We try often, though we fall back often. A brave delight, fit for freedom’s athletes, fills these arenas, and fully satisfies, out of the action in them irrespective of success. Whatever we do not attain, we at any rate attain the experiences of the fight, the hardening of the strong campaign, and throb with currents of attempt at least. Time is ample. Let the victors come after us.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) American poet
“Democratic Vistas” (1871)
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One might say that a nation is politically stable when nothing of radical consequence is determined by its elections.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
The Phantom Public, 12.1 (1930)
There is no end to education. We are all in the Kindergarten of God.
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) American writer, businessman, philosopher
The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard [ed. E. Hubbard II] (1927)
When I find any officer that answers me with firmness, intelligence, and clearness, I set him down in my list for making of his service on proper occasions.
Frederick II (1712-1786) King of Prussia (a.k.a. Frederick the Great)
“Morning the Fourth: On Private Politics” The Confessions of Frederick the Great [ed. D. Sladen (1915)]
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The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-communism.
Adlai Ewing Stevenson (1900-1965) American politician
Speech, American Legion convention, New York City (27 Aug 1952)
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