The first phase of American political history was characterized by the conflict between the Federalists and the Republicans, and it resulted in the complete triumph of the latter.

Had it not been for the Atlantic Ocean and the virgin wilderness, the United States would never have been the Land of Promise.

I am not a prophet in any sense of the word, and I entertain an active and intense dislike of the foregoing mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism.

The national school is not a lecture hall or a library. Its schooling consists chiefly in experimental collective action aimed at the realization of a collective purpose.

The average American is nothing if not patriotic.

The higher American patriotism, on the other hand, combines loyalty to historical tradition and precedent with the imaginative projection of an ideal national Promise.

Unless the great majority of Americans not only have, but believe they have, a fair chance, the better American future will be dangerously compromised.

The adoption by Jefferson and the Republicans of the political structure of their opponents is of an importance hardly inferior to that of the adoption of the Constitution by the states.

The only fruitful promise of which the life of any individual or any nation can be possessed, is a promise determined by an ideal.

Of course, Americans have no monopoly of patriotic enthusiasm and good faith.

So far I, at least, have no fault to find with implications of Hamilton's Federalism, but unfortunately his policy was in certain other respects tainted with a more doubtful tendency.

When you strive for greatness, chaos is guaranteed to show up.

Slogans seem to be dead

Words have ruined more souls than any devil's agency.

In chains and darkness, wherefore should I stay, And mourn in prison, while I keep the key.

Poetry is the breath of beauty.

Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.

I don't have hobbies. I have passions.

Our best hope for the future [...] lies in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.

I don't think you should be too absolutist about what you play and what you don't play.

It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that [a society without government, as among our Indians] is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population.