“If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy.”

One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.

I don’t know whether anyone will care to examine my heart, but if they do, they will find two words there- ‘social justice.’ For that is what I have believed in and fought for.

But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.

Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure – such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.

I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.

You can’t make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it.

Wall Street had been doing business with pieces of paper; and now someone asked for a dollar, and it was discovered that the dollar had been mislaid.

The remedy [for the Great Depression] is to give the workers access to the means of production, and let them produce for themselves, not for others, . . . the American way.

Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse.

The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence.

In the twilight, it was a vision of power.

They use everything about the hog except the squeal.

But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for him.

We define journalism in America as the business and practice of presenting the news of the day in the interest of economic privilege.

Turn over the pages of history and read the damning record of the church’s opposition to every advance in every field of science. . . .

The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery.

All great actions return to God, from whom they are derived.

The great secret of the successful fool is that he’s no fool at all.

Great fury, like great whisky, requires long fermentation.

We were told that they wished merely to pass through our country. To seek for gold in the far west, Yet before the ashes of the council are cold, the Great Father is building his forts among us. His presence here is an insult to the spirits of our ancestors.

Success is its own reward, but failure is a great teacher too, and not to be feared.

The duty we owe ourselves is greater than that we owe others.

The great empire will be torn from limb, the all-powerful one for more than four-hundred years: Great power given to the dark one from slaves come.

I made many mistakes but my triumphs have received far greater publicity than my failures.