To understand is not only to pardon, but in the end to love.

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

In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.

The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.

The man who will follow precedent, but never create one, is merely an obvious example of the routineer. You find him desperately numerous in the civil service, in the official bureaus. To him government is something given as unconditionally, as absolutely as ocean or hill. He goes on winding the tape that he finds. His imagination has rarely extricated itself from under the administrative machine to gain any sense of what a human, temporary contraption the whole affair is. What he thinks is the heavens above him is nothing but the roof.

The devil is merely a fallen angel, and when God lost Satan he lost one of his best lieutenants.

Freedom to speak... can be maintained only by promoting debate.