When I examined my political faith I found that my strongest belief was in democracy according to my own definition. Democracythe essential thing as distinguished from this or that democratic governmentwas primarily an attitude of mind, a spiritual testament, and not an economic structure or a political machine. The testament involved certain basic beliefsthat the personality was sacrosanct, which was the meaning of liberty; that policy should be settled by free discussion; that normally a minority should be ready to yield to a majority, which in turn should respect a minoritys sacred things. It seemed to me that democracy had been in the past too narrowly defined and had been identified illogically with some particular economic or political system such as laissez-faire or British parliamentarism. I could imagine a democracy which economically was largely socialist and which had not our constitutional pattern.
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Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.
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History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness. The hasty reformer who does not remember the past will find himself condemned to repeat it.
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He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply.
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I believe that all wisdom consists in caring immensely for a few right things, and not caring a straw about the rest.
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What would you call the highest happiness? Wratislaw was ask. The sense of competence, was the answer, given without hesitation.
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We can pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.
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An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
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