I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist.

Meiklejohn's position is that free speech in a democracy is not an absolute flowing from the boundless source of some presumed 'natural right.' It is a practical necessity of 'self-government by universal suffrage,' for if the citizens are not permitted to argue out the issues of government, how can they be what they must be in a democracy - the rulers as well as the ruled?

American capitalism has been both overpraised and overindicted. It is neither the Plumed Knight nor the monstrous Robber Baron.

The taste of democracy becomes a bitter taste when the fullness of democracy is denied.

Having a thirteen-year-old in the family is like having a general-admission ticket to the movies, radio and TV. You get to understand that the glittering new arts of our civilization are directed to the teen-agers, and by their suffrage they stand or fall.

When evil acts in the world it always manages to find instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but honorable.

Of the many things we have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted.