In applying the new principles to our conditions we have found the Federal Constitution a nearly perfect instrument.

Liar” is just as ugly a word as “thief,” because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other.

The Romans kept national unity, but only by means of a crushing centralized despotism.

The system of a closely knit and indestructible union of free commonwealths has enabled us to do what neither Greek nor Roman in their greatest days could do.

In all the history of mankind there is nothing that quite parallels the way in which our people have filled a vacant continent with self-governing commonwealths, knit into one nation.

We need fearless criticism of dishonest men, and of honest men on any point where they go wrong; but even more do we need criticism which shall be truthful both in what it says and in what it leaves unsaid—truthful in words and truthful in…

Woe to all of us if ever as a people we grow to condone evil because it is successful.

We are in honor bound each to strive according to his or her strength to bring ever nearer the day when justice and wisdom shall obtain in public life as in private life.

We can not retain the full measure of our self-respect if we can not retain pride in our citizenship.

Our greatest statesmen have always been those who believed in the nation—who had faith in the power of our people to spread until they should become the mightiest among the peoples of the world.

Under any governmental system which was known to Europe, the problem offered by the westward thrust, across a continent, of so masterful and liberty-loving a race as ours would have been insoluble.

To be a good husband or good wife, a good neighbor and friend, to be hard-working and upright in business and social relations, to bring up many healthy children—to be and to do all this is to lay the foundations of good citizenship as…

Each of us has not only his duty to himself, his family, and his neighbors, but his duty to the State and to the nation.

It is a great mistake to think that the extremist is a better man than the moderate.

The great civilized and colonizing races of antiquity, the Greeks and the Romans, had been utterly unable to devise a scheme under which when their race spread it might be possible to preserve both national unity and local and individual…

If, after making all the effort that his strength of body and of mind permits, he yet honorably fails, why, he is still entitled to a certain share of respect because he has made the effort.

While striving to prevent industrial injustice at home, we must not bring upon ourselves industrial weakness abroad.

Hysteria in any form is incompatible with sane and healthy endeavor.

It is a law of our intellectual development that the greatest and most important truths, when once we have become thoroughly familiar with them, often because of that very familiarity grow dim in our minds.

Modern industrial competition is very keen between nation and nation, and now that our country is striding forward with the pace of a giant to take the leading position in the international industrial world, we should beware how we fetter…

But if he does not make the effort, or if he makes it half-heartedly and recoils from the labor, the risk, or the irksome monotony of his task, why, he has forfeited all right to our respect, and has shown himself a mere cumberer of the…

If a man is dishonest he should be driven from public life.

The true welfare of the nation is indissolubly bound up with the welfare of the farmer and the wage-worker—of the man who tills the soil, and of the mechanic, the handicraftsman, the laborer.

On the other hand, it is equally true that the prosperity of any of us can best be attained by measures that will promote the prosperity of all.

The poorest motto upon which an American can act is the motto of “Some men down,” and the safest to follow is that of “All men up.” A good deal can and ought to be done by law.