When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.

The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal; but ideas are immortal.

We are concerned in public affairs, but immersed in our private ones.

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.

A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.

Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.

The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class.