I feel quite sure that what the American people lack is knowledge.

Nearly all great civilizations that perished did so because they had crystallized, because they were incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions, new methods, new points of view. It is as though people would rather die than change.

If we do not pay for children in good schools, then we are going to pay for them in prisons and mental hospitals.

You can't move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn't mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.

...so much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty, and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon society than the others.

Sailors have the cleanest bodies and the filthiest minds.

experience should teach us that it is always the unexpected that does occur.