It's just a game--baseball--an amusement, a marginal thing, not an art, not a consequential metaphor for life, not a public trust.... It may have broken Bart Giamatti's sentimental heart, but it will never break mine.... In its behind-the-scenes machinations as sport, baseball has developed unexpected ties to big-time professional wrestling, with that strange spectacle's buffoonish, self-important, overstuffed Steinbrennerish management types spouting gibberish about the best interests of this and such and the need for moral direction, all in counterpoise to sullenly big-muscled, bad-boy superstars nattering and snuffling about not getting any respect and not being in it for the dough, and being in it for the dough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The misdeeds of ordinary men can be buried with them, and their lives described in half-truths that are really half-lies. But not ...a public man. Particularly not this one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My remembrance of the past is a novel I am constantly recomposing; and it would not be a historical novel, but sheer fiction, if t...he material events which mark and ballast my career had not their public dates and characters scientifically discoverable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When in the enfranchisement of the black men [women] saw another ignorant class of voters placed about their heads, and beheld the... danger of a distinctively "male" government, forever involving the nations of the earth in war and violence; and demanded for the protection of themselves and children, that woman's voice should be heard and her opinions in public affairs be expressed by the ballot, they were coolly told that the black man had earned the right to vote, that he had fought and bled and died for his country. It was not because the three-penny tax on tea was so exorbitant that our Revolutionary fathers fought and died, but to establish the principle that such taxation was unjust. It is the same with this woman's revolution; though every law were as just to woman as to man, the principle that one class may usurp the power to legislate for another is unjust, and all who are now in the struggle from love of principle would still work on until the establishment of the grand and immutable truth, "All governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A woman does not have to make decisions based on the need to survive. She can cut through issues, call shots as she sees them.... ...Many bad decisions are made by men in government because it is good for them personally to make bad public decisions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are ...not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe,... seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular--not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class th...at has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat.... They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it. They have no manners and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public house and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious.... They are scum.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »