If I cannot retain my moral influence over a man except by occasionally knocking him down, if that is the only basis upon which he will respect me, then for the sake of his soul I have got occasionally to knock him down.

There is no cause half so sacred as the cause of the people. There is no idea so uplifting as the idea of the service of humanity.

Reality is what I see, not what you see.

No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence.

Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself.

From the dim morning hours of history when the father was king and priest down to this modern time of history's high noon when nations stand forth full grown and self-governed, the law of coherence and continuity in political development has suffered no serious breach.

One cool judgement is worth a thousand hasty councils.