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Favorite Quotes

There are a lot of great quotes out there — far too many to try to list. Every now and then, however, I come across one that especially sticks out. One that makes an more than average impression on me — on topics from politics, to love, to race, to daily ups and downs, and more. Below I have included a sample of those quotes. Enjoy!

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
– Jack Canfield

Darkness cloaks the earth
and she once again fades from view.
I drown these empty hours without her in sleep.
I long for the first rays of sunlight
to reveal her to me.
The fresh, virgin morning moves me from my
solitary slumber
and I detect her presence.
My eyes cannot adjust quickly enough
for I crave her incessantly.
Her beauty, inviting and wild drives my spirit
and embraces my very soul.
Her daily rendezvous invites feelings
of such splendid security.
For she is part of me
and I of her.
My undying love for her grows daily,
as does my respect.
For with each day I find something succinctly new
within her that touches me — Gifts from God.
I therefore willingly surrender my consciousness
to discovering and savoring her miraculous
complexities.
– Richard Driver, “Love Poem”

“Finish everyday and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a sprit to be encumbered with your old nonsense”.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We have two or three great moving experiences in our lives- experiences so great and moving that it doesn’t seem at the time that anyone else has been caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“It is the things we think we know — because they are so elementary or because they surround us — that often present the greatest difficulties when we are actually challenged to explain them.”
– Stephen Jay Gould

“There is no better education than your own failures, if you’ve the eyes to see. We must have the courage to fail. It’s evidence that we’re risking to be our best.”
– Tim Hansel

“Race has no place in American life or law.”
– John F. Kennedy

“Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.”
– John F. Kennedy

“A liberal is one who says that it’s all right for an eighteen year-old girl to perform in a pornographic movie as long as she gets paid the minimum wage.”
– Irving Kristol, “Two Cheers for Capitalism”

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“It’s better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and resolve all doubt.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“The great silent majority”
– Richard M. Nixon

“The Soviet Union began by banishing God. The United States began as a community of people who wanted to worship God as they chose. . . Man does not live by bread alone. Those in the United States whose desire to create a strictly secular society is as strong as Lenin’s was should study this Cold War lesson closely. Communism was defeated by an alliance spearheaded by ‘one nation under God.'”
– Richard M. Nixon

“With all our differences, whenever we are confronted with a threat to our security we are not then Republicans or Democrats but Americans; we are not then the fifty states but the United States.”
– Richard M. Nixon

“It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.”
– George Washington

“[G]overnment’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
– Ronald Reagan, remarks to the White House Conference on Small Business, August 15, 1986

“…under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution’s focus upon the individual… To pursue the concept of racial entitlement — even for the most admirable and benign of purposes — is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.”
– Justice Antonin Scalia in his concurring opinion on Adarand v. Pena

“If people in the South insisted on living by crazy rules, then I would play the hand dealt me for now. If I was going to be confined to one end of the playing field, then I was going to be a star on that part of the field. I was not going to let myself become emotionally crippled because I could not play on the whole field. I was not going to allow someone else’s feelings about me to become my feelings about myself. I occasionally felt hurt; I felt anger; but most of all I felt challenged. I’ll show you!”
– Colin Powell from “My American Dream” on racism.

“My obligation is to do the right thing. The rest is in God’s hands.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom; socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville

“A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.”
– Unknown

“I sacrificed no principle to gain this office and I shall sacrifice no principle to keep it.”
– Unknown: from a plaque that hung in Gerald Mann’s (Former TX Atty. General) office in the late 1930’s.

“Why do English Literature specialists try to analyze every written work? I wish they could accept the fact that imagination doesn’t always have meaning.”
– Unknown

“Given a choice of the truth and a lie, I’ll take the truth; it hurts more, but it’s the only one worth hearing.”
– Unknown

“It’s better to be hated for who you are, than loved for what your not.”
– Unknown

“Enlighten and strengthen my will, God, so that by freely choosing to walk in Your way I can make this a better world.”
– Unknown

“You fail 100% of the times you never tried.”
– Unknown

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
– The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

“I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American.”
– Daniel Webster

“The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena,. . . .who, at the worst, if they fail, fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. ”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves. ”
– Wilhelm Von Humbolt

“The future has several names. For the weak, it is the impossible. For the fainthearted it is the unknown. For the thoughtful and valiant it is the ideal.”
– Victor Hugo

“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
– Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

“The only important decision we have to make is to live with God; He will make all the rest.”
– Psalm 84:11

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
– P.J. O’Rourke

“Character is so largely affected by associations that we cannot afford to be indifferent as to who and what our friends are.”
– M. Hulburd

“There is a loftier ambition that merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.”
– Henry Van Dyke

“Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it.”
– W. Feather

“The most wasted of all our days are those in which we have not laughed.”
– Sebastian Chamfort

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
– Winston Churchill

“Men are born with two eyes but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.”
– Charles Caleb Colton

“True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.”
– Charles Caleb Colton

“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
– Stephen Covey

“All of us necessarily hold many casual opinions that are ludicrously wrong simply because life is far too short for us to think through even a small fraction of the topics that we come across.”
– Julian Simon

“The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.”
– Booker T. Washington

“My father always used to say that when you die, if you’ve got five real friends, then you’ve had a great life.”
– Lee Iacocca

“There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.”
– Henry Van Dyke

“The basis of our Bill of Rights comes form the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don’t think we emphasize that enough these days. If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with… a government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State!”
– Harry Truman

“Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body by ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature… if the next centennial does not find us a great nation… it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”
– Harry Truman

“But for [the Bible] we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare… are to be found portrayed in it.”
– James Garfield

“Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.”
– Henry Ford

“Every piece of work in the shops moves. Save 10 steps a day for each of the 12,000 employees, and you will have saved 50 miles of wasted motion and misspent energy.”
– Henry Ford

“Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.”
– Henry Ford

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
– Henry Ford

“It doesn’t matter how often you get knocked down; what matters is how often you get back up.”
– Vince Lombardi

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”
– Vince Lombardi