Nothing that we could say could add to the impressiveness of the lesson furnished by the events of the past year, as to the needs and the dangerous condition of the neglected classes in our city. Those terrible days in July—the sudden appearance, as if from the bosom of the earth, of a most infuriated and degraded mob; the helplessness of property holders and the better classes;… immense destruction of property—were the first dreadful revelations to many of our people of the existence among us of a great, ignorant, irresponsible class who were growing up here without any permanent interest in the welfare of the community or the success of the government…. It should be remembered that there are no dangers to the value of property, or to the permanency of our institutions, so great as those from the existence of such a class of vagabond, ignorant, and ungoverned children. This "dangerous class" has not begun to show itself as it will in eight or ten years when these boys and girls are matured. Those who were too negligent or too selfish to notice them as children, will be fully aware of them as men. They will vote. They will have the same rights as we ourselves, though they have grown up ignorant of moral principle…. They will poison society. They will perhaps be embittered at the wealth and the luxuries they never share. Then let society beware, when the outcasts, vicious, reckless multitude … swarming now in every foul alley and low street, come to know their power and use it.
Children's Aid Society 11th Annual Report, "written in the aftermath of the draft riots of 1864", according to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who quoted from it August 25, 1966. Federal Role in Urban Affairs, hearings before the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization of the Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, 89th Congress, 2d session (1966), part 4, p. 919.
Sir, since the debate opened months ago those of us who have stood against this proposition have been taunted many times with being little Americans. Leave us the word American, keep that in your presumptuous impeachment, and no taunt can disturb us, no gibe discompose our purposes. Call us little Americans if you will, but leave us the consolation and the pride which the term American, however modified, still imparts.
William Edgar Borah, remarks in the Senate, November 19, 1919, Congressional Record, vol. 58, p. 8783. This speech, known as the "Little American" speech, referred to the treaty to ratify the League of Nations proposed after World War I.
That what is true of business and politics is gloriously true of the professions, the arts and crafts, the sciences, the sports. That the best picture has not yet been painted; the greatest poem is still unsung; the mightiest novel remains to be written; the divinest music has not been conceived even by Bach. In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has to be discovered. We know only a few streaks about astronomy. We are only beginning to imagine the force and composition of the atom. Physics has not yet found any indivisible matter, or psychology a sensible soul.
Lincoln Steffens, "This World Depression of Ours is Chock-full of Good News", Hearst's International Combined with Cosmopolitan (October 1932), p. 26; reprinted in The World of Lincoln Steffens, ed. Ella Winter and Herbert Shapiro (1962), p. 216.
Catholic-baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals.
Peter Viereck, Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals (1953), chapter 3, p. 45.
Where they [] resemble each other, however, is that in all cases, it is the Western impact which has stirred up the winds of change and set the processes of modernization in motion. Education brought not only the idea of equality but also another belief which we used to take for granted in the West—the idea of progress, the idea that science and technology can be used to better human conditions. In ancient society, men tended to believe themselves fortunate if tomorrow was not worse than today and anyway, there was little they could do about it. The idea, the revolutionary idea, that tomorrow might be better and that man can do something about it is entirely Western—and all around the world it inspires what Mr. Adlai Stevenson has called "the revolution of rising expectations." If a man has lived in a tradition which tells him that nothing can be done about his human condition, to believe that progress is possible may well be the greatest revolution of all.
Barbara Ward, The Unity of the Free World (1961), p. 12; from her lecture on the cultures of Asia and the continent of Africa, State University of Iowa, Iowa City (April 6, 1961).
I didn't say that I didn't say it. I said that I didn't say that I said it. I want to make that very clear.
Attributed to George Romney, National Review (December 12, 1967), cover. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
A committee is a group of the unwilling, chosen from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.
Author unknown. Reported Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
