The test of a government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who must depend on it.

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.

What are the things that you can't see that are important? I would say justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, love...They're the guiding lights of a life.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

America has no functioning democracy at this moment.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.

One of the most serious problems that our country has inherited an unwillingness to talk to anyone who disagrees with us or who won't accept, before a discussion, all the premises that we demand.

God could learn a little about love and morality from us. If there’s anyone who needs redemption, it’s God.

Weather out the storm in the island of tranquility to find inner peace.

As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding.

I couldn't commit suicide if my life depended on it.

What I'm trying to do is immerse myself.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Many a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of Misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on.

I've actually rented Bjork's swan dress. I know that's kind of recycling, but I saw An Inconvenient Truth.

He offered to stop the tide for me once. He offered to build me a palace at the bottom of the sea.

The trouble with life was that you didn’t get a chance to practice before doing it for real.