WIST

Would the boy you were be proud of the man you are?

Lawrence J. Peter (1919-1990) American educator, management theorist
(Attributed)

The poor man’s conscience is clear; yet he is ashamed. … He feels himself out of the sight of others, groping in the dark. Mankind takes no notice of him: he rambles and wanders unheeded. In the midst of a crowd, at church, in the market … he is in as much obscurity as he would be in a garret or a cellar. He is not disapproved, censured, or reproached: he is only not seen. … To be wholly overlooked, and to know it, are intolerable.

John Adams (1735-1826) US President (1797-1801)
Discourses on Davila, ch. 5 (1790)

A bad fittin’ suit never wears out.

Kin Hubbard (1868-1930) American caricaturist and humorist [Frank McKinney Hubbard]
Abe Martin’s Almanac for 1909 (1908)
Full text.

COSMO: What’s wrong with this country Marty? Money. You taught me that. Evil defense contractors had it, noble causes did not. Politicians are bought and sold like so much chattel. Our problems multiplied. Pollution, crime, drugs, poverty, disease, hunger, despair; we throw gobs of money at them! The problems always get worse. Why is that? Because money’s most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don’t have it.

Phil Alden Robinson (b. 1950) American screenwriter, director, producer
Sneakers (1992) [with Lawrence Lasker, Walter Parkes]

Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.

William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“The Sentiment of Rationality” (1882)