What counts in a man or in a nation is not what the man or the nation can do, but what he or it actually does.

The words of the Declaration of Independence, as given effect by Washington...are to be accepted as real, and not as empty phrases...that in very truth this is a government by the people themselves, that the Constitution is theirs, that the courts are theirs, that all the government agents and agencies are theirs... It is for the people themselves finally to decide all questions of public policy and to have their decision made effective...We here, in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world.

The White House is a bully pulpit.

The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.

In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American.

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.