If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.

It seems fair to say that while the moral standards of the nineteenth century persisted almost unchanged into the twentieth, moral practices changed sharply, and that though the standards of the nineteenth century persisted the institutions that had sustained them and the sanctions that had enforced them lost influence and authority.

The greatest danger we face is not any particular kind of thought. The greatest danger we face is absence of thought.

Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change.

Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them.

The American people...have a stake in non-conformity. For they know that the American genius is non-conformist.

And we wonder what can be that 'philosophy of education' which believes that young people can be trained to the duties of citizenship by wrapping their minds in cotton wool.