A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

But cord blood also holds the great potential of producing pleural potential cells that could cure many other diseases such as juvenile diabetes, a disease that I live with every day.

Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.

Like a great athlete, we must have a very clear vision of what we want to accomplish before we make a move. Vision, in preparation for an action, is as important as the action itself.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.

I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them.

He stood upon the world’s broad threshold; wide
The din of battle and of slaughter rose;
He saw God stand upon the weaker side,
That sank in seeming loss before its foes:
Many there were who made great haste and sold
Unto the cunning enemy their swords,
He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold,
And, underneath their soft and flowery words,
Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went
And humbly joined him to the weaker part,
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content
So he could be the nearer to God’s heart,
And feel its solemn pulses sending blood
Through all the widespread veins of endless good.

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.

It is not wealth, nor ancestry, but honorable conduct and a noble disposition that make men great.

One man may hit the mark, another blunder; but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.

It is a great mistake to think of being great without goodness; and I pronounce it as certain that there was never yet a truly great man that was not as the same time truly virtuous.

A great mind may change its objects, but it cannot relinquish them; it must have something to pursue; variety is its relaxation, and amusement its repose.

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.

Edward Gibbon, in 1788 set forth in his famous book, “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, five basic reasons why that great civilization withered and died: 1) The undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis for human society. 2) Higher and higher taxes: the spending of public money for free bread and circuses for the populace. 3) The mad craze for pleasure, with sports and plays becoming more exciting, more brutal, and more immoral. 4) The building of great armaments when the real enemy was within the decay of individual responsibility. 5) The decay of religion, whose leaders lost their touch with life, and their power to guide the people.