“I do not know much about politics, but I am trying to do the best I can with this administration until the time shall come for me to turn it over to somebody else.”

Substantial progress toward better things can rarely be taken without developing new evils requiring new remedies.

Don’t worry over what the newspapers say. I don’t. Why should anyone else? I told the truth to the newspaper correspondents – but when you tell the truth to them they are at sea.

The intoxication of power rapidly sobers off in the knowledge of its restrictions and under the prompt reminder of an ever-present and not always considerate press, as well as the kindly suggestions that not infrequently come from Congress.

No, the only things which do not bother me are the elements. I can overcome them without a fight. All one has to do to get the best of the elements is to stand pat and one will win.

We are imperfect. We cannot expect perfect government.

A man never knows exactly how the child of his brain will strike other people.

I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe.

Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.

Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.

I love judges, and I love courts. They are my ideals, that typify on earth what we shall meet hereafter in heaven under a just God.

The true Mason always carries his working tools everywhere.

We have a government of limited power under the Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law.

The man with the average mentality, but with control, with a definite goal, and a clear conception of how it can be gained, and above all, with the power of application and labor, wins in the end.

I know this, and I know it from actual experience in the Orient, that the progress of modern Christian civilization has largely depended on the earnest hard work of the Christian missions of every denomination.

We shall have to begin all over again. [Taft hoped that] the Senators might change their minds, or that the people might change the Senate; instead of which they changed me.

Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment.

The presidency is not merely an administrative office. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.

Unfortunately, the administration’s plan is an ounce of cure for a pound of problems.

We have to be vigilant about how the Trump administration may try to divide us from each other.

It is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.

Those who serve upon our juries have maintained a standard of fairness and excellence and demonstrated a vision toward the administration of justice that is a wellspring of inspiration.

Oh, I don’t think Tom Sowell would tell anybody to join the administration. That’s not his style. But I think his attitude has always been if it had to be done he’d prefer me to do it than somebody else.

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.