The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.

To understand is not only to pardon, but in the end to love.

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.

The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.

It is all very well to talk about being the captain of your soul. It is hard, and only a few heroes, saints, and geniuses have been the captains of their souls for any extended period of their lives.

A regime, an established order, is rarely overthrown by a revolutionary movement; usually a regime collapses of its own weakness and corruption and then a revolutionary movement enters among the ruins and takes over the powers that have become vacant.

The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.