Category: Thought

Bigotry may be called the appalling frenzy of the indifferent. This frenzy of the indifferent is in truth a terrible thing; it has made all monstrous and widely pervading persecutions. In this degree it was not the people who cared who ever persecuted; the people who cared were not sufficiently numerous. It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack. There have come some persecutions out of the pain of a passionate certainty; but these produced, not bigotry, but fanaticism — a very different and a somewhat admirable thing. Bigotry in the main has always been the pervading omnipotence of those who do not care crushing out those who care in darkness and blood.

The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.

A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.

What is the use of being elected or reelected, unless you stand for something?

Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people.

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.