The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.

The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.

The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.

People that are orthodox when they are young are in danger of being middle-aged all their lives.

Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main ballpark.

Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.

Only the consciousness of a purpose that is mightier than any man and worthy of all men can fortify and inspirit and compose the souls of men.

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.

In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.

Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.