When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.

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.

The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it the representative of a whole class.

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

Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.

Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.

Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much.

A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.

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

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

The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master’s ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.

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.

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.

There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.

The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.

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

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.

When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.

What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.

When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.

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

The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.

In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.

The time has come to stop beating our heads against stone walls under the illusion that we have been appointed policeman to the human race.

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

There is nothing so good for the human soul as the discovery that there are ancient and flourishing civilized societies which have somehow managed to exist for many centuries and are still in being though they have had no help from the traveler in solving their problems.

Industry is a better horse to ride than genius.

He has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.

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

Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.

A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.

We are quite rich enough to defend ourselves, whatever the cost. We must now learn that we are quite rich enough to educate ourselves as we need to be educated.

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

We are all captives of the picture in our head – our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.

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.

The first principle of a civilized state is that the power is legitimate only when it is under contract.

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.

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.

Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.

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.

When all men think alike, no one thinks very much.

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.

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