Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

The Churches must learn humility as well as teach it.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.