The majority of men cannot be made disinterested for life by exhortation, by religious services, by any expenditure of subsidized works, or even by grave and manifest public need. They can be made permanently unselfish only by being helped to become disinterested in their individual purposes. In the complete democracy a man must in some way be made to serve the nation in the very act of contributing to his own individual fulfillment. Not until his personal action is dictated by disinterested motives can there be any such harmony between private and public interests.

At first, it must be remembered, that [women] can never accomplish anything until they put womanhood ahead of wifehood, and make motherhood the highest office on the social scale.

The more consciously democratic Americans became, however, the less they were satisfied with a conception of the Promised Land, which went no farther than a pervasive economic prosperity guaranteed by free institutions.

American history contains much matter for pride and congratulation, and much matter for regret and humiliation.

In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism.

The popular will cannot be taken for granted, it must be created.

The first phase of American political history was characterized by the conflict between the Federalists and the Republicans, and it resulted in the complete triumph of the latter.