Government, like any other organism, refuses to acquiesce in its own extinction. This refusal, of course, involves the resistance to any effort to diminish its powers and prerogatives.

If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.

What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor

He sailed through American history like a steel ship loaded with monoliths of granite.

Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.

I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.

What the meaning of human life may be I don't know: I incline to suspect that it has none.