JOHN MORLEY

In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.

They act as if they supposed that to be very sanguine about the general improvement of mankind is a virtue that relieves them from taking trouble about any improvement in particular.

You cannot demonstrate an emotion or prove an aspiration.

A proverb is good sense brought to a point.

They are the guiding oracles which man has found out for himself in that great business of ours, of learning how to be, to do, to do without, and to depart.

No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character.

He who hates vice hates men.

A great interpreter of life ought not himself to need interpretation.

Even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in the broad, intelligent, and spacious way.

Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions.

Politics is a field where the choice lies constantly between two blunders.

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

Evolution is not a force but a process. Not a cause but a law.

The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without and to depart.

... the head of the Cabinet is primus inter pares [first among equals], and occupies a position which, so long as it lasts, is one of exceptional and peculiar power.

Where there is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

[Describing Theodore Roosevelt:] Half St. Paul, half St. Vitus.

Our opinions are less important than the spirit and temper with which they possess us, and even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in a broad, intelligent, and spacious way.

Politics is the science of the second best.

Success depends on three things: who says it, what he says, how he says it; and of these three things, what he says is the least important.

Then there is the newspaper press, that huge engine for making the political test final.

The proper memory for a politician is one that knows what to remember and what to forget.

Those who would treat politics and morality apart will never understand the one or the other.

Waste of public money is like a sin against the Holy Ghost.

Great economic and social forces flow with a tidal sweep over communities that are only half conscious of them. Wise statesmen are those who foresee what time is thus bringing, and endeavor to shape institutions and to mold men's thought and purpose in accordance with the change that is silently surrounding them.