You need not be proud of me.... I'm only being active till you can be again--it isn't such a great desire on my part to serve theworld and I'll fall back into habits of sloth quite easily!

We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This declaration may well become the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere. We hope its proclamation by the General Assembly will be an event comparable to the proclamation in 1789 [of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man], the adoption of the Bill of Rights by the people of the U.S., and the adoption of comparable declarations at different times in other countries.

I think it is impossible for one human being really to know another without first knowing and being at peace with himself.

All of us in this country give lip service to the ideals set forth in the Bill of Rights and emphasized by every additional amendment, and yet when war is stirring in the world, many of us are ready to curtail our civil liberties. We do not stop to think that curtailing these liberties may in the end bring us a greater danger than the danger we are trying to avert.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

The mind must be trained, rather than the memory.

those who attack always do so with greater fervor than those who defend.