If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that a system that produces beggars needs to be repaved. We are called to be the Good Samaritan, but after you lift so many people out of the ditch you start to ask, maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be repaved.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

In the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and, ultimately, destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

Even if I were certain that the world would end tomorrow, I would plant a tree this very day

Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.