Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.

To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.

Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.

It’s good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for a while their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

In settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.

To need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.

Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.