“One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.”

You cannot tear up ancient rootages and safely plant the tree of liberty in soil that is not native to it.

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.

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.

Today’s greatest labor-saving device is tomorrow.

To do things today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking.

Power consists in one’s capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.

We have beaten the living, but we cannot fight the dead.

This was not after all a conventional war, a struggle between equally predacious powers; it was a war to end all wars.

Understanding is the soil in which grow all the fruits of friendship.

There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed.

Government, in it’s last analysis, is organized force.

The man who disparages music as a luxury and non-essential is doing the nation an injury. Music now, more than ever before, is a national need.

A fault which humbles a person is of more use to him or her than a good action which puffs him or her up.

A presidential campaign may easily degenerate into a mere personal contest, and so lose its real dignity. There is no indispensable man.

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.

We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists–believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic.