What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been em...ployed in works of public utility; what an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices, and improvements ... might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I regard the state of which I am a citizen as a public utility, like the organization that supplies me with water, gas, and electr...icity. I feel that it is my civic duty to pay my taxes as well as my other bills, and that it is my moral duty to make an honest declaration of my income to the income tax authorities. But I do not feel that I and my fellow citizens have a religious duty to sacrifice our lives in war on behalf of our own state, and, a fortiori, I do not feel that we have an obligation or a right to kill and maim citizens of other states or to devastate their land.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of high...ways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility. I have looked after the wild stock of the town,... and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm.... I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons. In short, I went on thus for a long time (I may say it without boasting), faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set my heart on that.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The last public hanging in the State took place in 1835 on Prince Hill.... On the fatal day, the victim, a man named Watkins, peer...ing through the iron bars of his cell, and seeing the townfolk scurrying to the place of execution, is said to have remarked, 'Why is everyone running? Nothing can happen until I get there.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the structure of our public morality crashed to earth. Above its grave a tombstone read, "Be tolerant--even of evil." Logicall...y the next step would be to say to our commonwealth's criminals, "I disagree that it's all right to rob and murder, but naturally I respect your opinion." Tolerance is only complacence when it makes no distinction between right and wrong.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 recent attempt to secure a charter from the State of North Dakota for a lottery company, the pending effort to obtain from the... State of Louisiana a renewal of the charter of the Louisiana State Lottery, and the establishment of one or more lottery companies at Mexican towns near our border, have served the good purpose of calling public attention to an evil of vast proportions.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 »