Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created.

Free institutions are not the property of any majority. They do not confer upon majorities unlimited powers. The rights of the majority are limited rights. They are limited not only by the constitutional guarantees but by the moral principle implied in those guarantees. That principle is that men may not use the facilities of liberty to impair them. No man may invoke a right in order to destroy it.

The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.

Photographs have the kind of authority over imagination to-day, which the printed word had yesterday, and the spoken word before that. They seem utterly real. They come, we imagine, directly to us without human meddling, and they are the most effortless food for the mind conceivable.

Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned....That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions.

The central drama of our age is how the Western nations and the Asian peoples are to find a tolerable basis of co-existence.

It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.