I learned to distinguish between the two kinds of people in the world: those who have known inescapable sorrow and those who have not.

The best government in the world, the best religion, the best traditions of any people, depend upon the good or evil of the men and women who administer them.

when the people of any country choose peace at all costs, not even generals can make war.

For our democracy has been marred by imperialism, and it has been enlightened only by individual and sporadic efforts at freedom.

Chinese were bornwith an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivete, and unless they were transplanted too young, these qualities ripened in them.... If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy.

What a man does in his own house cannot concern the nation.

An Englishman is never afraid of being laughed at. He just thinks the other fellow is a fool. But Americans still can't risk anybody laughing at them.