I have seen in my time two enormous extensions of the suffrage to men--one in America and one in England. But neither the negroes ...in the South nor the agricultural laborers in Great Britain had shown before they got the ballot any capacity of government; for they had never had the opportunity to take the first steps of political action. Very different has been the history of the march of women toward a recognized position in the State. We have had to prove our ability at each stage of progress, and have gained nothing without having satisfied a test of capacity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The learned professors have been at considerable pains in their attempts to make a distinction between tools and implements on the... one hand, and machinery on the other. Nor have they arrived much of anywhere. The one is continually shading into the other. Here is an ordinary shovel used by a day labourer in a ditch; here is the same shovel with a somewhat thicker handle, containing a pneumatic attachment which is said to improve its digging power; here is a very much larger shovel with curved ends and steel teeth, hitched to an arm that is hitched to a steam engine, which can gobble up a cartload of dirt at one mouthful. Where does the tool stop and the machine begin? A grindstone is widely held to be a primitive tool; a turret lathe is widely held to be a machine. Both spin around. What is the essential difference? The employment of nonhuman power, steam, oil, gas, has been defined as the difference. Well and good. Then everything worked by human hands and legs is a tool only, and bicycles, typewriters, adding machines, sewing machines, foot lathes, clocks, hand-pumps--are not machines. Which is absurd. And what is one to do with treadmills for grinding corn, whose motive power is said by some to be the donkey, and by some the carrot in front of his nose?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Next week Reagan will probably announce that American scientists have discovered that the entire U.S. agricultural surplus can be ...compacted into a giant tomato one thousand miles across, which will be suspended above the Kremlin from a cluster of U.S. satellites flying in geosynchronous orbit. At the first sign of trouble the satellites will drop the tomato on the Kremlin, drowning the fractious Muscovites in ketchup.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think the people over here are coming to realize what would happen if Germany and Italy won a European war. We would be out of t...he picture entirely.... If I were a German conqueror what would I do? Obviously I would have the British navy out of the way and the French army out of the way.... The first thing I would do is look around and say, "What outside territories do I want to take for myself?"... We are not quite ready to take on the United States but we can do it by indirection very nicely. We are going to dominate South America ... without violating the Monroe Doctrine. [FDR set forth a scenario of economic domination of Latin America by giving Argentina a choice of agreeing to German domination of its army by economic blackmail by virtue of the fact that Germany controlled all the agricultural markets in Europe on which Argentina depended for livelihood and the same for Brazil.] It is a perfectly open and shut thing and, if you have the complete, physical power to do it, you win.... [F]rom Hitler's point of view, it is rational. And, if any of us were in his place, with his methods, we would do it. I made myself a hump-back, dyed my skin in several places with great spots of yellow; so that, when I look'd in the glass, I was almost frighten'd at my own figure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The War of the Roses in England and the Civil War in America were both intestinal conflicts arising out of similar ideas. In the f...irst the clash was between feudalism and the new economic order; in the second, between an agricultural society and a new industrial one. Both led to similar ends; the first to the founding of the English nation, and the second to the founding of the American. Both were strangely interlinked; for it was men of the old military and not of the new economic mind--men, such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh--who founded the English colonies in America.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good govern...ment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs in advancing the sciences, will lea...ve lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity; but every one must not hope to be a Boyle, or a Sydenham; and in an age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius, and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some others of that strain; it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »