I observe that there are two entirely different theories according to which individual men seek to get on in the world. One theory leads a man to pull down everybody around him in order to climb up on them to a higher place. The other leads a man to help everybody around him in order that he may go up with them.
Elihu RootThe framers of the Constitution realized that . . . there needed to be some guardian of the sober second thought, and so they created the Senate to fulfill that high and vitally important duty.
Elihu RootThe law of the survival of the fittest led inevitably to the survival and predominance of the men who were effective in war and who loved it because they were effective.
Elihu RootThe line of least resistance in the progress of civilization is to make that theoretical postulate real by the continually increasing force of the world's public opinion.
Elihu Root