The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.

To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.

Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.

The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being - which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs - where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.

The smashing of idols is in itself such a preoccupation that it is almost impossible for the iconoclast to look clearly into a future when there will not be many idols left to smash.

Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue; it must be the intelligible consequence of it.

We are concerned in public affairs, but immersed in our private ones.