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.

A nation is as great, and only as great, as her rank and file.

There's not an idea in our heads that has not been worn shiny by someone else's brains.

We forget that there is much more patriotism in having the audacity to differ from the majority than in running before the crowd; we forget that in the resistance of the minority some of the biggest things in our own history have been accomplished, and the man who looks on the Stars and Stripes and doesn't hold a right to say nay to his neighbor, even if the neighbor is of the larger party, has forgotten the history of his country.

Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.

We [Americans] have a great ardor for gain; but we have a deep passion for the rights of man.

To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of national life.