The nature of Man and his condition in the world, for the first time within the period of certain history, controlled the formatio...n of the State. The necessity of the colonists wrote the law. Their wants, their poverty, their manifest convenience made them bold to ask of the Governor and of the General Court, immunities, and to certain purposes, sovereign powers. The townsmen's words were heard and weighed, for all knew that it was a petitioner that could not be slighted; it was the river, or the winter, or famine, or the Pequots, that spoke through them to the Governor and Council of Massachusetts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace; the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch ji...g, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinquepace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Today, more than ever before, American capital is seeking investment in foreign countries, and American products are more and more... generally seeking foreign markets. As a consequence, in all countries there are American citizens and American interests to be protected, on occasion, by their Government. These movements of men, capital, and of commodities bring peoples and governments close together and so form bonds of peace and mutual dependency, as they must also sometimes make passing points of friction. The resultant situation inevitably imposes upon this Government vastly increased responsibilities. This Administration, through the Department of State and the foreign service, is lending all proper support to legitimate and beneficial American enterprises in foreign countries, the degree of such support being measured by the national advantages to be expected.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is better to have the power of self-protection than to depend on any man, whether he be the Governor in his chair of State, or ...the hunted outlaw wandering through the night, hungry and cold and with murder in his heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men are apt to mistake, or at least to seem to mistake, their own talents, in hopes, perhaps, of misleading others to allow them t...hat which they are conscious they do not possess. Thus lord Hardwicke valued himself more upon being a great minister of state, which he certainly was not, than upon being a great magistrate, which he certainly was.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himse...lf with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, "Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Heads of state are notoriously ill prepared for their mature careers; think of Adolf Hitler (landscape painter), Ho Chi Minh (seam...an), and our own Ronald Reagan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is the story-teller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State ...approval.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »