Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation - not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago.
Barack Obama

Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Abraham Lincoln

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.
Mohandas Gandhi

If I'd had some set idea of a finish line, don't you think I would have crossed it years ago?
Bill Gates

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
Warren Buffett

Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.
Walt Disney

Things that I felt absolutely sure of but a few years ago, I do not believe now. This thought makes me see more clearly how foolish it would be to expect all men to agree with me.
Jim Rohn

Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.
Erma Bombeck

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.
Henry David Thoreau

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.
George Bernard Shaw

I stopped loving my father a long time ago. What remained was the slavery to a pattern.
Anais Nin

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
Les Brown

I'm not trying to clock scores in this lifetime, it's just that things are better now than they were like five, ten years ago. Music has gotten a lot better. There's a lot of people who are committed to - soulfully.
Jerry Garcia

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I'm not a real movie star. I've still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago.
Will Rogers

There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.
Meister Eckhart

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.
H. L. Mencken

If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.
Lenny Bruce

Back 12 years ago, when Dr. Mathews was president here, we had a plan that when I got ready to quit, we'd bring a certain guy in and he'd take over that day and I'd leave. But as time wore on, I realized that wouldn't have been good at all.
Bear Bryant