All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
I'm just preparing my impromptu remarks.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.
Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
No crime is so great as daring to excel.
My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.
These are not dark days: these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived.
I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.
Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
I never worry about action, but only inaction.
If it weren't for painting, I wouldn't live; I couldn't bear the extra strain of things.
The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.
It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.
War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.
We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.
I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.
If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.