When people say of their tragedies, 'I don't often think of it now,' what they mean is it has entered permanently into their thoughts, and colors everything.

I never had, or wished for, power over you. That isn't true, of course. I wanted the greatest power of all. but not advantage, or authority.

Marriage is like democracy - it doesn't really work, but it's all we've been able to come up with.

That was the trouble with experience; it taught you that most people were capable of anything, so that loyalty was never quite on firm ground -- or, rather, became a matter of pardoning offenses instead of denying their existence.

Since the moment of the United Nations' inception, untold energies have been expended by governments not only toward the exclusion of persons of principle and distinction from the organization's leading positions, but toward the installation of men whose character and affiliations would as far as possible preclude any serious challenge to governmental sovereignty.

Americans' great and secret fear is that America may turn out to be a phenomenon rather than a civilization.

The tragedy is not that love doesn't last. The tragedy is the love that lasts.