You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United States. Of allegiance to whom? Of allegiance to no one, unless it be God. Certainly not of allegiance to those who temporarily represent this great government. You have taken an oath of allegiance to a great ideal, to a great body of principles, to a great hope of the human race.

I could see now that a literary education did not fit one for the popular novelist's trade.Once you had started using words like flavicomous or acroamatic, because you liked the sound of them, you were lost.

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

No task, rightly done, is truly private. It is part of the world s work.

Americanism consists in utterly believing in the principles of America.

Politics is a war of causes; a joust of principles. Government is too serious a matter to admit of meaningless courtesies.

I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.