I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the libert...y of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her--Lucretia Mott, the Grimke sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone--a long galaxy of great women.... Those older women have gone on, and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examinatio...n.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I may as well say, what all men feel, that whilst our every amiable and very innocent representatives and senators at Washington a...re accomplished lawyers and merchants, and every eloquent at dinners and at caucuses, there is a disastrous want of men in New England.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Who decides what is margin and what is text? Who decides where the borders of the homeland run? Absences and silences are potent. ...It is the eloquent margins which frame the official history of the land. As for geography, there are divisions and boundary lines that fissure any state more deeply than the moat it digs around the nationhood. In every country there are gaping holes. People fall through them and disappear. Yet on every side there are also doors to a wider place, a covert geography under sleep where all the waters meet.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politi...cians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are told to maintain constitutions because they are constitutions, and what is laid down in those constitutions?... Certain gre...at fundamental ideas of right are common to the world, and ... all laws of man's making which trample on these ideas, are null and void--wrong to obey, right to disobey. The Constitution of the United States recognizes human slavery; and makes the souls of men articles of purchase and of sale.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of spe...ech and slow of tongue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The contrast between Leonardo and Michelangelo is an allegory of the arts of modern times. Leonardo left copious notes of his obse...rvations on nature and the world around him, but little about his feelings or his inner life. Michelangelo, in his letters, his poetry, in biographies by his friends and students Vasari and Condivi, in conversations with Francisco de Hollanda and others, left us vivid revelations and eloquent chronicles of himself. Leonardo, the self-styled "disciple of experience," was a hero of the effort to re-create the world from the shapes and forms and sensations out there. But Michelangelo, prophet of the sovereign self, found mysterious resources within. These two greatest figures of Italian Renaissance art dramatized a modern movement from craftsman to artist. If Leonardo could be called the Aristotle--practical-minded organizer and surveyor of experience--Michelangelo would be the Plato, seeker after the perfect idea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A broad consensus exists that Lincoln was more eloquent than Davis in expressing war aims, more successful in communicating with t...he people, more skillful as a political leader in keeping factions working together for the war effort, better able to endure criticism and work with his critics to achieve a common goal. Lincoln was flexible, pragmatic, with a sense of humor to smooth relationships and help him survive the stress of his job; Davis was austere, rigid, humorless, with the type of personality that readily made enemies. Lincoln had a strong physical constitution; Davis suffered ill health and was frequently prostrated with illness. Lincoln picked good administrative subordinates (with some exceptions) and knew how to delegate authority to them; Davis went through five secretaries of war in four years; he spent a great deal of time and energy on petty administrative details that he should have left to subordinates. A disputatious man, Davis sometimes seemed to prefer winning an argument to winning the war; Lincoln was happy to lose an argument if it would help him win the war.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most eloquent eulogy of capitalism was made by its greatest enemy. Marx is only anti-capitalist in so far as capitalism is out... of date.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »