Quotes to inspire and reflect

The constant free flow of communication amount us-enabling the free interchange of ideas-forms the very bloodstream of our nation. It keeps the mind and body of our democracy eternally vital, eternally young.

We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.

If you treat people right they will treat you right - ninety percent of the time.

Be sincere; be brief; be seated.

As Americans, we go forward, in the service of our country, by the will of God.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president's wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.

In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Old age has deformities enough of its own. It should never add to them the deformity of vice.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me 'understand' something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

Friendship with one’s self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.

The only advantage of not being too good a housekeeper is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.

There are practical little things in housekeeping which no man really understands.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide. We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

You can never really live anyone else's life, not even your child's. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you've become yourself.

Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.

It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second—surrender.

Radio was theater of the mind.

We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.

The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.

I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.

If more government is the answer, then it was a really stupid question.

Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

Government is not a solution to our problem government is the problem.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.

A people free to choose will always choose peace.

Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.

Freedom is not free.