The cynic says, "One man can't do anything". I say, "Only one man can do anything."

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all.

The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his education.

Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.

Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.

True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.

Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.

History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.

If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.

Creativity requires the freedom to consider unthinkable alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices.

To waste time is to lose life

Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled.

A quote is not a conversation, but an invitation to change your perspective.

I don't think it does the audience any good to know what I do to prepare. It keeps it more of a surprise. I don't feel like it has to be a mystery.

When desire dies, fear is born.

I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are part and parcel an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world.

Abel has left mathematicians something to keep them busy for five hundred years.

Beauty alters the grain of reality.

And I like pygmy goats, because they're just lovely, and ducks.

The best way to live is to live like there is no tomorrow.