It's always wise to seek the truth in our opponents' error, and the error in our own truth.

Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about a particular degree of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimatized.

All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.

The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.

The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms.