“Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.”
“There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.”
“Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power”
“Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.”
“When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.”
“Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main ballpark.”
“When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.”
“People that are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.”
“The first principle of a civilized state is that the power is legitimate only when it is under contract.”
“No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.”
“Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.”
“Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.”
“We are all captives of the picture in our head -- our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.”
“Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.”
“The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.”
“In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.”
“The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.”
“It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.”
“Let a human being throw the energies of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct of workmanship will take care of his honesty.”
“Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men.”
“Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.”
“The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.”
“Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.”
“Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can make of capitalism.”
“What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.”
“The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class.”
“There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.”
“Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.”
“This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement -- that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it -- that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.”
“The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.”