“I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose.”

I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans because I am by instinct a teacher, and I would like to teach them something.

I would not speak with disrespect of the Republican Party. I always speak with great respect of the past.

We are no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.

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 whole day was like that. I wish I could do it justice as I’m writing about it. I feel like I could use all of the words that I have in my head times each and never be able to tell exactly what it was like.

That’s the beauty of sampling: taking the old sound and recreating it and making something new, or bringing back the old sounds, mixed with some heavy grooves and beats, so people can remember. “Oh, I remember that, back in the day.”

Allah causes the night and the day to succeed each other. Truly, in these things is indeed a lesson for those who have insight.

Maybe one day there will finally be an education for electronic music.

Emily Dickinson provided four or more alternates for every word; Beethoven wrestled with endings to the point of exhaustion; in our day Jerome Robbins and his lack of decision are a byword in the dance profession.

Every day has been so short, every hour so fleeting, every minute so filled with the life I love that time for me has fled on too swift a wing.

Every day has its emotional difficulties. I miss my mother whether I’m singing her music or not.

I hope there are days when you fall in love with being alive.