In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution o...f our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The very existence of society depends on the fact that every member of it tacitly admits he is not the exclusive possessor of hims...elf, and that he admits the claim of the polity of which he forms a part, to act, to some extent, as his master.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Civil War divided a nation, whereas the American Revolution created and unified it. The Civil War exposed our vilest flaws, wh...ereas the Revolution shaped our character and (we generally assumed) displayed our courage, principles, and highmindedness for all the world to see. What happened in 1776 somehow reflected glory upon us, whereas what happened in 1861, when the polity disintegrated, became an object lesson in the perils of extremism and selfishness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Republics demanded virtue. Monarchies could rely on coercion and "dazzling splendor" to suppress self-interest or factions; republ...ics relied on the goodness of the people to put aside private interest for public good. The imperatives of virtue attached all sorts of desiderata to the republican citizen: simplicity, frugality, sobriety, simple manners, Christian benevolence, duty to the polity. Republics called on other virtues--spiritedness, courage--to protect the polity from external threats. Tyrants kept standing armies; republics relied on free yeomen, defending their own land.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am more and more convinced that the ant colony is not so much composed of separate individuals as that the colony is a sort of i...ndividual, and each ant like a loose cell in it. Our own blood stream, for instance, contains hosts of white corpuscles which differ little from free-swimming amoebae. When bacteria invade the blood stream, the white corpuscles, like the ants defending the nest, are drawn mechanically to the infected spot, and will die defending the human cell colony. I admit that the comparison is imperfect, but the attempt to liken the individual human warrior to the individual ant in battle is even more inaccurate and misleading. The colony of ants with its component numbers stands half way, as a mechanical, intuitive, and psychical phenomenon, between our bodies as a collection of cells with separate functions and our armies made up of obedient privates. Until one learns both to deny real individual initiative to the single ant, and at the same time to divorce one's mind from the persuasion that the colony has a headquarters which directs activity ... one can make nothing but pretty fallacies out of the polity of the ant heap.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My life more civil is and free Than any civil polity.... Ye princes, keep your realms And circumscribèd power, Not wide as are my dreams, Nor rich as is this hour. What can ye give which I have not? What can ye take which I have got? Can ye defend the dangerless? Can ye inherit nakedness? To all true wants Time's ear is deaf, Penurious states lend no relief Out of their pelf: But a free soul--thank God-- Can help itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be shall never want attentive and ...favourable hearers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »