All men in whose character there is not an element of hardened baseness must admit the need in our public life of those qualities which we somewhat vaguely group together when we speak of “reform,” and all men of sound mind must also admit…

We can not expect the best work from soldiers who have carried to an unhealthy extreme the sports and pastimes which would be healthy if indulged in with moderation, and have neglected to learn as they should the business of their…

The only way to provide against the evils of a horizontal cleavage in politics is to encourage the growth of fellow-feeling, of a feeling based on the relations of man to man, and not of class to class.

A soldier needs to know how to shoot and take cover and shift for himself—not to box or play foot-ball.

The mean and cringing admiration which such a career commands among those who think crookedly or not at all makes this kind of success perhaps the most dangerous of all the influences that threaten our national life.

From the highest to the lowest officer, every naval man had seen and taken part, during time of peace, in the work which he would have to do in time of war.

Only those who have seen something of such work at close quarters realize how much of it goes on quietly and without the slightest outside show, and how much it represents to many lives that else would be passed in gray squalor.

He speedily finds that the quality of successful management, the power to handle men and secure results, may exist in seemingly unlikely persons.

Given that he and they have a common object, the one test that he must apply to them is as to their ability to help in achieving that object.

The result is that in a very short time the men whose purposes are the same forget about all differences, save in capacity to carry out the purpose.

But the fact remains that the effect of political life, and of the associations that it brings, is of very great benefit in producing a better understanding and a keener fellow-feeling among men who otherwise would know one another not at…

No one can succeed who attempts to go in on any other basis; above all, no one can succeed if he goes in feeling that, instead of merely doing his duty, he is conferring a favor upon the community, and is therefore warranted in adopting an…

What is necessary is to approach the subject, not with a desire to get ahead of one another, but to do even and exact justice, and to put into operation a scheme which will work, while scrupulously conserving the honor and interest of all…

It is often quite as irritating to be patronized as to be plundered; as reformers have more than once discovered when the mass of the voters stolidly voted against them, and in favor of a gang of familiar scoundrels, chiefly because they…

The result might be an oligarchy, or it might be mob rule; it mattered little which, as regards the ultimate effect, for in both cases tyranny and anarchy were sure to alternate.

One secret of their influence with our Police Board was that, as they continually went about among their people and knew them all, and as they were entirely disinterested, they could be trusted to tell who did right and who did wrong among…

It is this capacity for sympathy, for fellow-feeling and mutual understanding, which must lie at the basis of all really successful movements for good government and the betterment of social and civic conditions.

On the other hand, if the men can be mixed together in some way that will loosen the class or caste bonds and put each on his merits as an individual man, there is certain to be a regrouping independent of caste lines.

A tie may remain between the members of a caste, based merely upon the similarity of their habits of life; but this will be much less strong than the ties based on identity of passion, of principle, or of ways of looking at life.

If the merchant or the manufacturer, the lawyer or the clerk, never meets the mechanic or the handicraftsman, save on rare occasions, when the meeting may be of a hostile kind, each side feels that the other is alien and naturally…

But the betterment must come through the slow workings of the same forces which always have tended for righteousness, and always will.

Under such circumstances the men who work together for the achievement of a common result in which they are intensely interested are very soon certain to disregard, and, indeed, to forget, the creed or race origin or antecedent social…

The chief factor in producing such sympathy is simply association on a plane of equality, and for a common object.

Any healthy-minded American is bound to think well of his fellow-Americans if he only gets to know them.

If the banker and the farmer never meet, or meet only in the most perfunctory business way, if the banking is not done by men whom the farmer knows as his friends and associates, a spirit of mistrust is almost sure to spring up.