People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep.
Every country is renewed out of the unknown ranks and not out of the ranks of those already famous and powerful and in control.
I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world - no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
My urgent advice to you would be, not only always to think first of America, but always, also, to think first of humanity. You do not love humanity if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and hatred. I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personal capital out of the passions of his fellowmen. He has lost touch with the ideal of America. For America was created to unit mankind.
The difference between a strong man and a weak one is that the former does not give up after a defeat.
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
All that destiny garbage. Nobody can decide what happens to you. Nobody but you.
Until every individual feels personally responsible for the careful planning and the preservation of natural resources, the inexorable destruction will go on.
Larry [Kramer] had already experienced so much loss by then from the AIDS epidemic. But I don't think it changed anything between us.
Necessity makes an honest man a knave.