If we are to be really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill.
The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad.
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
The longer I live the more I think of the quality of fortitude... men who fall, pick themselves up and stumble on, fall again, and are trying to get back up when they die.
Rarely has any people enjoyed greater prosperity than we are now enjoying. For this we render heartfelt and solemn thanks to the Giver of Good; and we seek to praise Him -not by words only -but by deeds, by the way in which we do our duty to ourselves and to our fellow men.
The president is that invisible force that makes a school of fish suddenly change direction, so that everyone 'ohhs' and 'ahhs' at the glimmering mass and only later wonders what makes them move in that way. I read somewhere-_Harper's_, I'm fairly certain-that the fish are only avoiding pockets of extra cold water.
The bosses of the Democratic party and the bosses of the Republican party alike have a closer grip than ever before on the party machines in the States and in the Nation. This crooked control of both the old parties by the beneficiaries of political and business privilege renders it hopeless to expect any far-reaching and fundamental service from either.
When we control business in the public interest we are also bound to encourage it in the public interest or it will be a bad thing for everybody and worst of all for those on whose behalf the control is nominally exercised.
There is nothing brilliant or outstanding in my record, except perhaps this one thing. I do the things I believe ought to be done. And when I make up my mind to do a thing, I act.