Here I am an old man in a long nightgown making muffled noises at people who may be no worse than I am.

The public official must pick his way nicely, must learn to placate though not to yield too much, to have the art of honeyed words but not to seem neutral, and above all to keep constantly audible, visible, likable, even kissable.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit of him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned ... .

Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who rarely and under the lurid glare of obloquy upset our moral complaisance, or shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those, the mass of us, who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers.

We recently had a referendum in New York about extending the forest preserve. The city voted for it by a large majority; yet as I walk the streets I do not see afforestation written with conviction on the harried faces of my fellow citizens.

We shall succeed only so far as we continue to undertake “the intolerable labor of thought” — that most distasteful of all our activities.

Here I am an old man in a long nightgown making muffled noises at people who may be no worse than I am.