American Quotes

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its center and ornament, and this paradise is not secure until children appear to animate and complete the picture.

Our dreams drench us in senses, and senses steps us again in dreams.

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.

First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.

Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples.

Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.

Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.

Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.

We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.

Where there is a mother in the home, matters go well.

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.

The less routine the more life.

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.

Our ideals are our better selves.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.

I can't go out with a Republican.

And so I have studied, I have to tell you, revolutions and uprisings for a long time. They are all slightly different, but what they all look for is some kind of a mechanism to go from an authoritarian system to an open, democratic system.

I think women are really good at making friends and not good at networking. Men are good at networking and not necessarily making friends. That's a gross generalization, but I think it holds in many ways.

I have said this many times, that there seems to be enough room in the world for mediocre men, but not for mediocre women, and we really have to work very, very hard.

One of the issues I kept saying to my students is you have to learn to interrupt. When you raise your hand at a meeting, by the time they get to you, the point is not germane. So the bottom line is active listening. If you are going to interrupt, you look for opportunities. You have to know what you

I have to tell you, my seven-year-old granddaughter said to my daughter, her mother, 'So what's the big deal about Grandma Maddy having been Secretary of State? Only girls are Secretaries of State.' Most of her lifetime, it's true. But at the time it really was a big deal.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You're trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren't very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all - make us laugh, think, cry and cheer - preferably in that order.

I hope I'm wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy - worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.

It's one thing to be religious, but it's another thing to make religion your policy.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what's evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We're less sure about what is good. There's sort of good, good enough, could be better - but absolute good is a little harder to define.

And frankly, I don't understand - I mean, I'm obviously a card-carrying Democrat - but I can't understand why any woman would want to vote for Mitt Romney, except maybe Mrs. Romney.