America is a passionate idea or it is nothing. America is a human brotherhood or it is chaos.

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

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?

Despite the success cult, men are most deeply moved not by the reaching of the goal but by the grandness of the effort involved in getting there - or failing to get there.

A people's speech is the skin of its culture.

We demand of our political life greater certainty and greater perfection than we demand of our personal life.

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.