I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. – James Madison, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours. – John F. Kennedy

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong. – Ralph Waldo Emerson