If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all.

Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.

The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.

Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power.

If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children.

Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.