“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.”

There is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.

The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history.

We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.

No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise.

It is not an army that we must train for war; it is a nation.

The roll of honor consists of the names of meant who have squared their conduct by ideals of duty.

A radical is one of whom people say ”He goes too far.” A conservative, on the other hand, is one who ”doesn’t go far enough.” Then there is the reactionary, ”one who doesn’t go at all.” All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have.

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers.

If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.

When men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in the warfare.

The Bible is the one supreme source of revelation of the meaning of life, the nature of God and spiritual nature and need of men. It is the only guide of life which really leads the spirit in the way of peace and salvation.

The ordinary literary man, even though he be an eminent historian, is ill-fitted to be a mentor in affairs of government. For… things are for the most part very simple in books, and in practical life very complex.

The man who reads everything is like the man who eats everything: he can digest nothing, and the penalty of crowding one’s mind with other men’s thoughts is to have no thoughts of one’s own.

We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.

Life does not consist in thinking, it consists in acting.

The man who fights for his ideals is alive.

No man can be ideally successful until he has found his place. Like a locomotive he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else.

And it seems to me important for a country, for a nation to certainly know about its glorious achievements but also to know where its ideals failed, in order to keep that from happening again.

I’m still basically an idealist, which translates into getting real things done to make people’s lives better.

Success is achieved by people who deeply understand reality and know how to use it to get what they want. The converse is also true: idealists who are not well-grounded in reality create problems, not progress.

Well, it gives, certainly to my father, who is the one that suffered the most in our family, and understanding of how the ideals of a country are only as good as the people who give it flesh and blood.

Being a lifestyle entrepreneur is about building a business around your lifestyle rather than a lifestyle around your business. You need to figure out what your ideal lifestyle is first.

All too often, we spend our days waiting for the ideal path to appear in front of us. We forget that paths are made by walking, not waiting.