Every effort to confine Americanism to a single pattern, to constrain it to a single formula, is disloyalty to everything that is valid in Americanism.

The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause trouble for governments they no longer trusted.

History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at all we must impose some order upon it.

Our best people don't go into politics.

History is organized memory, and the organization is all important!

In the long run [censorship] will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.

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