Life is too short for reading inferior books.

Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.

No government demands so much from the citizens as democracy and none gives back so much.

It is accepted as an axiom by all Americans that the civil power ought to be not only neutral and impartial as between different forms of faith, but ought to leave these matters entirely on one side, regarding them no more than it regards the artistic or literary pursuits of the citizens.

Perhaps the most typically American place in America.

The tendency everywhere in America to concentrate power and responsibility in one man is unmistakable.

I have often asked Americans wherein they consider their freedom superior to that of the English, but have never found them able to indicate a single point in which the individual is worse off in England as regards his private civil rights or his general liberty of doing and thinking as he pleases. They generally turn the discussion to social equality, the existence of a monarchy and hereditary titles and so forth - matters which are, of course, quite different from freedom in its proper sense.