It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion

These things do not happen by chance. There is much less luck in public affairs than some suppose.

Few people are lacking in capacity, but they fail because they are lacking in application.

Your ability to face setbacks and disappointments without giving up will be the measure of your ability to succeed.

Governments are necessarily continuing concerns. They have to keep going in good times and in bad. They therefore need a wide margin of safety. If taxes and debt are made all the people can bear when times are good, there will be certain disaster when times are bad.

Of course, the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence.

I have done it [appointed commissions] regretfully and with the hope that it would be temporary. But after a commission is established you find it always wants to enlarge itself, employ more people, is very busy with Senators and Congressmen to impress upon them the great value of the services of the commission, and even when I talk to people that I appoint to commissions and tell them I would like them to go on to various boards with the idea that they may be abolished, they say they ought to be abolished, but when they have taken their position they very soon seem to change their mind.