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

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

The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.

Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.

We say that the truth will make us free. Yes, but that truth is a thousand truths which grow and change.

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

The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians. He musses up what had been so tidily arranged.