Category: Thought

A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.

Free government is self-government. A government of the people by the people. The best government of this sort is that which the people think best.

The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing . . . a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better.

They keep telling us that in war truth is the first casualty, which is nonsense since it implies that in times of peace truth stays out of the sick bay or the graveyard.

The First Law of Journalism: to confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it.

The American university system is enormous and it plays an enormous role in making the nation what it is — it is not too much to say, in fact, that it is an equal partner in the military-industrial-academic complex that essentially runs the country.

A “just war” is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.

Everyone is shy — it is the inborn modesty that makes us able to live in harmony with other creatures and our fellows. Achievement comes not by denying shyness but, occasionally, by setting it aside and letting pride and perspiration come first.