Every social need, such as the need for friendship, must be a party to its own satisfaction: I cannot passively find my friend as a ready-made friend…

- William Ernest Hocking

It is right, or absolute right, that an individual should develop the powers that are in him. He may be said to have a "natural right" to become what…

- William Ernest Hocking

Where men cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no other liberty is secure.

- William Ernest Hocking

This merely formal conceiving of the facts of one's own wretchedness is at the same time a departure from them--placing them in the object. It is not…

- William Ernest Hocking

However rich we may become in knowledge of the deeper causes of historical results, we forgo all understanding of history if we forget this inner con…

- William Ernest Hocking

We cannot swing up a rope which is attached only to our own belt.

- William Ernest Hocking

Man is the only animal that contemplates death, and also the only animal that shows any sign of doubt of its finality.

- William Ernest Hocking

For those who have only to obey, law is what the sovereign commands. For the sovereign, in the throes of deciding what he ought to command, this view…

- William Ernest Hocking

And indeed, no man has found his religion until he has found that for which he must sell his goods and his life.

- William Ernest Hocking