The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.

We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.

A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.

Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer.

A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.

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