Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.

I want the people to love me, but I suppose they never will.

Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit...

The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickenswith the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.

Great statesmen seem to direct and rule by a sort of power to put themselves in the place of the nation over which they are set, and may thus be said to possess the souls of poets at the same time they display the coarser sense and the more vulgar sagacity of practical men of business.

The profession I chose was politics; the profession I entered was law. I entered the one because I thought it would lead to the other.

We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world.... We are partners with the rest. What affects mankind isinevitably our affair as well as the nations of Europe and Asia.