Experience may be hard but we claim its gifts because they are real, even though our feet bleed on its stones.
Idealism and realism meet in the actual.
The unifying of opposites is the eternal process.
The foreman today does not merely deal with trouble, he forestalls trouble. In fact, we don’t think much of a foreman who is always dealing with trouble; we feel that if he is doing his job properly, there won’t be so much trouble.
The manager cannot share his power with division superintendent or foreman or workman, but he can give them opportunities for developing their power.
The ignoring of differences is the most fatal mistake in politics or industry or international life: every difference that is swept up into a bigger conception feeds and enriches society; every difference which is ignored feeds on society and eventually corrupts it.
Law should seek far more than mere reconciliation; it should be one of the great creative forces of our social life.
Many people tell me what I ought to do and just how I ought to do it, but Few have made me want to do something...
The most successful leader of all is the one who sees another picture not yet actualised.
In the small group then is where we shall find the inner meaning of democracy, its very heart and core.
The state accumulates moral power only through the spiritual activity of their citizens.
Responsiblity is the great developer of men.
Most people are not for or against anything; the first object of getting people together is to make them respond somehow, to overcome inertia.
Democracy must be conceived as a process, not a goal.
I am convinced that any feeling of exaltation because we have people under us should be conquered, for I am sure that if we enjoy being over people, there will be something in our manner which will make them dislike being under us.
There is no such thing as vicarious experience.
The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.
Fear of difference is fear of life itself.
I do not think that we have psychological and ethical and economic problems. We have human problems, with psychological, ethical and economical aspects, and as many others as you like.
We may be heartened by our sojourns on Sinai, but no man may live his life in the clouds. And what does pragmatism mean if not just this? We can only, as James told us again and again, understand the collective and distributive by living. Life is the true revealer: I can never understand the whole by reason, only when the heart-beat of the whole throbs through me as the pulse of my own being.
No experience can ever be repeated, and in this fact we find all the tragedy of life and at the same time its glory – its irrepressible movement.