Political Ideals

Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible.

— Political Ideals

The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.

— Political Ideals

Every creative impulse is shadowed by a possessive impulse; even the aspirant to saintliness may be jealous of the more successful saint.

— Political Ideals

So far as it lies in a man's own power, his life will realize its best possibilities if it has three things: creative rather than possessive impulses, reverence for others, and respect for the fundamental impulse in himself.

— Political Ideals

Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.

— Political Ideals

It is a sad evidence of the weariness mankind has suffered from excessive toil that his heavens have usually been places where nothing ever happened or changed. Fatigue produces the illusion that only rest is needed for happiness; but when men have rested for a time, boredom drives them to renewed activity.

— Political Ideals

War is recognized as an evil by an immense majority in every civilized country; but this recognition does not prevent war.

— Political Ideals

It is not, as a rule, by means of useful inventions, or of any other action which increases the general wealth of the community, that men amass fortunes; it is much more often by skill in exploiting or circumventing others.

— Political Ideals

The instinct of conventionality, horror of uncertainty, and vested interests, all militate against the acceptance of a new idea.

— Political Ideals

From childhood upward, everything is done to make the minds of men and women conventional and sterile. And if, by misadventure, some spark of imagination remains, its unfortunate possessor is considered unsound and dangerous, worthy only of contempt in time of peace and of prison or a traitor's death in time of war. Yet such men are known to have been in the past the chief benefactors of mankind, and are the very men who receive most honor as soon as they are safely dead.

— Political Ideals

So long as men are free to indulge their predatory instincts, some men or groups of men will take advantage of this freedom for oppression and robbery.

— Political Ideals

He will see that this spirit embodies not only the highest morality, but also the truest wisdom, and the only road by which the nations, torn and bleeding with the wounds which scientific madness has inflicted, can emerge into a life where growth is possible and joy is not banished at the frenzied call of unreal and fictitious duties. Deeds inspired by hate are not duties, whatever pain and self-sacrifice they may involve. Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love.

— Political Ideals