At the heart of that western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man...is the touchstone of value, and all society, all groups, and states, exist for that person's benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.

There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of the comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.

It is immoral to see evil and not act on it.

I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.

Always forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

The future is not a gift: it is an achievement. Every generation helps make its own future. This is the essential challenge of the present

We can master change not though force or fear, but only though the free work of an understanding mind, though an openness to new knowledge and fresh outlooks, which can only strengthen the most fragile and most powerful of human gifts: the gift of reason.