“It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.”
“No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise.”
“I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose!”
“One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.”
“America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.”
“No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know.”
“I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail.”
“The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life.”
“There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.”
“I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.”
“There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect.”
“Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.”
“America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses.”
“The interesting and inspiring thing about America is that she asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask for humanity itself.”
“Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.”
“A little group of willful men reflecting no opinion but their own have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
“No man has ever risen to the real stature of spiritual manhood until he has found that it is finer to serve somebody else than it is to serve himself.”
“Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interest of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.”
“Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him, and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit for.”
“There is no question what the roll of honor in America is. The roll of honor consists of the names of men who have squared their conduct by ideals of duty.”
“When you have read the Bible, you will know it is the word of God, because you have found it the key to your own heart, your own happiness and your own duty.”
“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.”
“Generally young men are regarded as radicals. This is a popular misconception. The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life.”
“I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.”
“If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.”
“You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American.”
“Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.”
“The history of liberty is the history of the limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. When we resist the concentration of power we are resisting the powers of death. Concentration of power precedes the destruction of human liberties.”
“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”
“A radical is one of whom people say ''He goes too far.'' A conservative, on the other hand, is one who ''doesn't go far enough.'' Then there is the reactionary, ''one who doesn't go at all.'' All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have”