We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

The great word Evolution had not yet, in 1860, made a new religion of history, but the old religion had preached the same doctrinefor a thousand years without finding in the entire history of Rome anything but flat contradiction.

If Washington were President now, he would have to learn our ways or lose his next election. Only fools and theorists imagine that our society can be handled with gloves or long poles. One must make one's self a part of it. If virtue won't answer our purpose, we must use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office, and this was as true in Washington's day as it is now, and always will be.

In practice, such trifles as contradictions in principle are easily set aside; the faculty of ignoring them makes the practical man.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

Unity is vision; it must have been part of the process of learning to see.