O. Henry Quotes

I am suspicious without a motive, and jealous without love; although I feel I ought to love since I desire to be loved.

The object of Literature is to instruct, to animate, or to amuse.

Mathematicians do not write for the circulating library.

In all sincere speech there is power, not necessarily great power, but as much as the speaker is capable of.

Shakespeare is a good raft whereon to float securely down the stream of time; fasten yourself to that and your immortality is safe.

The history of the race is but that of the individual "writ large".

It is always understood as an expression of condemnation when anything in Literature or Art is said to be done for effect; and yet to produce an effect is the aim and end of both.

There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification.

Ideas are forces; our acceptance of one determines our reception of others.

There are many justifications of silence; there can be none of insincerity.

A man must be himself convinced if he is to convince others. The prophet must be his own disciple, or he will make none. Enthusiasm is contagious: belief creates belief.

Pliny... makes the statement, and for untrustworthiness of statement he cannot easily be surpassed.

Private Perkins is a funny little codger.

An Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition.

There is no realism without an element of idealism.

The issues are too important to be left for the voters.

Every success is usually an admission ticket to a new set of decisions.

It is barely conceivable that there are people who like war.

It is not often that nations learn from the past,even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it.

Countries do not assume burdens because it is fair, only because it is necessary.

Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.

Committees are consumers and sometimes sterilizers of ideas, rarely creators of them.

University politics make me long for the simplicity of the Middle East.

90% of politicians give the other 10% a bad name.

I believe it is a mistake to isolate arms control from other areas of policy.

The British capitalize on their accent when they don't want you to know what they're saying. But if you wake them up at 4 A.M., they speak perfect English, the same as we do.

This is awful. Do it again.

John Paul II was one of the greatest men of the last century. Perhaps the greatest.

Over time even two armed blind men in a room can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.

The nuclear weapons were not useful for the achievement of political objectives.

Well, the capacity of French intellectuals to understand a Texan way of thinking is finite.

I believe in freedom of expression, and I believe that societies thrive when they permit freedom of expression.

I want to thank you for stopping the applause. It is impossible for me to look humble for any period of time.

A little uncertainty is good for everyone.

The convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office.

I don't think we should pay people to fight terrorism. I would be amazed if they asked for anything in return.

I think Vladimir Putin will give up power.

I have learned, as I wrote, that history must be discovered, not declared. It's an admission that one grows in life.

I do not criticize people who take a public stand on human rights issues. I express my respect for them. But some people are more influential without a public confrontation.

History is the memory of States.

Certainly not a party of the workers and the peasants. In fact, Jiang Zemin in recent weeks has officially said that capitalists and the entrepreneurs should be enrolled in the Communist Party.

I don't consider China a communist state, no. I know that sounds paradoxical, but it's my view.

The Russian empire under czars and commissars has been hard to deal with for other countries.

In my view, there's no doubt that the Soviets had infinitely greater trouble holding their structure together than we did.

I wouldn't say it's a split. It's a difference of emphasis. It does exist between, I would say, the State Department and the Defense Department.

One has to remember that every progress that has been made towards peace in the Middle East has come under American leadership.

I have always expressed respect for those people who make public declarations.

Withdrawal of US troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public: The more US troops come home, the more will be demanded.

It is steady, reliable, tough. It never yields to panic. It is never defeated one-sidedly. It achieves everything attainable by character and tenacity.

Left to its own devices, the State Department machinery tends toward inertia rather than creativity; it is always on the verge of turning itself into an enormous cable machine.