Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.
Whenever we accept an idea as authority instead of as instrument, an idol is set up. We worship the plough, and not the fruit.
We are all captives of the picture in our head - our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.
A more conscious life is one in which a man is conscious not only of what he sees, but of the prejudices with which he sees it.
Lovers who have nothing to do but love each other are not really to be envied; love and nothing else very soon is nothing else.
The whole speculation about morality is an effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively feel is good.
Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.
The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.
Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.
But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?
Only the very rarest of princes can endure even a little criticism, and few of them can put up with even a pause in the adulation.
In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
It seems like topsy-turvyland to make reason serve the irrational. Yet that is just what it has always done, and ought always to do.
There is only one purpose to which a whole society can be directed by a deliberate plan. That purpose is war, and there is no other.
Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men.
The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.
There is but one bond of peace that is both permanent and enriching: The increasing knowledge of the world in which experiment occurs.
The consent of the governed" is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.
Whether or not birth control is eugenic, hygienic, and economic, it is the most revolutionary practice in the history of sexual morals.
So far as I am concerned I have no doctrinaire belief in free speech. In the interest of the war it is necessary to sacrifice some of it.
The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.
The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.
Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.
The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.
Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men.
A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.
A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.
The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.
The emancipated woman has to fight something worse than the crusted prejudices of her uncles; she has to fight the bewilderment in her own soul.
Newspapers necessarilyand inevitably reflect, and therefore, in greater or lesser measure, intensify, the defective organization of public opinion.
The people who really matter in social affairs are neither those who wish to stop short like a mule, or leap from crag to crag like a mountain goat.
Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.
A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done.
The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.
The American's conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man's way of life.
Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.
The prophecy of a world moving toward political unity is the light which guides all that is best, most vigorous, most truly alive in the work of our time.
Whatever truth you contribute to the world will be one lucky shot in a thousand misses. You cannot be right by holding your breath and taking precautions.
Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can make of capitalism.
Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.
A large plural society cannot be governed without recognizing that, transcending its plural interests, there is a rational order with a superior common law.
A democracy which fails to concentrate authority in an emergency inevitably falls into such confusion that the ground is prepared for the rise of a dictator.
What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.
Nothing is easier than to simplify life and them make a philosophy about it. The trouble is that the resulting philosophy is true only of that simplified life.
We are quite rich enough to defend ourselves, whatever the cost. We must now learn that we are quite rich enough to educate ourselves as we need to be educated.
The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.
Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions ...are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends.
Behind innocence there gathers a clotted mass of superstition, of twisted and misdirected impulse; clandestine flirtation, fads, and ragtime fill the unventilated mind.
The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class.