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

When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.

In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.

The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.

Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past.

Because the results are expressed in numbers, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking that the intelligence test is a measure like a foot ruler or a pair of scales. It is, of course, a quite different sort of measure. Intelligence is not an abstraction like length and weight; it is an exceedingly complicated notion - which nobody has yet succeeded in defining.

Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.