When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much.

Modern men are afraid of the past. It is a record of human achievement, but its other face is human defeat.

The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.

We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world - introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably - that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.

Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.

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

There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.