text:
James A. Michener

James Albert Michener (3 February 1907 – 16 October 1997) was an American author of more than 40 titles, the majority of which are novels of sweeping sagas, covering the lives of many generations in a particular geographic locale and incorporating historical facts into the story as well.

Quotes

 * In 1948 I addressed some students at Washington and Lee University, and in the question-answer period one young man observed with asperity, "But it's easy for you to write. You've traveled."
 * Return to Paradise (1951) First lines

 * I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.
 * On a heroine in Tales of the South Pacific (1947) in Commercial Appeal  (31 December 1951)

 * A group of two dozen nurses completely surrounded by 100,000 unattached American men.
 * On the heroines of Tales of the South Pacific (1947) in Commercial Appeal  (31 December 1951)

 * On a bleak wintry morning some years ago I was summoned to the office of our naval attache at the American embassy in Kabul.
 * Caravans (1963) First lines

 * On Tuesday the freighter steamed through the Straits of Gibraltar and for five days plowed eastward through the Mediterranean, past islands and peninsulas rich in history, so that on Saturday night the steward advised Dr. Cullinane, "If you wish an early sight of the Holy Land you must be up at dawn."
 * The Source (1965) First lines

 * Youth is truth.
 * The Drifters (1971) First lines

 * Only another writer, someone who had worked his heart out on a good book which sold three thousand copies, could appreciate the thrill that overcame me one April morning in 1973 when Dean Rivers of our small college in Georgia appeared at my classroom door.
 * Centennial (1974) First lines

 * For some time now they had been suspicious of him.
 * Chesapeake (1978) First lines

 * Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
 * Chesapeake (1978)

 * It was the silent time before dawn, along the shores of what had been one of the most beautiful lakes in southern Africa.
 * The Covenant (1980) First lines

 * If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.
 * As quoted in Good Advice (1982) by William Safire and Leonard Safir. Original appearance in Holiday magazine, March 1956, pp. 40-51.

 * I was surprised when shortly after New Year's Day of 1983, the Governor of Texas summoned me to his office, because I hadn't been aware that he knew I was in town.
 * Texas (1985) First lines

 * Russia, France, Germany and China. They revere their writers. America is still a frontier country that almost shudders at the idea of creative expression.
 * "A Spelunker in the Caves of History" in Modern Maturity (August 1985)

 * The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.
 * As quoted in "The Michener Phenomenon" by Caryn James in The New York Times (8 September 1985)

 * The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.
 * As quoted in "The Michener Phenomenon" by Caryn James in The New York Times (8 September 1985)

 * About a billion years ago, long before the continents had separated to define the ancient oceans, or their own outlines had been determined, a small protuberance jutted out from the northwest corner of what would later become North America.
 * Alaska (1988) First lines

 * The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north and east.
 * Caribbean (1989) First lines

 * I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.
 * As quoted in The Observer (26 November 1989)

 * If you type adeptly with 10 fingers, you’re typing faster than your mind is working.
 * "James Michener: The Mighty", Entertainment Weekly (May 31, 1991)

 * I decided (after listening to a "talk radio" commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life) that I was both a humanist and a liberal, each of the most dangerous and vilified type. I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create a reasonably decent society. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. I do not believe that pure reason can solve the perpetual problems unless it is modified by poetry and art and social vision. So I am a humanist. And if you want to charge me with being the most virulent kind—a secular humanist—I accept the accusation.
 * Interview, Parade magazine (24 November 1991)

 * I had been sent to Mexico to cover a murder, one of a remarkable kind.
 * Mexico (1992) First lines

 * I feel myself the inheritor of a great background of people. Just who, precisely, they were, I have never known. I might be part Negro, might be part Jew, part Muslim, part Irish. So I can't afford to be supercilious about any group of people because I may be that people.
 * CNN obituary (17 October 1997)

Hawaii (1959)

 * Millions upon millions of years ago, when the continents were already formed and the principal features of the earth had been decided, there existed, then as now, one aspect of the world that dwarfed all others… a mighty ocean, resting uneasily to the east of the largest continent, a restless ever-changing, gigantic body of water that would later be described as Pacific.

 * Therefore, men of Polynesia and Boston and China and Mount Fuji and the barrios of the Philippines, do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no food here. In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruits and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish... On these harsh terms the islands waited.

 * No man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure.

 * It is difficult to be king when the gods are changing.

 * In later years, it would become fashionable to say of the missionaries, "They came to the islands to do good, and they did right well." Others made jest of the missionary slogan, "They came to a nation in darkness; they left it in light," by pointing out: "Of course they left Hawaii lighter. They stole every goddamned thing that wasn't nailed down."

 * Look, son, if you calculate on getting me drunk and outsmarting me, quit now, because you simply can't do it.

 * You love the Hawaiians as potential Christians, but you despise them as people. I am proud to say that I have come to exactly the opposite conclusion, and it is therefore appropriate that I should be expelled from a mission where love is not.
 * statement by Abraham Hewlett, in chapter "From the Farm of Bitterness"

Space (1982)

 * On 24 October 1944 Planet Earth was following its orbit about the sun as it has obediently done for nearly five billion years.
 * First lines

 * An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

 * Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.
 * Ch. 6

Poland (1983)

 * In a small Polish farm community, during the fall planting season of 1981, events occurred which electrified the world, sending reverberations of magnitude to capitals as diverse as Washington, Peking and especially Moscow.
 * First lines

 * No invader has ever conquered the heart of Poland, that spirit which is the inheritance of sons and daughters, the private passion of families and the ancient, unbreakable tie to all those who came before.

 * A Pole is a man born with a sword in his right hand, a brick in his left. When the battle is over, he starts to rebuild.

 * ...the crucial Battle of Zamość, which is not stressed in most current histories because it involved a Polish-Russian battle in which the Poles won.

 * Second, after a painful gap without any king, and a furious struggle by various foreign powers to elect men favorable to them, the Seym chose a pathetic Polish incompetent, who had the good sense to die rather promptly.
 * page 153

 * Silence, much more powerful than before, much more shot through with the meaning of life and the accumulated wisdom of history.
 * page 361

 * He had obtained a clearer view of his homeland by leaving it and seeing it through the eyes of others.
 * page 571

 * Leonid Brezhnev needed a haircut, so he went down to the ground floor of the Kremlin and plopped into the chair. It was understood that at such times the barber was to say not a word, just cut hair. But this morning, after a few snips he said: "Comrade Brezhnev what are you going to do about Poland?" No reply. Some minutes later: "Comrade Brezhnev, what about Poland?" Again no reply. Then, pretty soon: "Comrade Brezhnev, you've got to do something about Poland." At this Brezhnev jumps out of the chair and tears away the cloth: "What's all this about Poland?" and the barber says: "It makes my job so much easier," and Brezhnev screams: "What do you mean?" and the barber says: "Every time I mention Poland your hair stands straight up on end."
 * page 567

 * ...organizations like the church or General Motors promote a man up and up until he reaches a spot which he is obviously incapable of filling, and there they lay him to rest.
 * page 587

 * [The church's] job is to provide permanent solace and spiritual leadership to the people as a whole, whatever their government at the moment, so long as it stays within the bounds of moral decency.
 * page 591

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Interview, St. Petersburg, Florida (10 January 1991)

 * I don't know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish; I could be part Negro; I could be Irish; I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss, but you live with that loss.

 * I do believe that everyone growing up faces differential opportunities. With me, it was books and travel and some good teachers. With somebody else, it may be a boy scout master. With somebody else, it will be a clergyman. Somebody else, an uncle who was wiser than the father. I think young people ought to seek that differential experience that is going to knock them off dead center. I was a typical American school boy. I happened to get straight A's and be pretty good in sports. But I had no great vision of what I could be. And I never had any yearning. My job was to live through Friday afternoon, get through the week, and eat something. And then along came these differential experiences that you don't look for, that you don't plan for, but, boy, you better not miss them. The things that make you bigger than you are. The things that give you a vision. The things that give you a challenge.

 * Not too many people work in a job where, waiting out there are three or four hundred people who are paid to tear apart what you've done. And often they are brighter than you are, or they know more about the subject than you do, or they wish they had written a book themselves, or done a lot better. Or they just don't like it! And you have to live with it. I have been very well treated by the critics in the long haul.

 * Things are going to go wrong, and I think we are false to life if we don't portray it. But there is also the hope that some lucky clown is going to come along and stumble into the gold mine. And I think you are also entitled to hold out that hope.

The World Is My Home (1991)

 * I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behaviour of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson — the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

 * I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril.

Quotes about Michener

 * Rice Krispies happens to be one of my favorite junk foods, just as I regard Michener as superior among junk writers.
 * Christopher Lehmann-Haupt reviewing Chesapeake (1978) in the International Herald Tribune (8 August 1978)

 * Mr Michener, as timeless as a stack of National Geographics, is the ultimate Summer Writer. Just as one goes back to the cottage in Maine, so one goes back to one's Michener.
 * Wilfrid Sheed in The New York Times (6 July 1980)

 * Texas is … "trotting" journalism, history in a hurry.
 * Hughes Rudd reviewing Texas (1985) in The New York Times (13 October 1985)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: James A. Michener


text:
Thomas Overbury

Sir Thomas Overbury (1581 – 14 September 1613) was a British poet and essayist.

Quotes

 * In part to blame is she, Which hath without consent bin only tride: He comes to neere that comes to be denide.
 * A Wife, stanza 36. Compare: "In part she is to blame that has been tried: He comes too late that comes to be denied", Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Lady’s Resolve (1713).

 * An Ambitious woman shewes her selfe to bee a troublesome disturber of the world, powerfull to make smale things great, and great monstrous
 * The Just Downfall of Ambition, Adultery and Murder.

 * He disdains all things above his reach, and preferreth all countries above his own.
 * Miscellaneous Works: An Affectate Traveller.

Oxford Book of English Prose

 * Quotes reported in: Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed., The Oxford Book of English Prose (1925), nos. 120, 121

 * Is a Country Wench, that is so far from making herself beautiful by art that one look of hers is able to put all face-physick out of countenance. She knows a fair look is but a dumb orator to commend virtue, therefore minds it not. All her excellencies stand in her so silently, as if they had stolen upon her without her knowledge. The lining of her apparel (which is herself) is far better than outsides of tissue: for though she be not arrayed in the spoil of the silkworm, she is decked in innocency, a far better wearing. She doth not, with lying long abed, spoil both her complexion and conditions; nature hath taught her too immoderate sleep is rust to the soul: she rises therefore with Chanticleer, her dame's cock, and at night makes the lamb her curfew. In milking a Cow, and straining the teats through her fingers, it seems that so sweet a milk-press makes the milk the whiter or sweeter; for never came almond glove or aromatic ointment on her palm to taint it. The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her feet when she reaps them, as if they wished to be bound and led prisoners by the same hand that felled them. Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new-made haycock. She makes her hand hard with labour, and her heart soft with pity; and when winter evenings fall early (sitting at her merry wheel) she sings a defiance to the giddy wheel of Fortune. She doth all things with so sweet a grace, it seems ignorance will not suffer her to do ill, being her mind is to do well. She bestows her year's wages at next fair; and in chusing her garments counts no bravery i' th' world like decency. The garden and beehive are all her physick and chirurgery, and she lives the longer for it. She dares go alone, and unfold sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none: yet to say truth, she is never alone, for she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones; yet they have their efficacy, in that they are not palled with ensuing idle cogitations. Lastly, her dreams are so chaste that she dare tell them; only a Friday's dream is all her superstition : that she conceals for fear of anger. Thus lives she, and all her care is she may die in the springtime, to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet.
 * Sir Thomas Overburye His Wife, &c.
 * Titled "A Fair and Happy Milkmaid" by Q.

 * His outside is an ancient Yeoman of England, though his inside may give arms (with the best gentleman) and ne'er see the herald. There is no truer servant in the house than himself. Though he be master, he says not to his servants, 'Go to field,' but, 'Let us go;' and with his own eye doth both fatten his flock and set forward all manner of husbandry. He is taught by nature to be contented with a little; his own fold yields him both food and raiment: he is pleased with any nourishment God sends, whilst curious gluttony ransacks, as it were, Noah's Ark for food, only to feed the riot of one meal. He is ne'er known to go to law; understanding to be law-bound among men is like to be hide-bound among his beasts; they thrive not under it: and that such men sleep as unquietly as if their pillows were stuffed with Lawyers' penknives. When he builds, no poor tenant's cottage hinders his prospect: they are indeed his Almshouses, though there be painted on them no such superscription: he never sits up late, but when he hunts the Badger, the vowed foe of his Lambs: nor uses he any cruelty, but when he hunts the hare, nor subtilty, but when he setteth snares for the Snite or pitfalls for the Blackbird; nor oppression, but when in the month of July he goes to the next river and shears his sheep. He allows of honest pastime, and thinks not the bones of the dead anything bruised, or the worse for it, though the country lasses dance in the churchyard after evensong. Rock Monday, and the Wake in Summer, Shrovings, the wakeful catches on Christmas Eve, the Hoky, or Seed-cake, these he yearly keeps, yet holds them no relics of Popery. He is not so inquisitive after news derived from the privy closet, when the finding an aerie of Hawks in his own ground, or the foaling of a Colt come of a good strain, are tidings more pleasant, more profitable. He is lord paramount within himself, though he hold by never so mean a Tenure; and dies the more contentedly (though he leave his heir young), in regard he leaves him not liable to a covetous Guardian. Lastly, to end him: he cares not when his end comes, he needs not fear his Audit, for his quietus is in heaven.
 * Sir Thomas Overburye His Wife, &c.
 * Titled "A Franklin" by Q.

title: Thomas Overbury


text:
Will Rogers

William Penn Adair Rogers (4 November 1879 – 15 August 1935) was an American humorist and entertainer; known primarily as Will Rogers.

Weekly columns

 * Will Rogers launched a weekly, nationally syndicated newspaper column in December 1922. The column eventually became known as the "Weekly Article" and ran in each Sunday edition. Its inclusion in the New York Times gave it a national readership.

 * See they conducted experiments on convicts ... I don't know on what grounds they reason a man in jail is a bigger liar than one out of jail ... The chances are telling the truth is what got him there ... It would be a big aid to humanity, it will never be, for already the politicians are up in arms against it ... It would wreck the very foundation on which our political government is run ... If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics ... Even the ministers are denouncing it now ... Humanity is not yet ready for either real truth or real harmony.
 * Nationally syndicated column number 31, A Few Shots of Scopolamin (15 July 1923), after meeting Robert E. House, who had proposed the use of scopolamine as a truth serum, in The Use of Scopolamine in Criminology (1922).

 * Well, all I know is what I read in the papers.
 * Nationally syndicated column number 42, Blames All Ills on Earthquake (1923). This became a remark Rogers often used in his public appearances.

 * Papers say: "Congress is deadlocked and can't act." I think that is the greatest blessing that could befall this country.
 * Weekly Article #59, 1924-01-27

 * You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
 * Nationally syndicated column number 90, From Nuts To The Soup (31 August 1924); published in The New York Times

 * Heroing is one of the shortest-lived professions there is.
 * Nationally syndicated column number 114, Monuments Are All Right But Even Heroes Must Eat (1925).

 * I never met a man I didn't like.
 * Nationally syndicated column number 219, Rogers Gets Six Shiny Dimes From Oil King (1927).

 * This election was lost four and five and six years ago not this year. They dident start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the dryest little spot. But he dident know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow's hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.
 * Nationally syndicated column number 518, And Here's How It All Happened (1932), as published in the Tulsa Daily World, 5 December 1932.

Daily telegrams

 * These short, daily columns were syndicated in 500 newspapers around the country. They were first published in the New York Times in July 1926 and continued until his death in August 1935.

 * When the Judgment Day comes civilization will have an alibi, "I never took a human life, I only sold the fellow the gun to take it with."
 * Daily Telegram #926, A General Digging Out Of Old War Contracts (15 July 1929)

 * Sure must be a great consolation to the poor people who lost their stock in the late crash to know that it has fallen in the hands of Mr. Rockefeller, who will take care of it and see it has a good home and never be allowed to wander around unprotected again. There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it.
 * Daily Telegram #1019, Thoughts Of Will Rogers On The Late Slumps In Stocks (31 October 1929)

 * But it's just as Mr. Brisbane and I have been constantly telling you, "Don't gamble"; take all your savings and buy some good stock, and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it.
 * Daily Telegram #1019, Thoughts Of Will Rogers On The Late Slumps In Stocks (31 October 1929)

 * You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.
 * Daily Telegram #1063, Will Rogers Has An Idea About Disarmament Plans (22 December 1929)

 * Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
 * Daily Telegram #1172, Will Rogers Sees No Value In All The Time We Save (28 April 1930)

 * This would be a great world to dance in if we didn't have to pay the fiddler.
 * Daily Telegram #1224, Rogers Offers His Version Of The Economic Situation (27 June 1930)

 * This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
 * Daily Telegram #1230, Congress Session, Rogers Says, Is Like Baby Getting A Hammer (4 July 1930)

 * We are the first nation to starve to death in a storehouse that's overfilled with everything we want.
 * Daily Telegram #1355, The First Good News of the 1928 Campaign! Mr. Rogers Says He Will Not Run For Anything (26 November 1930)

 * I certainly know that [A] comedian can only last till he either takes himself serious or his audience takes him serious and I don't want either of those to happen to me til I am dead (if then).
 * Daily Telegram #1538, The First Good News of the 1928 Campaign! Mr. Rogers Says He Will Not Run For Anything (28 June 1931)

 * I not only "don't choose to run" but I don't even want to leave a loophole in case I am drafted, so I won't "choose". I will say "won't run" no matter how bad the country will need a comedian by that time.
 * Daily Telegram #1538, The First Good News of the 1928 Campaign! Mr. Rogers Says He Will Not Run For Anything (28 June 1931)

 * Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with.
 * Daily Telegram #1538, The First Good News of the 1928 Campaign! Mr. Rogers Says He Will Not Run For Anything (28 June 1931)

 * The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living. That's one thing about a little education. It spoils you for actual work. The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.
 * Daily Telegram #1597, Will Rogers Finds Larnin' Spoils One For Real Work (4 September 1931)

 * This would be a great time in the world for some man to come along that knew something.
 * Daily Telegram #1611, Mr. Rogers Thinks Its Time That A Smart Man Came Along (21 September 1931)

 * I am a peace man. I haven't got any use for wars and there is no more humor in 'em than there is reason for 'em.
 * Daily Telegram (4 December 1931), as quoted in Will Rogers' Daily Telegrams (1979), p. 104; also in Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers (1995) edited by Bryan B. Sterling and Frances N. Sterling, p. 304

 * I doubt if a charging elephant, or a rhino, is as determined, or hard to check, as a socially ambitious mother.
 * Daily Telegram #1808, Mr. Rogers' Heart Goes Out To Our Envoy To St. James's (10 May 1932) in The New York Times, 11 May 1932

 * '''This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it. That we have carried as much political bunk as we have and still survived shows we are a super nation.
 * Daily Telegram #1948, Will Rogers Favors Closing the Campaign Right Now and Letting The Boys Go Fishing (1 November 1932)

 * I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only, to give everybody a chance to get sore at everybody else. Sometimes it takes two or three conferences to scare up a war, but generally one will do it.
 * Daily Telegram number 2159, Mr. Rogers Has An Idea How Conferences End (5 July 1933)

 * There ain't nothing that breaks up homes, country, and nations like somebody publishing their memoirs.
 * Daily Telegram number 2615, Mr. Rogers Finds the Wars At Home and Afar Alike (23 December 1934) in The New York Times, 24 December 1934

 * Our constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U. S. Senators. There ought to be one day (just one) when there is open season on senators.
 * Daily Telegram number 2678, Mr. Rogers Takes Notice Of The Senatorial Storm (6 March 1935)

 * We don't know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it.
 * Daily Telegram number 2768, Mr. Rogers Puts Us Down As A Nation of Fleas (19 June 1935)

As quoted in ...

 * No party is as bad as its state and national leaders.
 * "I Accept the Nomination", Life magazine, 31 May 1928

 * advertising [...] makes you spend money you haven't got for things you don't want.
 * As the Connecticut Yankee Hank Morgan / Sir Boss in the 1931 film A Connecticut Yankee (after Mark Twain). Cf. Ivan G. Shreve Jr: Thrilling days of yesteryear blogspot.de/2009/09. Also quoted in Printers' Ink magazine, volume 156, issue 1 (1931), p. 3 books.google and Advertising Outdoors Vol. 2, No. 8 (August 1931), p. 19, =

 * The United States never lost a war or won a conference.
 * Remark after the Versailles Peace Conference, as quoted in Wit and Wisdom (1936) edited by Jack Lait

 * When you get into trouble 5,000 miles from home, you've got to have been looking for it.
 * As quoted in Sanity Is Where You Find It : An affectionate history of the United States in the 20's and 30's (1955) edited by Donald Day.

 * The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.
 * As quoted in The New Speaker's Treasury of Wit and Wisdom (1958) by Herbert Victor Prochnow, p. 190

 * The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
 * As quoted in The Image : A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1963) by Daniel Joseph Boorstein

 * We all can't be heroes, for someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
 * As quoted in The Complete Speaker's Index to Selected Stories for Every Occasion (1967) by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 16
 * Variant: We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
 * As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 240

 * Personally, I have always felt the best doctor in the world is the veterinarian. He can't ask his patients what is the matter — he's got to just know.
 * As quoted in Ether and me; or "Just relax." (1973)

 * An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh.
 * As quoted in You Must Remember This (1975) by Walter Wagner, p. 175

 * An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.
 * As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 258

 * We are here just for a spell and then pass on. So get a few laughs and do the best you can. Live your life so that whenever you lose it, you are ahead.
 * Inscribed on the Will Rogers Memorial Building in Claremore, Oklahoma.
 * Variants: We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.
 * As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 285
 * We are all here for a short spell; so get all the good laughs you can.
 * As quoted in Civilization's Quotations : Life's Ideal (2002) by Richard Alan Krieger, p. 69

 * There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. Wikiquote-logo.svg QOTD 2007·11·04 Sound file
 * As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 524

 * Buy land. They ain't making any more of the stuff.
 * As quoted in Land in America : Its Value, Use, and Control (1981) by Peter M. Wolf, p. 6
 * Unsourced variant: Buy land, they aren't making any more of it.

 * Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?
 * As quoted in Dreams Come Due : Government and Economics as If Freedom Mattered (1986) by John Galt, p. 235

 * What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.
 * As quoted in Creative Leadership : Mining the Gold in Your Workforce (1998) by A. S. Migs Damiani, p. 168

 * Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
 * As quoted in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1998) by Connie Robertson

 * Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.
 * As quoted in Wit (2003) by Des MacHale, p. 299

 * The rest of the people know the condition of the country, for they live in it, but Congress has no idea what is going on in America, so the President has to tell 'em.
 * As quoted in Defending Liars : In Defense of President Bush and the War on Terror in Iraq (2006) by Howard L. Salter, p. 40

 * Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can't buy enough to eat.
 * As quoted in The Quotable Will Rogers (2006) by Joseph H. Carter

 * The only problem with Boy Scouts is, there aren't enough of them.
 * As quoted in Giving young people a chance to grow (22 Nov 2011)

The Illiterate Digest (1924)

 * The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best.
 * "Breaking into the Writing Game"

 * I tell you Folks, all Politics is Apple Sauce.

 * The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make one out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a Crook or a Martyr.
 * "Helping the Girls with their Income Taxes"

 * Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else.
 * Now everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody Else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its Humor, and if it keeps on happening, why the entire laughter kinder Fades out of it.
 * "Warning to Jokers: Lay off the Prince"

 * I have no Politics. I am for the Party that is out of Power, no matter which one it is. But I will give you my word that, in case of my appointment, I will not be a Republican; I will do my best to pull with you, and not embarrass you. In fact, my views on European affairs are so in accord with you, Mr. President, that I might almost be suspected of being a Democrat.
 * Humorous letter to Republican US President Warren Harding, facetiously offering to replace the American ambassador to the Court of St. James in England.

 * The American people are a very generous people and will forgive almost any weakness, with the possible exception of stupidity.

 * Every Gag I tell must be based on truth. No matter how much I may exaggerate it, it must have a certain amount of Truth. ... Now Rumor travels Faster, but it don't stay put as long as Truth.
 * "Politics Getting Ready to Jell"

 * We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.
 * "The World Tomorrow" After the Manner of Great Journalists

 * A man that don't love a Horse, there is something the matter with him. If he has no sympathy for the man that does love Horses, then there is something worse the matter with him.
 * "A Skinny Dakota Kid Who Made Good"

Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom (1935)

 * Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom (1935) by P. J. O'Brien

 * So when all the yielding and objections is over, the other Senator said, "I object to the remarks of a professional joker being put into the Congressional Record." Taking a dig at me, see? They didn't want any outside fellow contributing. Well, he had me wrong. Compared to them I'm an amateur, and the thing about my jokes is that they don't hurt anybody. You can say they're not funny or they're terrible or they're good or whatever it is, but they don't do no harm. But with Congress — every time they make a joke it's a law. And every time they make a law it's a joke.
 * Ch. 9

 * I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat.
 * Ch. 9 "Rogers was a lifelong Democrat but he studiously avoided partisanship. He contributed to the Democratic campaign funds, but at the same time he frequently appeared on benefit programs to raise money for the Republican treasury. Republican leaders sought his counsel in their campaigns as often as did the Democrats." ~ P. J. O'Brien
 * Variants: I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a Democrat. I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.

 * There is no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole Government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I don't even have to exaggerate.
 * Variant: People often ask me, 'Will, where do you get your jokes?' I just tell 'em, 'Well, I watch the government and report the facts, that is all I do, and I don't even find it necessary to exaggerate.
 * Variant: I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
 * As quoted in Saturday Review (25 August 1962)

The Autobiography of Will Rogers (1949)

 * There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education.

 * Communism is like prohibition, it's a good idea but it won't work.

 * You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.

 * When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do — well, that's Memoirs.

The Will Rogers Book (1972)

 * Written by Paula McSpadden Love, a niece of Will Rogers's and curator of the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma.

 * Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.

 * When I die, my epitaph or whatever you call those signs on gravestones is going to read: "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like." I am so proud of that I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. And when you come to my grave you will find me sitting there, proudly reading it.
 * "One of his most famous and most quoted remarks. First printed in the Boston Globe, June 16, 1930, after he had attended Tremont Temple Baptist Church, where Dr. James W. Brougher was minister. He asked Will to say a few words after the sermon. The papers were quick to pick up the remark, and it stayed with him the rest of his life. He also said it on various other occasions" ~ Paula McSpadden Love
 * Variant: I joked about every prominent man in my lifetime, but I never met one I didn't like.
 * John D. [Rockefeller] sure carried out my old saying,  "I never met a man I didn't like." Nationally syndicated column number 219, Rogers Gets Six Shiny Dimes From Oil King (1927).
 * The earliest dated citation of such a remark thus far found in research for Wikiquote is the one from 1926 about Leon Trotsky from the Saturday Evening Post (6 November 1926).

 * I originated a remark many years ago that I think has been copied more than any little thing that I've every said, and I used it in the FOLLIES of 1922. I said America has a unique record. We never lost a war and we never won a conference in our lives. I believe that we could without any degree of egotism, single-handed lick any nation in the world. But we can't confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on.

Other

 * These quotations do not appear in the Will Rogers Weekly Articles or  Daily Telegrams series of books published by the Oklahoma State University Press.

 * I bet you if I had met him and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I dident like. When you meet people, no matter what opinion you might have formed about them beforehand, why, after you meet them and see their angle and their personality, why, you can see a lot of good in all of them.
 * On Leon Trotsky Saturday Evening Post (6 November 1926) - note that Rogers specifically spelled the word "dident"

 * We can make this thing into a Party, instead of a Memory.
 * Letter to Al Smith regarding the Democratic party (19 January 1929)

 * We'll hold the distinction of being the only Nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile. Radio broadcast, Bacon, Beans, and Limousines, October 18, 1931
 * Quoted as 'We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poor house in an automobile.'in How We Elect Our Presidents (1952), edited by Donald Day, p. 111

 * And kid Congress and the Senate, don't scold 'em. They are just children thats never grown up. They don't like to be corrected in company. Don't send messages to 'em, send candy.
 * Advice sent to President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt (2 December 1932)

 * You've got to be optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a humorist to stay one.
 * Good Gulf radio show (24 June 1934)

 * You've never in your life seen a picture, I bet any one of you, never seen a picture of one of these old Pilgrims praying when they didn't have a gun right by the side of them. That was to see that he got what he was praying for.
 * radio broadcast (14 April 1935)

 * That's one thing about Republican Presidents. They never went in much for plans. They only had one plan. It says "Boys, my head is turned. Just get it while you can."
 * radio broadcast (21 April 1935)

Misattributed

 * I am not so much concerned with the return on capital as I am with the return of capital.
 * The Prudent Professor: Planning and Saving for a Worry-Free Retirement (2011) by Edwin M. Bridges, Brian D. Bridges;
 * Forbes Guide to the Markets: Becoming a Savvy Investor (2009) by Forbes, LLC, Marc M. Groz
 * The National Underwriter, Volume 45 (1941), p. 12: "As Eddie Cantor put it years ago, after getting burned in the stock market, the life insurance policyholder is more interested in the return of his money than in the return on it."

 * Diplomacy is the art of being able to say "nice doggie" until you have time to pick up a rock!
 * Quote given unattributed in a 1953 issue of the Tennessee conservationist
 * Diplomacy is the same as saying "nice doggie" until you have a chance to pick up a rock.
 * Attributed to Francis Rodman, in volume 64 of The Reader's digest (1954)
 * Other variants also attributed to Wynn Catlin in Kiss Me Hardy: Quotations Ancient and (Very) Modern (1982) by Roger Kilroy; and to Winston Churchill by Dick Applegate in a speech reprinted in Volume 75 of "The Carpenter" (1955)

 * Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.

 * You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

Quotes about Rogers

 * Another popular humorist of the day was Will Rogers, who used to do an act where he'd twirl a lasso and absolutely slay his audiences with such wry observations as: "The only thing I know is what I read in the papers." Ha-ha! Get it? Neither do we. Must have been something he did with the lasso.
 * Dave Barry, Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States (1989), p. 105

 * America has never produced anybody quite like him, and there has rarely been an American humorist whose words produced less empty laughter or more sober thought. His interviews with Mussolini and Primo de Rivera help to bear out his contention that European disarmament is a farce, and that the League of Nations is a piece of eyewash designed by some of the big powers to manipulate affairs to their own advantage. Perhaps Will Rogers has done more to educate the American public in world affairs than all the professors who have been elucidating the continental chaos since the Treaty of Versailles.
 * John Carter, in The New York Times (31 October 1926); also quoted in Will Rogers : A Biography (1962) by Donald Day, Ch. 20, p. 195

 * He helped steady millions of drifting people, not only financially through his charity campaigns and his own large personal gifts which he always tried to hide from public knowledge, but mentally and morally as well through the ability to lift people, guide them, make them laugh, and then make them think. Presidents, cowboys, financiers, kings, show people, children- he knew and liked them all and all were genuinely sorry when he died. I think- because of this personal trait which Lincoln had- that Will Rogers is one of the very greatest men who ever lived.
 * Harold Keith, Will Rogers, A Boy's Life (Norman: Levite of Apache, 1991), revised 1991 republication of 1937 original, foreword

 * From his earliest childhood Will Rogers had strongly defined characteristics. He was by nature affectionate and fun-loving and, though he loved to tease and play pranks on his friends, there was no malice in him. Underneath his love of fun and his careless ways, there was a great sensitiveness which, in his early years at least, sometimes caused him unhappiness. But he was quick to forgive those who hurt him as he was to ask forgiveness when he himself was in the wrong, and this, as well as many other lovable traits, made Will Rogers a great favorite among his classmates at Willie Halsell.
 * Harold Keith, Will Rogers, A Boy's Life (Norman: Levite of Apache, 1991), revised 1991 republication of 1937 original, p. 78-79

 * Although honors were thrust upon Will Rogers thick and fast, he always had the good judgment to refuse those he felt he had no business accepting. In 1938, a presidential boom for which he was in no way responsible, arose. The Rogers County Democratic convention started it and soon it had spread everywhere. But Will himself quickly blocked it. "I certainly know that a comedian can last only till he either takes himself seriously or his audience takes him seriously," he said, "and I don't want either one of those to happen to me till I'm read- if then. So let's stop all this foolishness right now." Another time he was offered an honorary degree by the Oklahoma City University, but he refused it. "This honorary degree thing is hooey," he said. "I got too much respect for people who work and earn 'em to see 'em handed around to every notorious character." His unusual stand was praised by newspapers and magazines everywhere.
 * Harold Keith, Will Rogers, A Boy's Life (Norman: Levite of Apache, 1991), revised 1991 republication of 1937 original, p. 251-252

 * As Will Rogers' popularity and earning capacity increased, his contributions to charities, both public and private, increased also. Although it is hard to obtain information on this phase of his life, because of his quietness and secrecy about it, it is known that he gave hundreds to newsboys' homes, maternity homes, hospitals for crippled children, and other institutions like nature. During the World War he gave hundreds of dollars to the Red Cross each month, and later, in 1927, he was made a life member of this organization, a distinction of which he was very proud, for he loved the Red Cross and the work it was doing. Eddie Cantor, the actor, once declared: "Will Rogers had Carnegie and both the Rockefellers backed off the boards in comparison. He is always giving and never telling. How much he gives away only Bill himself really can tell- and I doubt that he keeps any books on it. But I'm a poor guesser if it is less than fifty thousand dollars a year. And he'll up and deny it right, left and center, if you accuse him of it."
 * Harold Keith, Will Rogers, A Boy's Life (Norman: Levite of Apache, 1991), revised 1991 republication of 1937 original, p. 252-253

 * In addition to my deep appreciation of his humor the first time that I fully realized Will Rogers' exceptional and deep understanding of political and social problems was when he came home from his European trip in 1926. While I had discussed European matters with many others, both American and foreign, Will Rogers' analysis of affairs abroad was not only more interesting but proved to be more accurate than any other I had heard.
 * Franklin D. Roosevelt, as quoted in Will Rogers : A Biography (1962) by Donald Day, Ch. 20, p. 195

 * Will Rogers was America's most complete human document. He reflected in many ways the heartbeat of America. In thought and manner of appearance and in his daily life he was probably our most typical native born, the closest living approach to what we like to call the true American.
 * Damon Runyon, as quoted in Will Rogers : A Biography (1962) by Donald Day

 * There is a curious parallel between Will Rogers and Abraham Lincoln. They were rare figures whom we could call beloved with ease and without embarrassment.
 * Carl Sandburg, shortly after Roger's death, as quoted in Will Rogers : A Biography (1962) by Donald Day

 * The impact upon the people of America at the death of Will Rogers was similar to that produced by the death of Abraham Lincoln.
 * Robert Sherwood, as quoted in Will Rogers : A Biography (1962) by Donald Day

 * One of the best-known and one of the least-known men in the world. By inclination, a great mixer. By instinct, a hermit.
 * Spencer Tracy, as quoted in "What others said" at Tulsa World

title: Will Rogers


text:
Charles A. Beard

Charles Austin Beard (27 November 1874 – 1 September 1948) was an influential American historian. He stressed the importance of economic factors in American constitutional history. His partner was the historian Mary Ritter Beard

Quotes

 * What hope lies anywhere save in the widest freedom to inquire and expound — always with respect to the rights and opinions of others? As my friend, James Harvey Robinson, once remarked, the conservative who imagines that things will never change is always wrong; the radical is nearly always wrong too, but he does insure some slight risk of being right in his guess as to the direction of evolution. It is in silence, denial, evasion and suppression that danger really lies, not in open and free analysis and discussion ... everywhere there seems to be a fear of reliance upon that ancient device so gloriously celebrated by John Milton three hundred years ago — the device of unlimited inquiry. Let us put aside resolutely that great fright, tenderly and without malice, daring to be wrong in something important rather than right in some meticulous banality, fearing no evil while the mind is free to search, imagine, and conclude, inviting our countrymen to try other instruments than coercion and suppression in the effort to meet destiny with triumph, genially suspecting that no creed yet calendared in the annals of politics mirrors the doomful possibilities of infinity.
 * Address to the American Political Science Association at St. Louis, Missouri (29 December 1926), published as "Time, Technology, and the Creative Spirit in Political Science" in The American Political Science Review Vol. 21, Issue 1 (February 1927), p. 11

 * If this statement by Judge Cooley is true, and the authority for it is unimpeachable, then the theory that the Constitution is a written document is a legal fiction. The idea that it can be understood by a study of its language and the history of its past development is equally mythical. It is what the Government and the people who count in public affairs recognize and respect as such, what they think it is. More than this. It is not merely what it has been, or what it is today. It is always becoming something else and those who criticize it and the acts done under it, as well as those who praise, help to make it what it will be tomorrow.
 * The American Leviathan: The Republic in the Machine Age (1931) co-written with William Beard, p. 39

 * "Four sentences summarizing the lessons of History"
 * Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
 * The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.
 * The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
 * When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
 * After being asked if he could summarize the lessons of history in a short book, Beard replied that he could do it in those four sentences; as quoted in "Condensed History Lesson" by Arthur H. Secord, in Readers' Digest, Vol. 38, No. 226 (February 1941), p. 20; the first statement is an adaption of an ancient anonymous proverb, sometimes wrongly attributed to Euripides. The second is from Friedrich von Logau, "Retribution", Sinngedichte III, 2, 24, c. 1654, as translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(?). The origins of the third and fourth have not been determined.

 * If I were compelled to state in a single sentence the most significant contribution of our movement to modern civilization, I should say that it is the application of the idea of continuous and experimental research, found so effective in economic enterprise, to the business of public administration intimately and in a deep-thrusting sense, a contribution to the processes by which modern mankind is striving with all its resources to emancipate itself from the tyranny of rules of thumb and the blind regimen of nature, becoming conscious of its destiny as an all conquering power.
 * As quoted in The Administrative State (1948) by Dwight Waldo, p. 33

Philosophy, Science and Art of Public Administration (1939)

 * Address delivered before The Annual Conference of the Governmental Research Association, Princeton, New Jersey (8 September 1939), as quoted in Administration (1949) by Albert Lepawsky

 * The word science of administration has been used. There are many who object to the term. Now if by science is meant a conceptual scheme of things in which every particularity coveted may be assigned a mathematical value, then administration is not a science. In this sense only astro-physics may be called a science and it is well to remember that mechanical laws of the heavens tell us nothing about the color and composition of the stars and as yet cannot account for some of the disturbances and explosions which seem accidental. If, on the other hand, we may rightly use the term science in connection with a body of exact knowledge derived from experience and observation, and a body of rules or axioms which experience has demonstrated to be applicable in concrete practice, and to work out in practice approximately as forecast, then we may, if we please, appropriately and for convenience, speak of a science of administration. Once, when the great French mathematician, Poincaré, was asked whether Euclidean geometry is true, he replied that the question had no sense but that Euclidean geometry is and still remains the most convenient. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that a science is, among other things, a particular branch of knowledge or study; a recognized department of learning.
 * p. 660-1

 * The administrator is more like the engineer who constructs a power plant, that is, he is concerned with the realization of conscious human purposes by the conscious use of human beings and materials. It is true that the mere student of administration may be just an observer, but he does not merely observe natural, unconscious, and automatic operations. He observes the formulation of human purposes, consciously and deliberately and operations designed to effect given results. And he sees calculations of results in advance realized later in practice with a high degree of approximation. The degree of approximation between advance calculations and results is not often, if ever, as exact as in the case of a hydro-electric plant, but it is constantly exact enough for practical purposes.
 * p. 661

 * In other words, there are in administration things analogous to, if not identical with, the mechanical tracts or deterministic sequence, of physics. If, for example, it is decided by government to accomplish the purpose of providing compensation at given rates for men and women employed in industry who sustain injuries in connection with their occupations, the administrator can, like the engineer, estimate in advance the probable cost of such a design, indicate the types of officers and employees necessary to administer the design, and the administrative procedures appropriate to the whole process from beginning to end. And, as in the case of the hydro-electric engineer, the administrator, later sees the results of his operations and can compare them with his advance estimates. There are more variables and incalculables in human affairs than in hydroelectric affairs, but even so administration achieves pre-determined results with an approximation which is often amazing for its exactness. If administrative designs and estimates were not realized in practice with a high degree of exactness, both industry and government would collapse.
 * p. 661

 * And if the experience of natural science is any guide, then as the science of administration advances, we may reasonably expect it to take on an increasingly deterministic character. As research, scientific societies, and the exchanges of knowledge and hypotheses by natural scientists have advanced the exactness of knowledge in the domain of natural science, so we may expect research, administrative societies, and the exchanges among administrators to advance the exactness of knowledge in the domain of administration.
 * 661-2

 * Already, we may truly say, we have an enormous body of exact and usable knowledge in the domain of administration. It would be easy to list thousands of volumes and articles on the subject, from the hands of high competence. I have seen this body of literature grow from a few items in 1898 to an enormous mass in 1939. During this period I have seen the number of research workers increase from a mere handful to hundreds. This is a fact also, at least for informed and competent persons. During this period the opportunities for life work in administration have multiplied many times. I dare say, though I shall not try to prove it, that the body of exact literature in administration is many times larger than the body of exact literature in natural science when Bacon, Galileo, and Newton, began the revolution in natural science three hundred years ago. During this same period I have seen the number of societies and organizations among administrators, local and general, increase from nothing to fifty or sixty.
 * p. 662

 * This body of administrative literature can be taught to young men and women; perhaps also to the aged, if they are not hopeless. And it is possible by tests to discover whether or how far the process of communicating and imparting administrative knowledge has been successful, [although] not precisely in all cases. Moreover, and this is highly important, young men and women who have more or less mastered the principles, maxims, and axioms of administrative science can now, by what is called in-training, fortify their formal knowledge by living experiences in and with administration. There is, then, a science of administration, in the sense in which I have used the term, and it can be taught, learned, and used.
 * p. 662

Administration, A Foundation of Government (1940)

 * "Administration, A Foundation of Government" in American Political Science Review, Vol. XXXIV, No. 2 (April 1940), p. 232, as cited in Reflections on Public Administration (1947) by John M. Gaus, p. 7-8

 * I present, for what it is worth, and may prove to be worth, the following bill of axioms or aphorisms on public administration, as fitting this important occasion.
 * The continuous and fairly efficient discharge of certain functions by government, central and local, is a necessary condition for the existence of any great society.
 * As a society becomes more complicated, as its division of labor ramifies more widely, as its commerce extends, as technology takes the place of handicrafts and local self-sufficiency, the functions of government increase in number and in their vital relationships to the fortunes of society and individuals.
 * Any government in such a complicated society, consequently any such society itself, is strong in proportion to its capacity to administer the functions that are brought into being.
 * Legislation respecting these functions, difficult as it is, is relatively easy as compared with the enforcement of legislation, that is, the effective discharge of these functions in their most minute ramifications and for the public welfare.
 * When a form of government, such as ours, provides for legal changes, by the process of discussion and open decision, to fit social changes, then effective and wise administration becomes the central prerequisite for the perdurance of government and society — to use a metaphor, becomes a foundation of government as a going concern.
 * Unless the members of an administrative system are drawn from various classes and regions, unless careers are open in it to talents, unless the way is prepared by an appropriate scheme of general education, unless public officials are subjected to internal and external criticism of a constructive nature, then the public personnel will become a bureaucracy dangerous to society and to popular government.
 * Unless, as David Lilienthal has recently pointed out in an address on the Tennessee Valley Authority, an administrative system is so constructed and operated as to keep alive local and individual responsibilities, it is likely to destroy the basic well-springs of activity, hope, and enthusiasm necessary to popular government and to the following of a democratic civilization.

Quotes about Charles A. Beard

 * I began to read an enormous amount of history around this time. I was very taken with Charles Beard-at that point his writings seemed to me to represent great Marxist truths because he talked about the things that high school history never talked about, the underlying economic motives of history makers. I read everything he and his wife Mary Beard wrote.
 * Dorothy Ray Healey California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party (1990)

title: Charles A. Beard


text:
William Ellery Channing

William Ellery Channing (April 7 1780 – October 2 1842) was the foremost Unitarian theologian and preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century.
 * For his nephew, the Transcendentalist poet, see: William Ellery Channing (poet)

Quotes

 * I am a living member of the great Family of All Souls; and I cannot improve or suffer myself without diffusing good or evil around me through an ever-enlarging sphere.
 * "The Father's Love for Persons", in Selected Discourses and Essays from the works of William Ellery Channing, DD (1895)

 * God deliver us all from prejudice and unkindness, and fill us with the love of truth and virtue.
 * "Unitarian Christianity", an address to The First Independent Church of Baltimore (5 May 1819)

 * We honor revelation too highly to make it the antagonist of reason, or to believe that it calls us to renounce our highest powers.
 * "Unitarian Christianity", an address to The First Independent Church of Baltimore (5 May 1819)

 * We do, then, with all earnestness, though without reproaching our brethren, protest against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity. "To us," as to the Apostle and the primitive Christians, "there is one God, even the Father." With Jesus, we worship the Father, as the only living and true God. We are astonished, that any man can read the New Testament, and avoid the conviction, that the Father alone is God.
 * "Unitarian Christianity", an address to The First Independent Church of Baltimore (5 May 1819)

 * The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.
 * Review of The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (1827) by Sir Walter Scott, in the Christian Examiner (September - October 1827)

 * I affirm, and would maintain, that true religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the Supreme Being. Its noblest influence consists in making us more and more partakers of the Divinity. For this it is to be preached. Religious instruction should aim chiefly to turn men's aspirations and efforts to that perfection of the soul, which constitutes it a bright image of God. Such is the topic now to be discussed; and I implore Him, whose glory I seek, to aid me in unfolding and enforcing it with simplicity and clearness, with a calm and pure zeal, and with unfeigned charity.
 * "Likeness to God", an address in Providence, Rhode Island (1828)

 * I begin with observing, what all indeed will understand, that the likeness to God, of which I propose to speak, belongs to man's higher or spiritual nature. It has its foundation in the original and essential capacities of the mind. In proportion as these are unfolded by right and vigorous exertion, it is extended and brightened. In proportion as these lie dormant, it is obscured. In proportion as they are perverted and overpowered by the appetites and passions, it is blotted out. In truth, moral evil, if unresisted and habitual, may so blight and lay waste these capacities, that the image of God in man may seem to be wholly destroyed.
 * "Likeness to God", an address in Providence, Rhode Island (1828)

 * Likeness to God is the supreme gift. He can communicate nothing so precious, glorious, blessed, as himself. To hold intellectual and moral affinity with the Supreme Being, to partake his spirit, to be his children by derivations of kindred excellence, to bear a growing conformity to the perfection which we adore, this is a felicity which obscures and annihilates all other good. It is only in proportion to this likeness, that we can enjoy either God or the universe.
 * "Likeness to God", an address in Providence, Rhode Island (1828)

 * I see the marks of God in the heavens and the earth, but how much more in a liberal intellect, in magnanimity, in unconquerable rectitude, in a philanthropy which forgives every wrong, and which never despairs of the cause of Christ and human virtue. I do and I must reverence human nature... I thank God that my own lot is bound up with that of the human race.
 * "Likeness to God", an address in Providence, Rhode Island (1828)

 * There are seasons, in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. There are periods when...to dare, is the highest wisdom.
 * The Union (1829)

 * I call that mind free, which masters the senses, which protects itself against animal appetites, which contemns pleasure and pain in comparison to its own energy, which penetrates beneath the body and recognises its own reality and greatness, which passes life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting, and seeking after righteousness. I call that mind free, which escapes the bondage of matter, which, instead of stopping at the material universe and making it a prison wall, passes beyond it to its Author, and finds in the radiant signatures which everywhere bears of the Infinite Spirit, helps to its own spiritual enlightenment. I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven. I call that mind free, which sets no bounds to its love, which is not imprisoned in itself or in a sect, which recognises in all human beings the image of God and the rights of his children, which delights in virtue and sympathizes with suffering wherever they are seen, which conquers pride, anger, and sloth, and offers itself up a willing victim to the cause of mankind.
 * Spiritual Freedom (1830)

 * I have insisted on our own activity as essential to our progress; but we were not made to live or advance alone. Society is as needful to us as air or food. A child doomed to utter loneliness, growing up without sight or sound of human beings, would not put forth equal power with many brutes; and a man, never brought into contact with minds superior to his own, will probably run one and the same dull round of thought and action to the end of llfe. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are true levelers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race.
 * "Self-Culture", an address in Boston (September 1838)

 * The path to perfection is difficult to men in every lot; there is no royal road for rich or poor. But difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict. And how much has it already overcome! Under what burdens of oppression has it made its way for ages What mountains of difficulty has it cleared! And with all this experience, shall we say that the progress of the mass of men is to be despaired of; that the chains of bodily necessity are too strong and ponderous to be broken by the mind; that servile, unimproving drudgery is the unalterable condition of the multitude of the human race?
 * "Self-Culture", an address in Boston (September 1838)

 * All noble enthusiasms pass through a feverish stage, and grow wiser and more serene.
 * Emancipation (1840)

 * The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven.
 * "Remarks on the Character and Writings of Fénelon" (1843)

 * Undoubtedly some men are more gifted than others, and are marked out for more studious lives. But the work of such men is not to do others' thinking for them, but to help them to think more vigorously and effectually. Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves. The light and life which spring up in one soul are to be spread far and wide. Of all treasons against humanity, there is no one worse than his, who employs great intellectual force to keep down the intellect of his less-favoured brother.
 * "Lectures On The Elevation Of The Labouring Portion Of The Community: Lecture II", in The Works of William Ellery Channing, D.D. (1844) Vol. III, p. 81

 * "Whatever you may suffer, speak the truth. Be worthy of the entire confidence of your associates. Consider what is right as to what must be done. It is not necessary that you should keep your property, or even your life, but it is necessary that you should hold fast your integrity."
 * Memoir of William Ellery Channing: With Extracts from His Correspondence and Manuscripts (1848), Vol. II. Part III. Chapter VII: Home Life

War (1816)

 * An address to the Congregational Ministers of Massachussetts, Boston (1816)

 * Government, the peace-officer at home, breathes war abroad, organizes it into a science, reduces it to a system, makes it a trade, and applauds it as if it were the most honorable work of nations.

 * The influence of war on the community at large, on its prosperity, its morals, and its political institutions, though less striking than on the soldiery, is yet baleful. How often is a community impoverished to sustain a war in which it has no interest?

 * War is to be ranked among the most dreadful calamities which fall on a guilty world; and, what deserves consideration, it tends to multiply and perpetuate itself without end. It feeds and grows on the blood which it sheds. The passions, from which it springs, gain strength and fury from indulgence.

 * One of the great springs of war may be found in a very strong and general propensity of human nature, in the love of excitement, of emotion, of strong interest; a propensity which gives a charm to those bold and hazardous enterprises which call forth all the energies of our nature. No state of mind, not even positive suffering, is more painful than the want of interesting objects. The vacant soul preys on itself, and often rushes with impatience from the security which demands no effort, to the brink of peril.

 * Another powerful principle of our nature, which is the spring of war, is the passion for superiority, for triumph, for power. The human mind is aspiring, impatient of inferiority, and eager for preeminence and control.

 * A genuine, enlightened patriot discerns, that the welfare of his own country is involved in the general progress of society; and, in the character of a patriot, as well as of a Christian, he rejoices in the liberty and prosperity of other communities, and is anxious to maintain with them the relations of peace and amity.

 * We need not war to awaken human energy. There is at least equal scope for courage and magnanimity in blessing, as in destroying mankind. The condition of the human race offers inexhaustible objects for enterprise, and fortitude, and magnanimity. In relieving the countless wants and sorrows of the world, in exploring unknown regions, in carrying the arts and virtues of civilization to unimproved communities, in extending the bounds of knowledge, in diffusing the spirit of freedom, and especially in spreading the light and influence of Christianity, how much may be dared, how much endured!

Slavery (1835)

 * Full text online

 * No judgment can be just or wise, but that which is built on the conviction of the paramount worth and importance of duty. This is the fundamental truth, the supreme law of reason; and the mind which does not start from this, in its inquiries into human affairs, is doomed to great, perhaps fatal error. The right is the supreme good, and includes all other goods. In seeking and adhering to it, we secure our true and only happiness. All prosperity, not founded on it, is built on sand.

 * There are times when the assertion of great principles is the best service a man can render society. The present is a moment of bewildering excitement, when men's minds are stormed and darkened by strong passions and fierce conflicts; and also a moment of absorbing worldliness, when the moral law is made to bow to expediency, and its high and strict requirements are denied, or dismissed as metaphysical abstractions or impracticable theories. At such a season, to utter great principles without passion, and in the spirit of unfeigned and universal good-will, and to engrave them deeply and durably on men's minds, is to do more for the world, than to open mines of wealth, or to frame the most successful schemes of policy.

 * The deliberate, solemn conviction of good men through the world, that slavery is a grievous wrong to human nature, will make itself felt. To increase this moral power is every man's duty. To embody and express this great truth is in every man's power; and thus every man can do something to break the chain of the slave.

 * He who cannot see a brother, a child of God, a man possessing all the rights of humanity, under a skin darker than his own, wants the vision of a Christian. He worships the Outward. The spirit is not yet revealed to him. To look unmoved on the degradation and wrongs of a fellow-creature, because burned by a fiercer sun, proves us strangers to justice and love, in those universal forms which characterize Christianity.

A Human Being Cannot Be Justly Owned (1835)

 * "A Human Being Cannot Be Justly Owned" (1835)

 * The slave-holder claims the slave as his Property. The very idea of a slave is, that he belongs to another, that he is bound to live and labor for another, to be another's instrument, and to make another's will his habitual law, however adverse to his own. Another owns him, and, of course, has a right to his time and strength, a right to the fruits of his labor, a right to task him without his consent, and to determine the kind and duration of his toil, a right to confine him to any bounds, a right to extort the required work by stripes, a right, in a word, to use him as a tool, without contract, against his will, and in denial of his right to dispose of himself, or to use his power for his own good. "A slave," says the Louisiana code, "is in the power of the master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any thing, but which must belong to his master." "Slaves shall be deemed, taken, reputed, and adjudged," say the South-Carolina laws, "to be chattels personal in the hands of their masters, and possessions to all intents and purposes whatsoever." Such is slavery, a claim to man as property. Now this claim of property in a human being is altogether false, groundless. No such right of man in man can exist. A human being cannot be justly owned. To hold and treat him as property is to inflict a great wrong, to incur the guilt of oppression.

Self-Culture (1838)

 * Full text online

 * Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the common light which the sun sends into all our windows, which he pours freely, impartially over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason, and conscience, and love, are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few.

 * He who possesses the divine powers of the soul is a great being, be his place what it may. You may clothe him with rags, may immure him in a dungeon, may chain him to slavish tasks. But he is still great.

 * A clear thought, a pure affection, a resolute act of a virtuous will, have a dignity of quite another kind, and far higher than accumulations of brick and granite and plaster and stucco, however cunningly put together.

 * Real greatness has nothing to do with a man's sphere. It does not lie in the magnitude of his outward agency, in the extent of the effects which he produces. The greatest men may do comparatively little.

 * Grandeur of character lies wholly in force of soul, that is, in the force of thought, moral principle, and love, and this may be found in the humblest condition of life.

 * Many a man, who has gone but a few miles from home, understands human nature better, detects motives and weighs character more sagaciously, than another who has travelled over the known world, and made a name by his reports of different countries. It is force of thought which measures intellectual, and so it is force of principle which measures moral greatness.

 * The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering; and is this a greatness which is apt to make a show, or which is most likely to abound in conspicuous station?

 * I have chosen for the subject of this lecture Self-culture, or the care which every man owes to himself, to the unfolding and perfecting of his nature.

 * We are able to discern not only what we already are, but what we may become, to see in ourselves germs and promises of a growth to which no bounds can be set, to dart beyond what we have actually gained to the idea of perfection as the end of our being. It is by this self-comprehending power that we are distinguished from the brutes, which give no signs of looking into themselves. Without this there would be no self-culture, for we should not know the work to be done; and one reason why self-culture is so little proposed is, that so few penetrate into their own nature. To most men, their own spirits are shadowy, unreal, compared with what is outward. When they happen to cast a glance inward, they see there only a dark, vague chaos. They distinguish, perhaps, some violent passion, which has driven them to injurious excess; but their highest powers hardly attract a thought; and thus multitudes live and die as truly strangers to themselves as to countries of which they have heard the name, but which human foot has never trodden.

 * Of all the discoveries which men need to make, the most important, at the present moment, is that of the self-forming power treasured up in themselves. They little suspect its extent, as little as the savage apprehends the energy which the mind is created to exert on the material world.

 * Whoever desires that his intellect may grow up to soundness, to healthy vigor, must begin with moral discipline. Reading and study are not enough to perfect the power of thought. One thing above all is needful, and that is, the disinterestedness which is the very soul of virtue. To gain truth, which is the great object of the understanding, I must seek it disinterestedly. Here is the first and grand condition of intellectual progress. I must choose to receive the truth, no matter how it bears on myself. I must follow it, no matter where it leads, what interests it opposes, to what persecution or loss it lays me open, from what party it severs me, or to what party it allies. Without this fairness of mind, which is only another phrase for disinterested love of truth, great native powers of understanding are perverted and led astray.

 * Intellectual culture consists, not chiefly, as many are apt to think, in accumulating information, though this is important, but in building up a force of thought which may be turned at will on any subjects on which we are called to pass judgment. This force is manifested in the concentration of the attention, in accurate, penetrating observation, in reducing complex subjects to their elements, in diving beneath the effect to the cause, in detecting the more subtle differences and resemblances of things, in reading the future in the present, and especially in rising from particular facts to general laws or universal truths. ... Oone man talks continually about the particular actions of this or another neighbor; whilst another looks beyond the acts to the inward principle from which they spring, and gathers from them larger views of human nature.

 * There is but a very minute portion of the creation which we can turn into food and clothes, or gratification for the body; but the whole creation may be used to minister to the sense of beauty.

 * The greatest truths are wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural and fit attire.

 * Get wealth if you can by honorable means, and if it do not cost too much. A true cultivation of the mind is fitted to forward you in your worldly concerns, and you ought to use it for this end. Only, beware lest this end master you; lest your motives sink as your condition improves; lest you fall victims to the miserable passion of vying with those around you in show, luxury, and expense. Cherish a true respect for yourselves. Feel that your nature is worth more than every thing which is foreign to you.

 * Books are the true levelers. They give to all who will faithfully use them the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, ... I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.

 * ... The past and the present call on you to advance. Let what you have gained be an impulse to something higher. Your nature is too great to be crushed. You were not created what you are, merely to toil, eat, drink, and sleep, like the inferior animals. If you will, you can rise. No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent. Do not be lulled to sleep by the flatteries which you hear, as if your participation in the national sovereignty made you equal to the noblest of your race. You have many and great deficiencies to be remedied; and the remedy lies, not in the ballot-box, not in the exercise of your political powers, but in the faithful education of yourselves and your children. ..

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

 * Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

 * Compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us with firm and cheerful trust endure all trials, discharge all duties, accept all sacrifices, fulf1ll the law of universal and impartial love, and adopt as our own that cause of truth, righteousness, humanity, liberty, and holiness, — which being the cause of the All-Good, cannot but triumph over all powers of evil. Let us rise into blest assurance that everywhere and forever we are enfolded, penetrated, guarded, guided, kept by the power of the Father and Friend, who can never forsake us; and that all spirits who have begun to seek, know, love, and serve the All-Perfect One on earth shall be reunited in a celestial home, and be welcomed together into the freedom of the universe, and the perpetual light of His presence.
 * p. 17

 * No other fame can be compared with that of Jesus. He has a place in the human heart, that no one who ever lived has in any measure rivaled. No name is pronounced with a tone of such love and veneration. All other laurels wither before His. His are ever kept fresh with tears of gratitude.
 * p. 60

 * The sages and heroes of history are receding from us, and history contracts the record of their deeds into a narrow and narrower page. But time has no power over the name and deeds and words of Jesus Christ.
 * p. 61

 * Other sages have spoken to me of God. But from whom could I have learned the essence of Divine perfection, as from Him, who was in a peculiar sense the Son, representative, and image of God — who was especially an incarnation of the unbounded love of the Father? And from what other teacher could I have learned to approach the Supreme Being with that filial spirit, which forms the happiness of my fellowship with Him? From other seers I might have heard of heaven; but when I behold in Jesus the spirit of heaven, dwelling actually on earth, what a new comprehension have I of that better world!
 * p. 62

 * The miracles of Christ were studiously performed in the most unostentatious way. He seemed anxious to veil His majesty under the love with which they were wrought.
 * p. 66

 * Compassionate Saviour! We welcome Thee to our world, We welcome Thee to our hearts. We bless Thee for the Divine goodness Thou hast brought from heaven; for the souls Thou hast warmed with love to man, and lifted up in love to God; for the efforts of divine philanthropy which Thou hast inspired; and for that hope of a pure celestial life, through which Thy disciples triumph over death.
 * p. 85

 * What a sublime doctrine it is, that goodness cherished now is eternal life already entered on!
 * p. 210

 * Let us aspire towards this living confidence, that it is the will of God to unfold and exalt without end the spirit that trusts itself to Him in well-doing as to a faithful Creator.
 * p. 239.

 * Do we vividly feel that He is near us as our everlasting Friend, to guide, cheer, and bless our aspirations and our efforts? And in this confidence do we watch, pray, strive, press forward, and seek resolutely for ourselves and fellow-beings the highest end of existence, even the perfection of our immortal souls?
 * p. 277

 * O, for a voice of power to arouse the human spirit from its death in life of animality, to quicken it with a fit consciousness of its own nature, to lift it to an adequate comprehension of the purposes for which the sublime thoughts of God, of duty, of disinterested love, of heaven are opened within!
 * p. 317

 * In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail.
 * p. 420

 * Religion is faith in an infinite Creator, who delights in and enjoins that rectitude which conscience commands us to seek. This conviction gives a Divine sanction to duty.
 * p. 493

 * It was religion, which, by teaching men their near relation to God, awakened in them the consciousness of their importance as individuals. It was the struggle for religious rights, which opened their eyes to all their rights. It was resistance to religious usurpation, which led men to withstand political oppression. It was religious discussion, which roused the minds of all classes to free and vigorous thought.
 * p. 498

 * Contempt of all outward things, which come in competition with duty, fulfills the ideal of human greatness. This conviction, that readiness to sacrifice life's highest material good and life itself, is essential to the elevation of human nature, is no illusion of ardent youth, nor outburst of blind enthusiasm. It does not yield to growing wisdom. It is confirmed by all experience. It is sanctioned by conscience — that universal and eternal lawgiver whose chief dictate is, that every thing must be yielded up for the right.
 * p. 533.

 * Did any man at his death ever regret his conflicts with himself, his victories over appetite, his scorn of impure pleasure, or his sufferings for righteousness' sake?
 * p. 536

 * The sin that now rises to memory as your bosom sin, let this first of all be withstood and mastered. Oppose it instantly by a detestation of it, by a firm will to conquer it, by reflection, by reason, and by prayer.
 * p. 551

Misattributed

 * We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is overeager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.
 * Philip Nicholas Shuttleworth (1782–1842), bishop of Chichester, in an address "Christ's Yoke Easy and Burden Light", published in The Sunday Library; or, The Protestant's Manual for the Sabbath-day (1831) by Thomas Frognall Dibdin; this seems to have become misattributed to Channing in A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) by Tryon Edwards

Quotes about William Ellery Channing

 * I would ask, if this modesty is not attractive also, when manifested in the other sex? It was strikingly marked in Horace Mann, when presiding over the late National Educational Convention in this city. The retiring modesty of William Ellery Channing was beautiful, as well as of many others who have filled elevated stations in society. These virtues, differing as they may in degree in man and woman, are of the same nature, and call forth our admiration wherever manifested.
 * Lucretia Mott, "Why Should Not Woman Seek to Be a Reformer?" (1854)

title: William Ellery Channing