“Knowledge has no value except that which can be gained from its application towards some worthy end.”

“My parents constantly drummed into me the importance of judging people as individuals. There was no more grievous sin at our household than a racial slur or other evidence of religious or racial intolerance. A lot of it, I think, was because my dad had learned what discrimination was like firsthand. He’d grown up in an era when some stores still had signs at their door saying, NO DOGS OR IRISHMEN ALLOWED. When my brother and I were growing up, there were still ugly tumors of racial bigotry in much of America, including the corner of Illinois where we lived. At our one local movie theater, blacks and whites had to sit apart—the blacks in the balcony. My mother and father urged my brother and me to bring home our black playmates, to consider them equals, and to respect the religious views of our friends, whatever they were. My brother’s best friend was black, and when they went to the movies, Neil sat with him in the balcony. My mother always taught us: “Treat thy neighbor as you would want your neighbor to treat you,” and “Judge everyone by how they act, not what they are.” Once my father checked into a hotel during a shoe-selling trip and a clerk told him: “You’ll like it here, Mr. Reagan, we don’t permit a Jew in the place.” My father, who told us the story later, said he looked at the clerk angrily and picked up his suitcase and left. “I’m a Catholic,” he said. “If it’s come to the point where you won’t take Jews, then some day you won’t take me either.” Because it was the only hotel in town, he spent the night in his car during a winter blizzard and I think it may have led to his first heart attack.”

“Love stories are built around people's idiosyncrasies.”

“The fact that you yearn for more doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful for what you have or that you’re greedy. It means you have a higher calling. The yearning inside calls you.”

“I have come," said a deep voice behind them. They turned and saw the Lion himself, so bright and real and strong that everything else began at once to look pale and shadowy compared with him.”

“Know your own mind and you will be as wise as the sages.”

“We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.”

“A right delayed is a right denied.”

“Let us endure these storms.”

“I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of the sea…and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.”

“Change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

“If I preached unity, I must act like a unifier, even at the risk of perhaps alienating some of my own colleagues.”

“How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!” 

“When people show you who they are ... believe them!”

“Keep your eyes and ears wide open— and your mouth closed, if you wish to acquire the habit of prompt decision.”