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

Men who are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.

I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away.

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.

The consent of the governed" is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.

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

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.