A powerful Navy we have always regarded as our proper and natural means of defense; and it has always been of defense that we have thought, never of aggression or of conquest. But who shall tell us now what sort of Navy to build? We shall take leave to be strong upon the seas, in the future as in the past; and there will be no thought of offense or provocation in that. Our ships are our natural bulwarks.

I have sometimes heard men say politics must have nothing to do with business, and I have often wished that business had nothing to do with politics.

Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.

It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.

There is no more subtle dissolvent of morals than sentimentality.

The natural man inevitably rebels against mathematics, a mild form of torture that could only be learned by painful processes of drill.

We are not put into this world to sit still and know; we are put into it to act.