Your enlightenment depends on the company you keep. You do not know the world until you know the men who have possessed it and tried its wares before you were ever given your brief run upon it.

The literary gift is a very dangerous gift to possess if you are not telling the truth, and I would a great deal rather, for my part, have a man stumble in his speech than to feel he was so exceedingly smooth that he had better be watched both day and night.

America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of the Holy Scripture.

My own ideals for the university are those of a genuine democracy and serious scholarship. These two, indeed, seem to go together.

I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.

...it would be a mistake...to ascribe to Roman legal conceptions an undivided sway over the development of law and institutions during the Middle Ages... The Laws of Moses as well as the laws of Rome contributed suggestions and impulse to the men and institutions which were to prepare the modern world; and if we could have but eyes to see... we should readily discover how very much besides religion we owe to the Jew.

It is a protest against the way the world has worked. (explanation of Bolshevism)