He believed that the meaning of the Constitution's great open phrases must change with the times.
As always, the great phrase shook him to the heart.
A great phrase from the prayer-book came to his mind-- "Whose service is perfect freedom."
It's every songwriter's biggest fear - that really great phrase or lyric you thought was all your own creation turns up in another song.
And like a great many other phrases of modern intellectualism, it means literally nothing at all.
But if the Constitution's great phrases are to have any concrete meaning, they must be interpreted again and again.
How accurate, that's exactly what it is, what a great phrase.
Then a great phrase comes up like a flash that illuminates everything, or reveals a threat.
Lenin had a great phrase about the dustheap of history.
'Let a thousand flowers bloom' was, I think, the great phrase.