“We live in a stage of politics, where legislators seem to regard the passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement.”

Politics make me sick.

When the history of this period is written, [William Jennings] Bryan will stand out as one of the most remarkable men of his generation and one of the biggest political men of our country.

I think his greatest fault is his failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done. This is a great weakness in any man.

Action for which I become responsible, or for which my administration becomes responsible, shall be within the law.

The cheerful loser is a sort of winner.

I don’t know the man I admire more than [Charles Evans] Hughes. If ever I have the chance I shall offer him the Chief Justiceship.

We are all imperfect. We can not expect perfect government.

There are a great many people who are in favor of conservation no matter what it means.

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.

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.

I did not get an opportunity to die for the country, but I have got an opportunity to live for the country.

I care not if I live but a day and a night, so long as my deeds live after me.

Do I trust some, and get fooled by phoniness, or do I trust no one and live in loneliness?

I have certain objectives. They’re the same objectives my father had to give people a higher standard of living, to do away with the cancer of poverty, to eliminate the consequences of economic backwardness.

You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.

Look what is happening in the world – we are being conditioned by society, by the culture we live in, and that culture is the product of man. There is nothing holy, or divine, or eternal about culture.

When one has an image about oneself one is surely insane, one lives in a world of illusion.