Look, Americans will go for leadership that makes sense. Our job, you know, as public officials, is not to put our finger in the air. Our job is to listen, and then lead.

You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.

When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk.

Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

Change is never easy, but always possible.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that your efforts don’t matter or that your voice doesn’t count. Don’t ever believe that you can’t make a difference. You have.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.

Learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. And it's up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.

If somebody is different from you, that's not something you criticize, that's something that you appreciate.

Why should a religion claim that it is not bound to abide by the standpoint of reason! If one does not take the standard of reason, there cannot be any true judgment, even in the case of religion.

The most important things, the experiences that leave marks on our souls for everyone to see, those marks that reflect our most intense emotions in a glass pane, we will never forget.

All a man can see while looking at the sky are cosmic fossils of thousands and millions of years ago. The only thing an astrologer can predict, is the past.

The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change.

I don't know why you would trade a stud pitcher.

Think I'll win. Could be big.

Moderation cannot have the credit of combatiug and subduing ambition, they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and indolence of the soul, as ambition is its activity and ardor.

At least I have precluded the possibility of peaking too early.

A true brave man is the one who dares to work against personal-interest.

If you're trying to get someone who's sick with a fever off of a submarine and it's cold and raining outside, the only way in and out of a submarine, generally, is through a fairly narrow hatch.