In another situation, and in an active station in life, I should have been keenly occupied, and the founding of an order would have never come into my head.
Be who you are, said the Duchess to Alice, or, if you would like it put more simply, never try to be what you might have been or could have been other than what you should have been.
A group of white South Africans recently killed a black lawyer because he was black. That was wrong. They should have killed him because he was a lawyer.
I believe that this Republic will endure for many centuries. If so there will doubtless be among its Presidents Protestants and Catholics, and very probably at some time, Jews. I have consistently tried while President to act in relation to my fellow Americans of Catholic faith as I hope that any future President who happens to be Catholic will act towards his fellow Americans of Protestant faith. Had I followed any other course I should have felt that I was unfit to represent the American people.
I can't imagine why everybody is always so keen for authors to talk about writing. I should have thought it was an author's business to write, not talk.
Now, as a nation, we don't promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That's an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.
Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly.
I have mastered the principles of several religions. They have all shocked me by the violence which I should have to do to my reason to accept the dogmas of any one of them.
Media people should have long noses like an elephant to smell out politicians, mayors, prime ministers and businessmen. We need to know the reality, the good and the bad, not just the appearance.
We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their healthcare.
The judge should not be young, he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others.