What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him...

We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern.

Modern men are afraid of the past. It is a record of human achievement, but its other face is human defeat.

The essential discovery of maturity has little if anything to do with information about the names, the locations, and the sequence of facts; it is the acquiring of a different sense of life, a different kind of intuition about the nature of things.

In the blood of the martyrs to intolerance are the seeds of unbelief

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.

When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.