The whole speculation about morality is an effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively feel is good.

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

We know that it is possible to harness desire to many interests, that evil is one form of a desire, and not the nature of it.

When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.

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

The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.

You don't have to preach honesty to men with a creative purpose. A genuine craftsman will not adulterate this product. The reason isn't because duty says he shouldn't, but because passion says he couldn't.