

Excesses accomplish nothing. Disorder immediately defeats itself.

Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit.

Men grow by having responsibility laid upon them.

There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.

Men are not put into this world to go the path of ease, they are put into this world to go the path of pain and struggle.

A man’s rootage is more important than his leafage.

I am the friend of peace and mean to preserve it for America so long as I am able. No course of my choosing or of their (nations at war) will lead to war. War can come only by the wilful acts and aggressions of others.

You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand

We grow by our dreams.

If you’ve made up your mind you can do something, you’re absolutely RIGHT.

It does not become America that within her borders, where every man is free to follow the dictates of his conscience, men should raise the cry of church against church. To do that is to strike at the very spirit and heart of America.

The cure for bad politics is the same as the cure for tuberculosis. It is living in the open.

You cannot tear up ancient rootages and safely plant the tree of liberty in soil that is not native to it.

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.

Today’s greatest labor-saving device is tomorrow.

It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of the spider.

You don’t realize what fine fighting material there is in age. You show me any one who’s lived to over seventy and you show me a fighter – someone who’s got the will to live.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?

If there’s another world, he lives in bliss; if there is none, he made the best of this.

Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.

When I was a little kid, all I wanted to do was to escape what I thought was the country and get to a city. Probably film and television had influenced me so much, I really thought the key to happiness was living a very artificial life in a penthouse in New York with martini glasses.

I shall not live ’till I see God; and when I have seen Him, I shall never die.