There have been great men with little of what we call education. There have been many small men with a great deal of learning. There has never been a great people who did not possess great learning.

There is only one form of political strategy in which I have any confidence, and that is to try to do the right thing and sometimes be able to succeed.

Nations are beginning to look to some vague organization, some nebulous course of humanity, to pay their bills and tell them what to do. This is not local self-government. It is not American. It is not the method which has made this country what it is. We can not maintain the western standard of civilization on that theory. If it is supported at all, it will have to be supported on the principle of individual responsibility.

After order and liberty, economy is one of the highest essentials of a free government.

I want the people to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry.

The chief business of America is business.

The budget idea, I may admit, is a sort of obsession with me. I believe in budgets. I want other people to believe in them. I have had a small one to run my own home; and besides that, I am the head of the organization that makes the greatest of all budgets, that of the United States Government. Do you wonder, then, that at times I dream of balance sheets and sinking funds?