You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh,... maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together, and blow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices that... may accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You haf slafed your life away in de bosses' mills and your fadhers before you and your kids after you yet. Vat is a man to do with... seventeen-fifty a week? His wife must work nights to make another ten, must vork nights and cook and wash in day an' vatfor? So that the bosses can get rich an' the stockholders and bondholders. It is too much... ve stood it before because ve vere not organized. Now we have union... We must all stand together for union.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Self-trust is the first secret of success, the belief that if you are here the authorities of the universe put you here, and for c...ause, or with some task strictly appointed you in your constitution, and so long as you work at that you are well and successful.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I realized that, while I would never be my mother nor have her life, the lesson she had left me was that it was possible to love a...nd care for a man and still have at your core a strength so great that you never even needed to put it on display.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They made on me the impression, not of many individuals, but of one vast centipede of a man, good for all sorts of pulling down; a...nd why not then for some kinds of building up? If men could combine thus earnestly, and patiently, and harmoniously to some really worthy end, what might they not accomplish? They now put their hands, and partially perchance their heads together, and the result is that they are the imperfect tools of an imperfect and tyrannical government. But if they could put their hands and heads and hearts and all together, such a cooperation and harmony would be the very end and success for which government now exists in vain,--a government, as it were, not only with tools, but stock to trade with.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is cruel for you to leave your daughter, so full of hope and resolve, to suffer the humiliations of disfranchisement she alread...y feels so keenly, and which she will find more and more galling as she grows into the stronger and grander woman she is sure to be. If it were your son who for any cause was denied his right to have his opinion counted, you would compass sea and land to lift the ban from him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[On Harvard President Charles William Eliot's lamentation that the average Harvard graduate had fewer than two children:] That is ...quite enough. Harvard graduates do not always make the best fathers. Why should we be agitated over the too small families of the rich when there are so many children of the poor that are not cared for? The rich should make it their duty to raise up these children to a higher standard.... Men of the world hate to give up their tobacco, liquor, sports, clubs, their luxurious habits, their freedom from responsibility. They prefer to flock together and so women are compelled to do the same. President Eliot talks as though the young women were sitting around anxiously and aimlessly waiting for the graduates to come and get them. He would find, if he should make the proper investigation, that a class of women is being developed who are demanding a higher standard of morals in men than did those of past generations, and if they cannot get husbands who reach this standard they are making very satisfactory careers for themselves outside of marriage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means... of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »