Government is merely an attempt to express the conscience of everybody, the average conscience of the nation, in the rules that everybody is commanded to obey. That is all it is.
Politics is a war of causes; a joust of principles.
There is no indispensable man.
There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.
America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand.
Every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live.
Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at.
Government, in it’s last analysis, is organized force.
The commands of democracy are as imperative as its privileges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon us.
A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. And the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.
We are in the presence of a new organization of society. Our life has broken away from the past.
From the dim morning hours of history when the father was king and priest down to this modern time of history’s high noon when nations stand forth full grown and self-governed, the law of coherence and continuity in political development has suffered no serious breach.
America is the only idealistic nation in the world.
A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.
There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.
Neutrality is a negative word. It does not express what America ought to feel. We are not trying to keep out of trouble; we are trying to preserve the foundations on which peace may be rebuilt.
As compared with the college politician, the real article seems like an amateur.
It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.
Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide.
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.