It has prizes to offer as well as coercion to exercise; and with its foundations planted firmly in the past, its windows and portals look out towards a better future.

The tendency of its normal action is continually, if very slowly, to diminish the distance between the ideal of human brotherhood, and the political, economic, and social conditions, under which at any one time men manage to live together.
That is the truth to which the patriotic Americans should firmly cleave.
The modern nation, particularly in so far as it is constructively democratic, constitutes the best machinery as yet developed for raising the level of human association.

It really teaches men how they must feel, what they must think, and what they must do, in order that they may live together amicably and profitably.

The value of this school for its present purposes is increased by its very imperfections, because its imperfections issue inevitably from the imperfections of human nature.
Men being as unregenerate as they are, all worthy human endeavor involves consequences of battle and risk.

The heroes of the struggle must maintain their achievements and at times even promote their objects by compulsion.