A man cannot sleep in his cradle: whatever is useful must in the nature of life become useless.

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.

Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space, a longer reach of time, a greater number of things, than we can directly observe. They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine.

At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.

The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class.

We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.