The greatest obstacle to international understanding is the barrier of language

Natural Theology says not only look up and look out-it also says look down and look in, and you will find the proofs of the reality of God in the depth of your own nature.

American literature has never been content to be just one among the many literatures of the Western World. It has always aspired to be the literature not only of a new continent but of a New World.

The true makes of history are the spiritual men whom the world knew not, the unregarded agents of the creative action of the Spirit. The supreme instance of this-the key to the Christian understanding of history-is to be found in the Incarnation- the presence of the maker of the world in the world unknown to the world. ... The Incarnation is itself in a sense the divine fruit of history-of the fullness of time-and it finds its extension and completion in the historic life of the Church.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion

Faith transcends reason because divine truth is not only higher, but also wider than the human mind, and the rationalist in his haste for premature simplification always tends to shut his eyes to one aspect of the truth and to seek a false harmony of thought by the sacrifice of an essential element of reality.

The sublimated idealism of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the League of Nations and of the United Nations Charter have not proved strong enough to control the aggressive dynamism of nationalism.