The great lawyer who employs his talent and his learning in the highly remunerative task of enabling a very wealthy client to override or circumvent the law is doing all that in him lies to encourage the growth in this country of a spirit…

But the nation is badly off if in addition to this there is not a very much higher standard of conduct, a standard impossible effectively to establish by statute, but one upon which the community as a whole, and especially the real leaders…

I want to congratulate you, as I always do when I come here, upon the delightful physical surroundings of the union.

We need men with these ideals in public life, and we need them just as much in business and in such a profession as the law.

Of course I am for peace.

It is far more important that they should conduct their business affairs decently than that they should spend the surplus of their fortunes in philanthropy.

But I am for one thing before peace—I am for righteousness first.

I feel that this union is one of the most important elements in shaping a right Harvard life.

It is a bad thing for any college man to grow to regard sport as the serious business of life.

The only personal request that I made as to the programme of these two days was that I should be given the chance of saying a word to my fellow members of the Harvard Union.

We can by statute establish only those exceedingly rough lines of morality, the overpassing of which means that the man is in jeopardy of the constable or the sheriff.

It seems to me that there is no other institution which so embodies and typifies the true spirit of Harvard as this union—the spirit which stands for what is highest, of brotherhood, of genuine allegiance to the university as such.

The chief use of the increased money value of the scholar's prize would be the index thereby afforded of the respect in which it was popularly held.

The same qualities that count in the army and the navy are what we need and wish to make the best civilization in the world.

If you have to choose between being noxious and merely harmless, of course, choose to be harmless.

If he does not secure such legal evidence, no amount of popular feeling is to be allowed to be substituted for the legal evidence.

I demand that the nation do its duty, accept responsibility that must go with greatness.

And they look like mighty nice children, too.