There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right and not to fear to do or say what you believe to be right. That is the only way to deserve and to win the confidence of our great people in these days of trouble.
I do not need to know all things. I remind myself that it is sufficient that I know what I know and know that without believing that I will always know what I know or that what I know will always be true.
I have concluded through careful empirical analysis and much thought that somebody is looking out for me, keeping track of what I think about things, forgiving me when I do less than I ought. Giving me strength to shoot for more than I think I’m capable of. I believe they know everything that I do and think, and they still love me, and I’ve concluded, after careful consideration, that this person keeping score is me.
While I am a convinced pacifist there are circumstances in which I believe the use of force is appropriate - namely, in the face of an enemy unconditionally bent on destroying me and my people.
I don't believe any more in democracy. But I can't believe in the old sort of aristocracy, either, nor can I wish it back, splendid as it was. What I believe in is the old Homeric aristocracy, when the grandeur was inside a man, and he lived in a simple wooden house.
Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.
Such professions as the soldier and the lawyer ... give ample opportunity for crimes but not much for mere illusions. ... If you have lost a battle you cannot believe you have won it; if your client is hanged you cannot pretend that you have gotten him off.
If you set to work to believe everything, you will tire out the believing-muscles of your mind, and then you'll be so weak you won't be able to believe the simplest true things.
I believe we can seize this future together, because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. [...] We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions. [...] We are and forever will be the United States of America. [...] We will continue our journey forward and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.
Men seldom persevere in a vocation unless they believe or can convince themselves that it is fundamentally more important than anyother calling. Women are the same with their lovers.
It sometimes happened that you might be familiar with a man for several years thinking he was a wild animal, and you would regard him with contempt. And then suddenly a moment would arrive when some uncontrollable impulse would lay his soul bare, and you would behold in it such riches, such sensitivity and warmth, such a vivid awareness of its own suffering and the suffering of others, that the scales would fall from your eyes and at first you would hardly be able to believe what you had seen and heard. The reverse also happens.
It is rare to find a man who believes in his own thoughts or speaks that which he is created to say. As nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing, so nothing is more rare in any man than an act of his own...feel yourself, and be not daunted by things...The light by which we see this world comes out from the soul of the observer.