John McCain

To fear the world we have organized and led for three quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership, and our duty to remain the last, best hope of Earth, for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems, is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.

Americans Never Quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We Make History.

But we’re at a place in our political history when passing legislation through the House with bipartisan support is considered by some folks a greater evil than the problem it’s intended to solve.

I have watched men suffer the anguish of imprisonment, defy appalling human cruelty… break for a moment, then recover inhuman strength to defy their enemies once more.

It is your character, and your character alone, that will make your life happy or unhappy.

War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.

What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea, to discover a great thought – an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plough had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find a way to make the lightning carry your messages. To be the first – that is the idea.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a years.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the feature road looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting-inviting, then we need to gather our resolve and carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that one as well.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

The eye is the jewel of the body.

Love is only one of many passions.

Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have, to prove it right.

The truest end of life is to know that life never ends.