“We can’t have a decent government unless those in power exercise self restraint.”

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 world is not going to be saved by legislation.

We, as Unitarians, may feel that the world is coming our way.

Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.

We passed the Children’s Bureau bill calculated to prevent children from being employed too early in factories.

The President cannot make clouds to rain and cannot make the corn to grow. He cannot make business good, although when these things occur, political parties do claim some credit for the good things that have happened in this way

I know how irritating it is to have somebody else lay down rules for your moral uplift, but you’ve got to stand a great deal in order to make progress.

Anyone who has taken the oath I have just taken must feel a heavy weight of responsibility. If not, he has no conception of the powers and duties of the office.

God’s most lordly gift to man is decency of mind.

God’s most lordly gift to man is decency of mind.

I am losing all sense of decency.

I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do.

There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.

It is no use to preach to children if you do not act decently yourself.

The job is interesting, and the task is difficult, but the man is just a decent man doing a very ordinary job.

I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.