We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house.

Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent.

There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction.

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

The hardest lessons to learn are those that are the most obvious.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.