I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.
Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.
Your enlightenment depends on the company you keep. You do not know the world until you know the men who have possessed it and tried its wares before you were ever given your brief run upon it.
I have rather a strange objection to talking from the back platform of a train.... It changes too often. It moves around and shifts its ground too often. I like a platform that stays put.
Our civilization cannot survive materially unless it is redeemed spiritually. It can be saved only by becoming permeated with the Spirit of Christ, and being made free and happy by practices which spring out of that spirit. Only thus can discontent be driven out and all shadows lifted from the road ahead.
The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.
[We are] no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.
The soul of me is very selfish. I have gone my way after a fashion that made me the center of the plan. And you who are so individual, who are so independent a spirit, whose soul is also a kingdom, have been so loyal, so forgiving, so self-sacrificing in your willingness to live my life. Nothing but love cold have accomplished so wonderful a thing.
They [the children] live in a world of delightful imagination; they pursue persons and objects that never existed; they make an Argosy laden with gold out of a floating butterfly,--and these stupid [grown-up people] try to translate these things into uninteresting facts.
The trouble with the theory [of limited and divided government] is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. This is where the living and breathing constitution comes from. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life.