Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers glory - to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.

There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.

The prophecy of a world moving toward political unity is the light which guides all that is best, most vigorous, most truly alive in the work of our time.

But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?

Free institutions are not the property of any majority. They do not confer upon majorities unlimited powers. The rights of the majority are limited rights. They are limited not only by the constitutional guarantees but by the moral principle implied in those guarantees. That principle is that men may not use the facilities of liberty to impair them. No man may invoke a right in order to destroy it.

I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.

A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.