Liberty does not consist in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action.
Liberty cannot live apart from constitutional.
The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.
Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now.
I want the people to love me, but I suppose they never will.
There is something better, if possible, that a man can give than his life. That is his living spirit to a service that is not easy, to resist counsels that are hard to resist, to stand against purposes that are difficult to stand against.
To be free is not necessarily to be wise. Wisdom comes with counsel, with the frank and free conference of untrammeled men united in the common interest.
Princeton is no longer a thing for Princeton men to please themselves with. Princeton is a thing with which Princeton men must satisfy the country.
There’s not an idea in our heads that has not been worn shiny by someone else’s brains.
The law that will work is merely the summing up in legislative form of the moral judgment that the community has already reached.
The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation – until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.
Politics is a war of causes; a joust of principles. Government is too serious a matter to admit of meaningless courtesies.
Energy in a nation is like sap in a tree; it rises from bottom up.
Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people.
I firmly believe in Divine Providence. Without belief in Providence I think I should go crazy. Without God the world would be a maze without a clue.
To conquer with arms is to make only a temporary conquest; to conquer the world by earning its esteem is to make a permanent conquest.
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.
The firm basis of government is justice, not pity.
You cannot tear up ancient rootages and safely plant the tree of liberty in soil that is not native to it.
The profession I chose was politics; the profession I entered was law. I entered the one because I thought it would lead to the other.