No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.

This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement-that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it-that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.

The consent of the governed" is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.

The devil is merely a fallen angel, and when God lost Satan he lost one of his best lieutenants.

There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.

Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most.

Popular government has not yet been proved to guarantee, always and everywhere, good government.

The invisible government [bosses] is malign. But the evil doesn't come from the fact that it plays horse with the Newtonian theory of the constitution. What is dangerous about it is that we do not see it, cannot use it, and are compelled to submit to it.

When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.