Quotes from Dorothy Thompson, speech, 1937

The adventure in popular government has gone on in this country for 150 years. And attended by the new risks of this revolutionary era, it is still the greatest adventure in the world today. And still worth one's faith, and one's courage, and one's perspicacity.

To believe in liberal democracy is to believe that there is more good will in society than ill will; more ground for agreement than disagreement; more things that the majority of people want to preserve and cherish than they want to destroy; more that they love than that they hate; more to unite men and classes than to divide them; and that to find these principles of unity and agreement, through deliberation and compromise, is the duty of civilized human beings.

The liberal spirit is the breath of liberal democracy. And the liberal spirit is something instantly recognizable but very difficult to define. It has about it a refreshing common sense... It is even-tempered, and of even tempo... Reform, and constant reform, is a necessity of democracy. But reform in a hurry... is jerry-built, and it blows down in the first storm.