If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.
Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.
The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.
If I had feelings, I probably wouldn’t have even survived.
only if we act greatly in meeting our responsibilities abroad will we remain a great nation, and only if we remain a great nation will we act greatly in meeting our challenges at home
Federal and state laws (should) be changed to no longer make it a crime to possess marijuana for private use.
When the President does it , that means that it is not illegal.
I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.
In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.
No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.
The Cold War isn’t thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn’t sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.
I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get.
I don’t know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports.
Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.
You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates.
You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I’m innocent. You’ve got to believe I’m innocent. If you don’t, take my job.
The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.
I can see clearly now… that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate.
Life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s hard to take being on the top – or on the bottom. I guess I’m something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things… Life is one crisis after another.
If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.
We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.
We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.
Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.
Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.
I played by the rules of politics as I found them.
It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.
We are not spending the Federal Government’s money, we are spending the taxpayer’s money, and it must be spent n a way which guarantees his money’s worth and yields the fullest possible benefit to the people being helped.
Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don’t want to be a colony in a nation.
Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.
Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.
In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.
Don’t get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.
What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.