“It does not become America that within her borders, where every man is free to follow the dictates of his conscience, men should raise the cry of church against church. To do that is to strike at the very spirit and heart of America.”

Has justice ever grown in the soil of absolute power? Has not justice always come from the … heart and spirit of men who resist power?

To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of national life.

At every crisis in one’s life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving.

Any man that resists the present tides that run in the world, will find himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that it will seem he has been separated from his human kind forever.

When I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing.

The right is more precious than peace.

We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.

It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilizationitself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things we have always carried closest to our hearts.

A man may be defeated by his own secondary successes.

What is the use of voting? We know that the machines of both parties are subsidized by the same persons, and therefore it is useless to turn in either direction.

I do not want a government that will take care of me, I want a government that will make other men take their hands off me so I can take care of myself.

I would never read a book if it were possible for me to talk half an hour with the man who wrote it.

Progressiveness means not standing still when everything else is moving.

The seed of revolution is repression.

There is something better, if possible, that a man can give than his life. That is his living spirit to a service that is not easy, to resist counsels that are hard to resist, to stand against purposes that are difficult to stand against.

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.