I am a 21st century man. I don’t believe in magic. I believe in sweat, tears, life and death.
We draw our Presidents from the people. It is a wholesome thing for them to return to the people. I came from them. I wish to be one of them again.
Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.
When people are bewildered they tend to become credulous.
There is no force so democratic as the force of an ideal.
I cannot think of anything characteristically American that was not produced by toil. I cannot think of any American man or woman preeminent in the history of our nation who did not reach their place through toil. I cannot think of anything that represents the American people as a whole so adequately as honest work.
A display of reason rather than a threat of force should be the determining factor in the intercourse among nations.
Woe to the man who offends a small child!
Meanness inherits a set of silverware and keeps it in the bank. Economy uses it only on important occasions, for fear of loss. Thrift sets the table with it every night for pure pleasure, but counts the butter spreaders before they are put away.
A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy.
As I've grown older, the simple pleasure of sitting on the couch with someone you love and watching a documentary is about as good as it gets for me.