Teaching is one of the noblest of professions. It requires an adequate preparation and training, patience, devotion, and a deep sense of responsibility. Those who mold the human mind have wrought not for time, but for eternity.
There is no escaping the fact that when the taxation of large incomes is excessive, they tend to disappear.
Nature is inexorable. If men do not follow the truth they cannot live.
Workmen’s compensation, hours and conditions of labor are cold consolations, if there be no employment.
All growth depends upon activity.
Our doctrine of equality and liberty and humanity comes from our belief in the brotherhood of man, through the fatherhood of God.
School is not the end but only the beginning of an education.
Don’t hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don’t hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table.
We do not need to import any foreign economic ideas or any foreign government. We had better stick to the American brand of government, the American brand of equality, and the American brand of wages. America had better stay American.
Few people are lacking in capacity, but they fail because they are lacking in application.
The best help that benevolence and philanthropy can give is that which induces everybody to help himself.
It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness.
Unless we lay our course in accordance with this principle, the great power for good in the world with which we have been intrusted by a Divine Providence will be turned to a power for evil.
Human nature provides sufficient distrust of all that is alien, so that there is no need of any artificial supply.
There is far more danger of harm than there is hope of good in any radical changes.
You have to stand every day three or four hours of visitors. Nine-tenths of them want something they ought not to have. If you keep dead-still they will run down in three or four minutes. If you even cough or smile they will start up all over again.
The property of the people belongs to the people. To take it from them by taxation cannot be justified except by urgent public necessity. Unless this principle be recognized our country is no longer secure, our people no longer free.
The only hope of a short war is to prepare for a long one.
It is not easy to conceive of anything that would be more unfortunate in a community based upon the ideals of which Americans boast than any considerable development of intolerance as regards religion.
There have been great men with little of what we call education. There have been many small men with a great deal of learning. There has never been a great people who did not possess great learning.