John McCain

Most great leaders in history that I’ve studied always need to get as wide a range of opinions as possible so that they can have sufficient information to make the right decisions.

Demographics aren’t destiny. Our culture isn’t the work of one race or religion. To suggest otherwise is to contradict our ideals and to doubt their power.

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.

Depriving the oppressed of a beacon of hope could lose us the world we have built and thrived in. It could cost our reputation in history as the nation distinct from all others in our achievements, our identity, and our enduring influence on mankind. Our values are central to all three.

Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed.

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

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library.

The disciplined are free.

One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

Stay with me,’ he said, ‘until the sun goes out, the seas are parched, and the wind draws its last breath.

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.

It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words – 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man – the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.

The only reward of virtue is virtue the only way to have a friend is to be one.

Our humanity is a poor thing, except for the divinity that stirs within us.