Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President.

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

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

It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rights of capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of the theories and abstract ideas as things in themselves.

I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away.

Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.

The consent of the governed" is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.