They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly im...agine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally avowable emotion, it may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment the...re was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all remaining respect for it, and pitied it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half-witted with the half- witted, because we appreciate only a third ...part of their wit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let's think about what's the whole ba...ttle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have had the accomplishment of something like this at heart ever since I was a boy.... So I feel tonight like the man who is lod...ging happily in the inn which lies half way along the journey and that in time, with a fresh impulse, we shall go the rest of the journey and sleep at the journey's end like men with a quiet conscience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »