“I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

“When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.” 

“You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution. 

“Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.” 

“A man imagines a happy marriage as a marriage of love; even if he makes fun of marriages that are without love, or feels sorry for lovers who are without marriage.”

“It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can.”

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death.

“What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create.”

A wealth you cannot imagine flows through you. Do not consider what strangers say. Be secluded in your secret heart-house, that bowl of silence.

This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream – a dream yet unfulfilled.

 I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions.

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” 

But I believe in love, you know; love is a uniquely portable magic. I don’t think it’s in the stars, but I do believe that blood calls to blood and mind calls to mind and heart to heart.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

Imagination is the highest form of research.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

There is nothing more beautiful than seeing a person being themselves. Imagine going through your day being unapologetically you.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.

Over the centuries, people have placed a wall around mastery. They have called it genius and have thought of it as inaccessible…But that wall is imaginary. This is the real secret: the brain that we possess…was designed to lead us to mastery.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.