John McCain

I don’t mind a good fight. For reasons known only to God, I’ve had quite a few tough ones in my life. But I learned an important lesson along the way: In the end, it matters less that you can fight. What you fight for is the real test.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself, something that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone.

Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood

Every day, people serve their neighbors and our nation in many different ways, from helping a child learn and easing the loneliness of those without a family to defending our freedom overseas. It is in this spirit of dedication to others and to our country that I believe service should be broadly and deeply encouraged.

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.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by makebelieve.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.

Truth isn’t truth.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

Lying rides upon debt’s back.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal.

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth.’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth–anonymously and posthumously.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.