Quote #18

Always a Progressive in outlook, Hughes believed in the organic growth and evolution of polities and political relationships; any effort to freeze conditions would inevitably become a reactionary defense of the rights of the privileged against what might, in some cases, be the reasonable and legitimate demands of the dispossessed and the interests of the community as a whole.

More from Charles Evans Hughes

  1. Now largely forgotten, Hughes was one of the great political figures of his age, both in America and on the world stage, and was very much …
  2. I don't know the man I admire more than Hughes. If ever I have the chance I shall offer him the Chief Justiceship.
  3. The only real progress to abiding peace is found in the friendly disposition of peoples and ... facilities for maintaining peace are useful…
  4. There is no path to peace except as the will of peoples may open to it. The way of peace is through agreement, not through force. The quest…
  5. Time has shown how illusory are alliances of great powers so far as the maintenance of peace is concerned. In considering the use of intern…
  6. It is not surprising that many should be captivated by the proposal, with its delusive simplicity and adequacey, for the outlawry of war. W…
  7. We may gain something in our quest for peace if we recognize at once that war is not an abnormality. In the truest sense, it is not the mer…
  8. [Dissents are] appeals to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of another day.

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