QUOTES

All books are either dreams or swords. You can cut, or you can drug, with words.

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.

Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

Books are the carriers of civilisation. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.

Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.

For years, governments have been promising more than they can deliver, and delivering more than they can afford.

Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

History is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.

If we get a government that reflects more of what this country is really about, we can turn the century and the economy around.

Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.

It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty and wealth have both failed.

It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will do when they don't have to.

Life begets life. Energy becomes energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

Only do what your heart tells you.

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. trust movement.

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

To repeat what others have said, requires education, to challenge it, requires brains.

To value his own good opinion, a child has to feel that he is a worthwhile person. He has to have confidence in himself as an individual.

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life.

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

When large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try it.

Whoever said anybody has a right to give up?

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

You are not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.