If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
James Madison (1751-1836) American statesman, political theorist, US President (1809-17)
The Federalist #51 (6 Feb 1788)
Full text.
The Fourth Amendment, and the personal rights which it secures, have a long history. At the very core stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.
Potter Stewart (1915-1985) US Supreme Court Justice (1959-81)
Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505 (1961) [Unanimous opinion]
(Source)
Note that the quote is frequently misidentified as being from Katz v. United States or Bartkus v. Illinois.
A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It’s a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.
Jimmy Carter (b. 1924) American politician, US President (1977-1981), Nobel laureate [James Earl Carter, Jr.]
“Warm Hearts and Cool Heads,” speech, Liberal Party dinner, New York City (14 Oct 1976)
(Source)
The title of the speech was from a phrase coined by Adlai Stevenson.
And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet, wit, dramatist
“Literary and Other Notes — I,” Woman’s World (Nov 1887)
Full text.
Administrivia: Master of my own domain?
I have a post over on my main blog about problems with the .info top-level domain being associated with spamming and malware — even though there are perfectly legitimate users of it (such as WIST, and New York’s MTA), and the rate of “bad stuff” isn’t all that much higher than from .com domains.
The current problem is that some software vendors and hosts are actually discriminating or blocking things associated with .info, e.g., Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger, as well as some mail systems that block or downcheck e-mail from a .info domain.
I don’t plan on changing the WIST site any time soon — but I will be monitoring the situation.
Persecution is born of intolerance, and intolerance is the child of certainty. Before we can tolerate we must doubt.
Edgar Royston Pike (1896-1984) British historian, social scientist, author
Slayers of Superstition (1931)
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) American physicist
Rogers Commission Report into the Challenger Crash, Appendix F “Personal Observations on Reliability of Shuttle” (Jun 1986)
Full report
Yes, Gentlemen; if I am asked why we are free with servitude all around us, why our Habeas Corpus Act has not been suspended, why our press is still subject to no censor, why we still have the liberty of association, why our representative institutions still abide in all their strength, I answer, It is because in the year of revolutions we stood firmly by our government in its peril; and, if I am asked why we stood by our government in its peril, when men all around us were engaged in pulling governments down, I answer, It was because we knew that though our government was not a perfect government, it was a good government, that its faults admitted of peaceable and legal remedies, that it had never inflexibly opposed just demands, that we had obtained concessions of inestimable value, not by beating the drum, not by ringing the tocsin, not by tearing up the pavement, not by running to the gunsmiths’ shops to search for arms, but by the mere force of reason and public opinion.
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
Speech on re-election to Parliament, Edinburgh (2 Nov 1852)
(Source)
On the various revolutions and counter-revolutions in Europe in 1848.
To my way of thinking there’s something wrong, or missing, with any person who hasn’t got a soft spot in their heart for an animal of some kind. With most folks the dog stands highest as man’s friend, then comes the horse, with others the cat is liked best as a pet, or a monkey is fussed over; but whatever kind of animal it is a person likes, it’s all hunkydory so long as there’s a place in the heart for one or a few of them.
Will James (1892–1942) Canadian-American artist, writer [b. Joseph Ernest Nephtali Dufault]
Smoky, the Cow Horse, Preface (1929)
Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
Speech to the Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia (27 Jun 1936)
Quoted in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, ed. Samuel I. Rosenman (1938-1950)
[A] page of history is worth a volume of logic.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U.S. 345, 349 (1921)
Full text.
By the frame of the Government under which we live this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
First Inaugural Address (4 Mar 1861)
Full text
The worst of it is, by the time one has finished a piece, it has been so often viewed and reviewed before the mental eye, that one loses in a good measure the powers of critical discrimination. Here the best criterion I know is a friend –n ot only of abilities to judge, but with good-nature enough, like a prudent teacher with a young learner, to praise perhaps a little more than is exactly just, lest the thin-skinned animal fall into that most deplorable of all poetic diseases — heart-breaking despondency of himself.
The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in the United States is closely connected with this.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
“My First Impression of the U.S.A.” (1921)
(Source)
Later published as "Some Notes on my American Impressions" in The World As I See It (1949)
I believe that the essence of government lies with unceasing concern for the welfare and dignity and decency and innate integrity of life for every individual. I don’t like to say this and wish I didn’t have to add these words to make it clear but I will — regardless of color, creed, ancestry, sex or age.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
Speech (1972-12-12), Civil Rights symposium, LBJ Library, Austin, Texas
(Source)
(Source (Video)). Johnson's last public speech.
The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) English social philosopher, feminist, writer
The French Revolution, Bk. V, ch. 4 (1794)
It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) English novelist and playwright [William Somerset Maugham]
The Summing Up, ch. 23 (1938)
(Source)
Heav’n has no Rage like Love to Hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.William Congreve (1670-1729) English dramatist
The Mourning Bride. III.8. [Zara] (1697)
There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.
Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) Romanian-American novelist, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate.
(Attributed)
Were we directed from Washington when to sow, & when to reap, we should soon want bread.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Autobiography (1821)
(Source)
Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being, as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) American novelist
“Individuality,” The American Democrat (1838)
It was from Handel that I learned that style consists in force of assertion. If you can say a thing with one stroke unanswerably, you have style; if not, you are at best a marchand de plasir, a decorative litterateur, or a musical confectioner, or a painter of fans with cupids and cocottes. Handel has this power. When he sets the words “Fixed in his everlasting seat,” the atheist is struck dumb; God is there, fixed in his everlasting seat by Handel, even if you live in an Avenue Paul Bert and despise such superstitions. You may despise what you like, but you cannot contradict Handel.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
“Causerie on Handel in England,” Ainslee’s Magazine (May 1913)
Originally a music society lecture given in France. Longer discussion.
Citizenship is no light trifle to be jeopardized any moment Congress decides to do so under the name of one of its general or implied grants of power.
Hugo Black (1886-1971) American politician and jurist, US Supreme Court Justice (1937-71)
Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253, 267-68 (1967) [majority opinion]
(Source)
But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.
No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is suppose that they are like himself.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) American writer
The Winter of Our Discontent, ch. 3 (1961)
A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
(Attributed)
Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Letter #8 from “Silence Dogood” (pseud.), in The New-England Courant, Boston (9 Jul 1722)
Inscribed on Cox Corridor II, first floor House corridor, U.S. Capitol.
He doubly benefits the needy who gives quickly.
[Inopi beneficium bis dat, qui dat celeriter.]
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], # 6
In foreign policy you have to wait twenty-five years to see how it comes out.
James "Scotty" Reston (1909-1995) Scottish-American journalist and editor
International Herald Tribune, Paris (18 Nov 1991)
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew — or a Quaker — or a Unitarian — or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim — but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) US President (1961-63)
Speech, Greater Houston Ministerial Association (12 Sep 1960)
(Source)
Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:
The right to criticize.
The right to hold unpopular beliefs.
The right to protest.
The right of independent thought.The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood, nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us doesn’t? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in.
Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1965) American politician (US Senator, Maine)
“Declaration of Conscience” (1950-06-01)
(Source)
Speech given in the US Senate.
That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves [and abhors], is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporal rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
“Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom” (18 Jun 1779; enacted 16 Jan 1786)
(Source)
The words in [brackets] were removed before final passage. The term "temporal rewards" was mistranscribed into statute as "temporary rewards."
I don’t mind rationalizing, everybody does it.
Mark Clark (Contemp.)
Belief-L (2001)
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a whole flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilization. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost —- he becomes a unit in unreason.
Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) English parodist, caricaturist, wit, writer [Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm]
Zuleika Dobson, ch. 9 (1911)
Full text
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Impact of Science on Society (1952)
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
“The American Crisis” #4 (12 Sep 1777)
(Source)
Heretics have been hateful from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered; but it has generally proved impossible to smother them; and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined.
Learned Hand (1872-1961) American jurist
“A Fanfare for Prometheus,” speech, American Jewish Committee (1955-01-29)
(Source)
If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
Address to the National Education Association, New York City (30 Jun 1938)
The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence, is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist
On Liberty, ch. 1 “Introductory” (1859)
(Source)
This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter to Henry L. Pierce, et al. (6 Apr 1859)
Father Brown laid down his cigar and said carefully: “It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.”
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) English journalist and writer
“The Point of a Pin,” The Scandal of Father Brown (1925)
No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) American industrialist and philanthropist
(Attributed)
There is nothing more horrible than the murder of a beautiful theory by a brutal gang of facts.
François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) French epigrammatist, memoirist, noble
Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Maxims] (1665-1678)
That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.
George Mason (1725-1792) American statesman, Founding Father [George Mason IV]
Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) American jurist, Supreme Court Justice
Schenck v. United States (3 Mar 1919)
(Source)
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972) American pianist, composer, actor, wit
(Attributed)
If radio news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when saleable, then I don’t care what you call it — I say it isn’t news.
Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) American journalist
Speech, Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), Chicago (15 Oct 1958)
Full speech.
But we know that freedom cannot be served by the devices of the tyrant. As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence. And any who act as if freedom’s defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Letter to Dr. Robert B. Downs, pres. of the American Library Association (24 Jun 1953)
I know a number of highly sensitive and intelligent people in my own communion who consider as a heresy my faith that God’s loving concern for his creation will outlast all our willfulness and pride. No matter how many eons it takes, he will not rest until all of creation, including Satan, is reconciled to him, until there is no creature who cannot return his look of love with a joyful response of love […] Some people feel it to be heresy because it appears to deny man his freedom to refuse to love God. But this, it seems to me, denies God his freedom to go on loving us beyond all our willfulness and pride. If the Word of God is the light of the world, and this light cannot be put out, ultimately it will brighten all the dark corners of our hearts and we will be able to see, and seeing, will be given the grace to respond with love — and of our own free will.
Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007) American writer
The Irrational Season (1977)
Administrivia: The Mysterious Gil Atkinson
Everybody knows who, say, George Bernard Shaw was. And it’s not likely anyone’s going to question which “Abraham Lincoln” to whom to attribute an Abraham Lincoln quote.
But then you get someone like “Gil Atkinson.” There are a ton of Gil Atkinson quotes on the net. But who is Gil Atkinson. Ah … there’s the rub.
Ninety-nine percent of the quotes in Google have nothing other than the name. A very few identify him as an inventor and businessman (1827-1905) of that name, who invented the automatic sprinkler. There are also a couple of cases where the quotes are attributed to an American historian by that name.
Problem is, the quotes themselves are all over the map. A couple sound plausible from an historian. A couple of others from an inventor (though few of those sound appropriate for someone writing at the turn of the 20th Century). Most of them sound like a (rather trite) motivational speaker or sales consultant (and are quoted most enthusiastically by those same sorts). But there are no Gil Atkinson websites, no “live” comments by him anywhere on the web (by that name), and no books at Amazon by him.
And none of the sources touting they know “who” Gil Atkinson is are reliable enough for me to just take their word — and assume they didn’t just plug in a description from elsewhere.
So, who was Gil Atkinson? Or who are they? Are we talking about multiple folk by that name, of different professions, and how, without actually finding the source of some of these quotes can one really, actually tell?
My conclusion — though I originally had my (one) Gil quote attributed to a contemporary historian, I’m going to backtrack on that, and just leave the name as a contemporary (based on the vocabulary and syntax of the quotes). Which really irks me, but what can you do?
Anyone with any citeable insight into this is more than welcome to chime in.
For the wicked are full of regrets.
[μεταμελείας γὰρ οἱ φαῦλοι γέμουσιν.]
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
Nicomachean Ethics [Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια], Book 9, ch. 4 (9.4.10) / 1166b.24-25 (c. 325 BC) [tr. Welldon (1892)]
(Source)
(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:
For the wicked are full of remorse.
[tr. Chase (1847)]
Whence it is that the wicked are ever full of repentance.
[tr. Williams (1869)]
For those who are not good are full of remorse.
[tr. Peters (1893)]
For bad men are laden with repentance.
[tr. Ross (1908)]
The bad are always changing their minds.
[tr. Rackham (1934)]
For base people are full of regret.
[tr. Reeve (1948)]
For bad men are full of regrets.
[tr. Apostle (1975)]
For bad men are full of regrets.
[tr. Thomson/Tredennick (1976)]
For base people are full of regret.
[tr. Irwin/Fine (1995)]
For bad people are full of regrets.
[tr. Crisp (2000)]
For base people teem with regret.
[tr. Bartlett/Collins (2011)]
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Man and Superman, “Maxims for Revolutionists,” “Democracy” (1903)
(Source)
Truth stood on one side and Ease on the other; it has often been so.
Theodore Parker (1810-1860) American clergyman, transcendentalist, abolitionist
A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion (1842)
Democracy means, not “I am as good as you are,” but, “You are as good as I am.”
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) American theologian and clergyman
The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, foreward (1944)
This quote was difficult to track down. It's quoted everywhere -- but often attributed to Theodore Parker (as I previously did) or James Russell Lowell. I couldn't find, however, any specific citation from either gentleman.
Rev. John Murray Atwood, in his essay "Universalism and Educational Ideas" in 1770-1920 - From Good Luck to Gloucester, ed. Rev. Frederick A Bisbee (1920), writes:
But he who not only feels that he himself has unknown, divine possibilities, but so has his fellow, that democracy means, not I am as good as you are, but you are as good as I am, who seeks as the expression of his own true nature the larger liberty and life for others, is the kind of man essential to construct a new world.
The book is a history of Universalism, which may tie into Theodore Parker's Unitarian career. At any rate, the wording does seem to precede Niebuhr, but lacking a solid citation, I'll leave it with him.
Come! Let us lay a lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
For who would live so petty and unblest
That dare not tilt at something ere he die;
Rather than, screened by safe majority,
Preserve his little life to little end,
And never raise a rebel cry!John Galsworthy (1867-1933) English novelist and playwright
“Errantry,” st. 1 (1934)
