The world is a better place to live in because it contains human beings who will give up ease and security in order to do what they themselves think worth doing. They do the useless, brave, noble, divinely foolish, and the very wisest things that are done by Man. And what they prove to themselves and to others is that Man is no mere creature of his habits, no automaton in his routine, but that in the dust of which he is made there is also fire, lighted now and then by great winds from the sky.

Certainly he is not of the generation that regards honesty as the best policy. However, he does regard it as a policy.

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.

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

Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.

Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.

For in the absence of debate unrestricted utterance leads to the degradation of opinion. By a kind of Greshams law the more rational is overcome by the less rational, and the opinions that will prevail will be those which are held most ardently by those with the most passionate will. For that reason the freedom to speak can never be maintained merely by objecting to interference with the liberty of the press, of printing, of broadcasting, of the screen. It can be maintained only by promoting debate.