Facts tend to become commonplace, and we tend to lose sight of their importance when once they are ingrained into the life of the Nation.

Although we talk a good deal about what the widespread education of this country means, I question if many of us deeply consider its meaning.

From the lowest grade of the public school to the highest form of university training, education in this country is at the disposal of every man, every woman, who chooses to work for and obtain it.

And each one of us who has obtained an education has obtained something for which he or she has not personally paid.

Each one of us then who has an education, school or college, has obtained something from the community at large for which he or she has not paid, and no self-respecting man or woman is content to rest permanently under such an obligation.

Where the State has bestowed education the man who accepts it must be content to accept it merely as a charity unless he returns it to the State in full, in the shape of good citizenship.

From all our citizens we have a right to expect good citizenship; but most of all from those who have received most; most of all from those who have had the training of body, of mind, of soul, which comes from association in and with a…

From those to whom much has been given we have Biblical authority to expect and demand much in return; and the most that can be given to any man is education.

I expect and demand in the name of the Nation much more from you who have had training of the mind than from those of mere wealth.

I ask you to take that not as a conventional statement from the university platform, but to test it by thinking of the men whom you admire in our past history and seeing what are the qualities which have made you admire them, what are the…

I hold that a great and masterful people forfeits its title to greatness if it shirks any work because that work is difficult and responsible.

The difficulty and responsibility impose upon us the high duty of doing the work well, but they in no way excuse us for refusing to do it.

Every man, every woman here should feel it incumbent upon him or her to welcome with joy the chance to render service to the country, service to our people at large, and to accept the rendering of the service as in itself ample repayment…

Traffic in foodstuffs which have been debased or adulterated so as to injure health or to deceive purchasers should be forbidden.

The average man, the average woman must earn his or her living in one way or another, and I most emphatically do not advise any one to decline to do the humdrum, every-day duties because there may come a chance for the display of heroism.

The sum of the parts is the whole, and if we wish to make that whole, the State, the representative and exponent and symbol of decency, it must be so made through the decency, public and private, of the average citizen.

It is absolutely essential if we are to have the proper standard of public life that promise shall be square with performance.

A lie is no more to be excused in politics than out of politics.

In the first place, the man who makes a promise which he does not intend to keep and does not try to keep should rightly be adjudged to have forfeited in some degree what should be every man’s most precious possession—his honor.

On the other hand, the public that exacts a promise which ought not to be kept, or which can not be kept, is by just so much forfeiting its right to self-government.

There is no surer way of destroying the capacity for self-government in a people than to accustom that people to demanding the impossible or the improper from its public men.

No man fit to be a public man will promise either the impossible or the improper; and if the demand is made that he shall do so it means putting a premium upon the unfit in public life.

The union of land and water under the national law has been recognized, and so has the fundamental proposition which necessarily underlies the prosperity of all communities in which irrigated agriculture is the chief industry, namely, that…

The public appreciation of this fundamental truth that the water belongs to the people to be taken and put to beneficial use will wipe out many controversies which are at present so harmful to the development of the West.

It is a fundamental truth that the prosperity of any people is simply another term for the prosperity of the home-makers among that people.