[On Harvard President Charles William Eliot's lamentation that the average Harvard graduate had fewer than two children:] That is ...quite enough. Harvard graduates do not always make the best fathers. Why should we be agitated over the too small families of the rich when there are so many children of the poor that are not cared for? The rich should make it their duty to raise up these children to a higher standard.... Men of the world hate to give up their tobacco, liquor, sports, clubs, their luxurious habits, their freedom from responsibility. They prefer to flock together and so women are compelled to do the same. President Eliot talks as though the young women were sitting around anxiously and aimlessly waiting for the graduates to come and get them. He would find, if he should make the proper investigation, that a class of women is being developed who are demanding a higher standard of morals in men than did those of past generations, and if they cannot get husbands who reach this standard they are making very satisfactory careers for themselves outside of marriage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The chuck wagon carries the food and utensils for the range kitchen. Man-at-the-pot is the first buckaroo to pick up the coffee po...t when out with the chuck wagons. It becomes his duty to pour the coffee for the outfit. "Come and get her before I throw her out" is the time honored mess call.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The people of this country are too tolerant. There's no other country in the world where they'd allow it... After all we built up ...this country and then we allow a lot of foreigners, the scum of Europe, the offscourings of Polish ghettos to come and run it for us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount... of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power. You can think about only what you know, so you ought to learn something; on the other hand, you can know only what you have thought about.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that... you should say, "Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?" No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a sort of myth of History that philosophers have.... History for philosophers is some sort of great, vast continuity in w...hich the freedom of individuals and economic or social determinations come and get entangled. When someone lays a finger on one of those great themes--continuity, the effective exercise of human liberty, how individual liberty is articulated with social determinations--when someone touches one of these three myths, these good people start crying out that History is being raped or murdered.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let us have compassion for those under chastisement. Alas, who are we ourselves? Who am I and who are you? Whence do we come and i...s it quite certain that we did nothing before we were born? This earth is not without some resemblance to a gaol. Who knows but that man is a victim of divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so constituted that one senses punishment everywhere.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now we may have more preachers out there than we have drinkers. But a fellow told me a story one time about a man down in Kentucky... where they make bourbon. And he said you can take a jigger or two jiggers and get by all right. But if you try to take the whole bottle why you have lost what you started with. So don't try to take it too quick. And don't try to do all of it at once. I don't do much promising. I tell what my goals are and then I try to wrap it up and put a blue ribbon on it and get it delivered. We say put the coonskin on the wall.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Come, and trip it as ye go On the light fantastic toe,... And in thy right hand lead with thee, The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »