The world can be at peace only if the world is stable, and there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where there is not tranquility of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of right.
No government has ever been beneficent when the attitude of government was that it was taking care of the people. The only freedom consists in the people taking care of the government.
An evident principleis the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.
A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.
A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about.
Be militant! Be an organization that is going to do things! If you can find older men who will give you countenance and acceptableleadership, follow them; but if you cannot, organize separately and dispense with them. There are only two sorts of men to be associated with when something is to be done: Those are young men and men who never grow old.
Government ought to be all outside and no inside. . . . Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety.
Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.