The bad news for animals is twofold. First, in all of these cases--women's rights, the abolition of slavery, ending apartheid--a g...ood part of the political momentum comes from the oppressed themselves. Progress in South Africa never would have begun if blacks there hadn't perceived their own dignity and fought for it. Second, in all these cases, empathy for the oppressed by influential outsiders came because the outsiders could identify with the oppressed--because, after all, they're people, too. With animal rights, in contrast, (1) the oppressed can never by themselves exert leverage; and (2) the outsiders who work on their behalf, belonging as they do to a different species, must be exquisitely, imaginatively compassionate in order to be drawn to the cause. To judge by history, this is not a recipe for success.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A republican government should be based on free and equal education among the people. While we have class and sectarian schools th...e parties supporting them will not give their fullest aid toward building up the public school system. If all of the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money and energies on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals. To be a success a republic must have a homogeneous people, and to do this it must have homogeneous schools.... I grow more and more opposed to [sectarian schools].LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Plato--who may have understood better what forms the mind of man than do some of our contemporaries who want their children expose...d only to "real" people and everyday events--knew what intellectual experience made for true humanity. He suggested that the future citizens of his ideal republic begin their literary education with the telling of myths, rather than with mere facts or so-called rational teachings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Governments like natural bodies have their time of growing perfection and declining, and according to their constitutions, some ho...ld out longer, and some decay sooner than otherse, but all in their beginnings and infancies are subject to so many infirmities and imperfections, that what Solomon said of a monarchy, "Woe to that kingdom whose prince is a child," may be more justly said of a new republic and we may with as much reason say, "Woe be to that people that live under a young government."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable... and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary mona...rchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the p...eople rule.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The United States is a republic, and a republic is a state in which the people are the boss. That means us. And if the big shots i...n Washington don't do like we vote, we don't vote for them, by golly, no more.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On fields all drenched with blood he made his record in war, abstained from lawless violence when left on the plantation, and rece...ived his freedom in peace with moderation. But he holds in this Republic the position of an alien race among a people impatient of a rival. And in the eyes of some it seems that no valor redeems him, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the ban which clings to him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »