“He did what heroes do after their work is accomplished; he died.”

“Just remember that if you’re not working at your game to the utmost of your ability, there will be someone out there somewhere with equal ability. And one day you’ll play each other, and he’ll have the advantage.”

“In some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty. ”

“I know not how to aid you, save in the assurance of one of mature age, and much severe experience, that you can not fail, if you resolutely determine, that you will not.”

“I have now learned that we do not even know what “happy” is until we forget about ourselves, start focusing on others, and become generous givers.”

“The emptiness of your pocket is not a recipe for you to discount the value of your passion!”

“Dear Habicht, / Such a solemn air of silence has descended between us that I almost feel as if I am committing a sacrilege when I break it now with some inconsequential babble... / What are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked, dried, canned piece of soul...?”

“Love yourself as you love your neighbour. If you love your neighbour with a heavy heart, love yourself too with a heavy heart.”

“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”

“Consciously a man lives on his own account in freedom of willbut he serves as an unconscious instrument in bringing about the historical ends of humanity. An act he has once committed is irrecvocable, and that act of his, coinciding in time with millions of acts of others, has an historical value... 'The hearts of kinds are in the hand of God.' The king is the slave of history... Every action that seems to them an act of their own freewill, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.”

“Dream murderers are people who refuse to learn and optimize their own dreams. They discourage others from going ahead to make it happen. Why? Because they don't want go higher and they want everyone to be like them!”

“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.”

“The respect that leadership must have requires that one’s ethics be without question. A leader not only stays above the line between right and wrong, he stays well clear of the ‘gray areas.”

“Everyone needs to be valued. Everyone needs to be appreciated. Every person needs that blessing.”

“In my considered opinion, salary is payment for goods delivered and it must conform to the law of supply and demand. If, therefore, the fixed salary is a violation of this law - as, for instance, when I see two engineers leaving college together and both equally well trained and efficient, and one getting forty thousand while the other only earns two thousand , or when lawyers and hussars, possessing no special qualifications, are appointed directors of banks with huge salaries - I can only conclude that their salaries are not fixed according to the law of supply and demand but simply by personal influence. And this is an abuse important in itself and having a deleterious effect on government service.”