The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.
We want wealth, but there are many other things we want very much more. Among them are peace, honor, charity, and idealism.
Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.
When people are bewildered they tend to become credulous.
There is no force so democratic as the force of an ideal.
I cannot think of anything characteristically American that was not produced by toil. I cannot think of any American man or woman preeminent in the history of our nation who did not reach their place through toil. I cannot think of anything that represents the American people as a whole so adequately as honest work.
A display of reason rather than a threat of force should be the determining factor in the intercourse among nations.
The first essentials, of course, is to know what you want.
The home was a school. Farm and cabin households, though bookless save for the Family Bible and The Sacred Harp, taught the girls to spin, weave, quilt, cook, sew, and mind their manners; the boys to wield gun, ax, hammer and saw, to ride, plow, sow and reap, and to be men. Nobody need ever be bored. Amusement did not have to be bought.
Have you ever met a war you didn't love?
I am a football fan, yeah.