We were good reformers, but we weren't good enough. We elected a candidate and then, busy with our own affairs, we left him hanging in mid-air. Reformers are such part-time pillars of society!

Money is what you'd get on beautifully without if only other people weren't so crazy about it.

For twenty years it had been generally known that an insidious Lobby was maintained in Washington to influence legislation and executive action on behalf of vested interests. ... The lobby was a creature of darkness. It worked behind closed doors and whispered in corners. This ancient industry was one form of invisible government.

There was a time in my life when election year was nothing to me, but in 1912, I joined that great army of Americans who drop a stitch in their routine every four years, and give themselves up to backing first a candidate for the nomination and afterwards a nominee.

[On women getting the vote:] The newspapers, poor dears, looked of course for something very spectacular. But then newspapers are always apt to be more interested in phenomena like meteors than in the slow growth of a mighty tree. Wait ten years, and the politicians will one day wake up and say, 'Look who's here!

We were good reformers, but we weren't good enough. We elected a candidate and then, busy with our own affairs, we left him hanging in mid-air. Reformers are such part-time pillars of society!

no war really comes unexpectedly. The drums are beating long before a single shot is fired.