When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.

Some people have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them.

The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.

The cynic says, "One man can't do anything." I say, "Only one man can do anything."

All laws are an attempt to domesticate the natural ferocity of the species.

Leaders come in many forms, with many styles and diverse qualities. There are quiet leaders and leaders one can hear in the next county. Some find strength in eloquence, some in judgment, some in courage.

Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all.

Our problem is not to find better values but to be faithful to those we profess.

Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.

History never looks like history when you are living through it.

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

Some people strengthen the society just by being the kind of people they are.

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

America's greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.

One of the reasons people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.

If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.

I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder that we could have tolerated anything so primitive.

The hallmark of our age is the tension between aspirations and sluggish institutions.

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities - brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.

It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government.

True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.

For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.

The idea for which this nation stands will not survive if the highest goal free man can set themselves is an amiable mediocrity. Excellence implies striving for the highest standards in every phase of life.

The cynic says, 'One man can't do anything.' I say, 'Only one man can do anything.'

One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline like learning Latin. But the good parts are of course simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer but when Hes good nobody can touch Him.

We get richer and richer in filthier and filthier communities until we reach a final state of affluent misery crocus on a garbage heap.

If you have some respect for people as they are you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.

When hiring key employees there are only two qualities to look for judgement and taste. Almost everything else can be bought by the yard.

We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference to standards.

To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning.

All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.

For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That's why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

This is how psychiatry has functioned-as a kind of property arm of the government, who can put you away if your husband doesn't like you.

I don't like government, it's just that simple.

And while the U.S. can never be 100 percent safe from a future strike, our government is working around the clock on measures to protect the American people.

It was also during my tenure of office that the Japanese Government agreed to the conclusion of a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and signed it, pursuing a policy in harmony with the avowed desire of the people.

You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.

It was an idea we had when Al was in the Senate - to organize and moderate an annual conference that would look at government policy through the lens of the family to help identify ways that the family can be supported and strengthened.

What the F.D.I.C. does is to put the full faith and credit of the United States government behind every savings account in the nation, up to a limit that has changed over the years and stands now at $100,000.

All that a good government aims at... is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.

Neither these statesmen nor their constituents sought in any way to use the Government for the interest of themselves or their section, or for the injury of a single member of the Confederacy.

The government must do all it can to help reduce interest rates for business.

The time has come for the American government to recognize the damage that has occurred to our economy, and to take firm action to curtail what I believe is both unfair and illegal foreign competition.