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

Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.

There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.

The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event ... For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities.

The public must be put in its place, so that it may exercise its own powers, but no less and perhaps even more, so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.

Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.