We cannot abdicate our conscience to an organization, nor to a government.

Our degeneration, when it is traced back to its origin in our view of the world really consists in the fact that true optimism has vanished unperceived from our midst.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted.

Every start on an untrodden path is a venture which only in unusual circumstances looks sensible and likely to succeed.

Who can describe the injustice and the cruelties that in the course of centuries the peoples of color of the world have suffered at the hands of Europeans?... We and our civilization are burdened, really, with a great debt. We are not free to confer benefits on these men, or not, as we please; it is our duty. Anything we give them is not benevolence but atonement.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used to failing.