Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.

To be sure, no piece of social machinery, however well constructed, can be effective unless there is back of it a will and a determination to make it work.

I fully realize that the new organization is a human rather than a perfect instrumentality for the attainment of its great objective. As time goes on it will, I am sure, be improved.

There is no greater responsibility resting upon peoples and governments everywhere than to make sure that enduring peace will this time - at long last - be established and maintained.

Within a few weeks the organization for the maintenance of international peace and security, established by the San Francisco Charter, will be formally launched through the convocation of the first General Assembly of the United Nations.

Under the ominous shadow which the second World War and its attendant circumstances have cast on the world, peace has become as essential to civilized existence as the air we breathe is to life itself.

Fortunately, the war has brought with it not alone a stark realization of what another war would mean to the world, but as well the creation of an international agency through which the nations of the world can, if they so desire, make peace a living reality.

That war has brought with it a truly incredible development of means of destruction and a terrifying prospect of rapid and almost limitless development in that direction.

Please let me assure you, however, that the keen disappointment and regret which I feel in this regard serve only to enhance my profound appreciation of the great honor which you have done me; and my sincere gratitude for your generous action.

Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river.

Triumphant science and technology are only at the threshold of man's command over sources of energy so stupendous that, if used for military purposes, they can wipe out our entire civilization.

Every good citizen should be willing to devote a brief time during some one day in the year when necessary to the making up of a listing of his income for taxes to contribute to his Government not the scriptural tithe but a small percentage of his net profits.

To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and nature, "human" might be the greater insult.

We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize and insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes.

Envy is an insult to oneself.

If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.

The vanity of men, a constant insult to women, is also the ground for the implicit feminine claim of superior sensitivity and morality.

Oppression is more easily endured than insult.

Ultimately, there is no compromise. Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, from the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people.

A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.

Ugly. Is irrelevant. It is an immeasurable insult to a woman, and then supposedly the worst crime you can commit as a woman. But ugly, as beautiful, is an illusion.

Taste every fruit of every tree in the garden at least once. It is an insult to creation not to experience it fully. Temperance is wickedness.

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.

Sometimes I think I might insult people by being openly flirtatious, then snatching it back.

There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.

If they had said my writing wasn't good enough, fair enough, that's an opinion. But to say it's too complex is to insult the intelligence of the so-called young.

Pornography is the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it.

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

I'm going to insult a whole industry here, but it seems like TV is for people who can't do film. I'm not talking about actresses; I'm talking about lighting people. Lighting on TV is just so... it's sinful, it really is.

I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.

To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.

If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.

The master class seldom lose a chance to insult a woman who has the ability for something besides service to his lordship.

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.

The bad part about being recognized is that when I walk into a restaurant and sit down, I've got to eat everything on the plate, whether it's good or bad. People would take it as an insult if I did otherwise.

But I would never insult the people that love this music and I would never insult the blessing of music in my life and I would never insult myself by playing uninspired music.

Old age is an insult. It's like being smacked.

There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.

People think that they just want movies like Pretty Woman, when really they - at least the ones that I know personally - have been waiting for something that doesn't completely insult them.

Say what you like about my bloody murderous government,' I says, 'but don't insult me poor bleedin' country.

If you can't ignore an insult, top it; if you can't top it, laugh it off; and if you can't laugh it off, it's probably deserved.

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.

An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

I elect to stay on the soil of which I was born and on the plot of ground which I have fairly bought and honestly paid for. Don't advise me to leave, and don't add insult to injury by telling me it's for my own good; of that I am to be the judge.

Millions of dollars' worth of advertising shows such little respect for the reader's intelligence that it amounts almost to outright insult.

A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.