Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end, and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.

Life does not consist in thinking, it consists in acting.

I confess my belief in the common man.... The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.... The man who is in the melee knows what blows are being struck and what blood is being drawn.

There is here a great melting pot in which we must compound a precious metal. That metal is the metal of nationality.

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.

When I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing.

We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency - clear disinterested thinking and fearless action