Skip to content

Wealth, power, the struggle for ephemeral social and political prestige, which so absorb our attention and energy, are but the passing phase of every age; ninety-day wonders which pass from man’s recollection almost before the actors who have striven from them have passed from the stage. ... What is significant in the record of man’s development is none of these. It is rather those forces in society and the lives of those individuals, who have, in each generation, added something to man’s intellectual and moral attainment, that lay hold on the imagination and compel admiration and reverence in each succeeding generation.

— Harlan F. Stone Attributed

Another quote →

More quotes by Harlan F. Stone

There is grim irony in speaking of the freedom of contract of those who, because of their economic necessities, give their service for less than is needful to keep body and soul together.

Words, especially those of a constitution, are not to be read with such stultifying narrowness.

The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.

Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.

Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.

All Harlan F. Stone quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Harlan F. Stone (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.