The cigar-box which the European calls a "lift" needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to r...eflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like the man's patent purge--it worksLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, ...all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose--some for cash and some for "political influence." We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice.... We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. "Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic i...s a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A Republican by principle and devotion, I will, until my death, oppose all Royalists ... and all enemies of my Government and the ...Republic.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 »
Our system of government, in spite of Vietnam, Cambodia, CIA, Watergate, is still the best system of government on earth. And the ...greatest resource of all are the 215 million Americans who still have within us the strength, the character, the intelligence, the experience, the patriotism, the idealism, the compassion, the sense of brotherhood on which we can rely in the future to restore the greatness to our country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is an enormous chasm between the relatively rich and powerful people who make decisions in government, business, and finance... and our poorer neighbors who must depend on these decisions to alleviate the problems caused by their lack of power and influence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »