The first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.

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

Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers glory - to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.

Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.

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

There is nothing so good for the human soul as the discovery that there are ancient and flourishing civilized societies which have somehow managed to exist for many centuries and are still in being though they have had no help from the traveler in solving their problems.

Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created.