In business, the earning of profit is something more than an incident of success. It is an essential condition of success. It is an essential condition of success because the continued absence of profit itself spells failure.
The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles.
If you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so much easier for you.
We gain nothing by trading the tyranny of capital for the tyranny of labor.
In a democracy, the most important office is the office of citizen.
Strong responsible unions are essential to industrial fair play. Without them the labor bargain is wholly one-sided.
At the foundation of our civil liberties lies the principle that denies to government officials an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.
The best of wages will not compensate for excessively long working hours which undermine heath.
Ways may someday be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home.
People fear witches, and burn women.
Neutrality is at times a graver sin than belligerence.
I rise early because no day is long enough for a day’s work.
If you will just start with the idea that this is a hard world, it will all be much simpler.
Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.
No system of regulation can safely be substituted for the operation of individual liberty as expressed in competition.
Nearly all legislation involves a weighing of public needs as against private desires; and likewise a weighing of relative social values.
Subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet.
Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly.
The function of the press is very high. It is almost holy. It ought to serve as a forum for the people, through which the people may know freely what is going on. To misstate or suppress the news is a breach of trust.
The goose that lays golden eggs has been considered a most valuable possession. But even more profitable is the privilege of taking the golden eggs laid by somebody else’s goose. The investment bankers and their associates now enjoy that privilege.