“In the public interest, therefore, it is better that we lose the services of the exceptions who are good Judges after they are seventy and avoid the presence on the Bench of men who are not able to keep up with the work, or to perform it satisfactorily.”

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.

Man is not made better by being degraded.

I was taught to think the next week or month or year will only get better than it is today. So I just keep waiting to see how great it will get!

Oh, the secret life of man and woman–dreaming how much better we would be than we are if we were somebody else or even ourselves, and feeling that our estate has been unexploited to its fullest.

The worst of me is known, and I can say that I am better than the reputation I bear.

It is better not to live at all than to live disgraced.

Unless you’re playing a real character based on a real person, if someone else has done it before, you’re probably better off not watching it as an actor. Otherwise you end up trying to copy someone else.

Hope is an expensive commodity. It makes better sense to be prepared.

I am better than my reputation.