It recognizes no morality but a sham morality meant for deceit, no honor even among thieves and of a thievish sort, no force but physical force, no intellectual power but cunning, no disgrace but failure, no crime but stupidity.
Some Americans need hyphens in their names because only part of them has come over.
We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists – believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic.
That is Gladstone, the greatest statesman that ever lived. I intend to be a statesman, too.
It is the object of learning, not only to satisfy the curiosity and perfect the spirits of ordinary men, but also to advance civilization.
There will be no greater burden on our generation than to organize the forces of liberty in our time in order to make our quest ofa new freedom for America.
Sciencehas won for us a great liberty in the physical world, a liberty from superstitious fear and from disease, a freedom touse nature as a familiar servant; but it has not freed us from ourselves.
Not all change is progress.
I am not one of those who have the least anxiety about the triumph of the principles I have stood for. I have seen fools resist Providence before, and I have seen their destruction, as will come upon these again, utter destruction and contempt. That we shall prevail is as sure as that God reigns.
Such a mind we must desire to see in a woman, – a mind that stirs without irritating you, that arouses but does not belabour, amuses and yet subtly instructs.
Great statesmen seem to direct and rule by a sort of power to put themselves in the place of the nation over which they are set, and may thus be said to possess the souls of poets at the same time they display the coarser sense and the more vulgar sagacity of practical men of business.
Some of the greatest and most lasting effects of genuine oratory have gone forth from secluded lecture desks into the hearts of quiet groups of students.
We have beaten the living, but we cannot fight the dead.
Bagehot did what so many thousand of young graduates before him had done, – he studied for the bar; and then, having prepared himself to practise law, followed another large body of young men in deciding to abandon it.
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.
The way to be patriotic in America is not only to love America, but to love the duty that lies nearest to our hand, and to know that in performing it we are serving our country.
Where the great force lies, there must be the sanction of peace.
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.
The light that shined upon the summit now seems almost to shine at our feet.
Americanism consists in utterly believing in the principles of America.