An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

Genius is formed in quiet, character in the stream of human life.

Character is inured habit.

Pres. Lyndon Johnson was a middle-aged man of smalltown America, both a Westerner and a Southerner, and except where politics had demonstrably forced his growth-as on the question of civil rights-he functioned like most men, as a product of his background.

A career in flying was like climbing one of those ancient Babylonian pyramids made up of a dizzy progression of steps and ledges, a ziggurat, a pyramid extraordinarily high and steep; and the idea was to prove at every foot of the way up that pyramid that you were one of the elected and anointed ones who had the right stuff and could move higher and higher and even-ultimately, God willing, one day-that you might be able to join that special few at the very top, that elite who had the capacity to bring tears to men's eyes, the very Brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself.

Character is doing the right thing when no one is watching.

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.

Being generous is inborn; being altruistic is a learned perversity.

Happiness is not the end of life: character is.

Character is that which can do without success.