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

A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.

You don't have to preach honesty to men with creative purpose. Let a human being throw the engines of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct of workmanship will take care of his honesty.

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to be good but to elucidate what the good is. The problem of sanctions is secondary.

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.

Great men, even during their lifetime, are usually known to the public only through a fictitious personality.