Equality as it is currently pursued is incompatible with true liberty; for liberty involves an inner working with reference to standards, the right subordination, in other words, of man’s ordinary will to a higher will. There is an inevitable clash, in short, between equality and humility.

Yet Aristotle’s excellence of substance, so far from being associated with the grand style, is associated with something that at times comes perilously near jargon.

A man needs to look, not down, but up to standards set so much above his ordinary self as to make him feel that he is himself “spiritually” the underdog. Anyone who thus looks up has some chance of becoming worthy to be looked up to in turn.

Perhaps as good a classification as any of the main types is that of the three lusts distinguished by traditional Christianity – the lust of knowledge, the lust of sensation, and the lust of power.

A gross and palpable error of the era that is just closing has been the confusion of mechanical and material progress with moral progress.

The humanities need to be defended to-day against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.

Commercialism is laying its great greasy paw upon everything including the irresponsible quest of thrills; so that, whatever democracy may be theoretically, one is sometimes tempted to define it practically as standardized and commercialized melodrama.

It is well to open one's mind but only as a preliminary to closing it ... for the supreme act of judgment and selection.

This comparative indifference to clearness and consistency of thought is visible even in that chief object of our national concern, education.

One of our federal judges said, not long ago, that what the American people need is ten per cent of thought and ninety per cent of action.