Unpleasant questions are being raised about Mother's Day. Is this day necessary? . . . Isn't it bad public policy? . . . No politi...cian with half his senses, which a majority of politicians have, is likely to vote for its abolition, however. As a class, mothers are tender and loving, but as a voting bloc they would not hesitate for an instant to pull the seat out from under any Congressman who suggests that Mother is not entitled to a box of chocolates each year in the middle of May.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man wil...l not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with... moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If any of us hopes to survive, s/he must meet the extremity of the American female condition with immediate and political response.... The thoroughly destructive and indefensible subjugation of the majority of Americans cannot continue except at the peril of the entire body politic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for ...civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put dow...n a revolutionary minority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both the Moral Majority, who are recycling medieval language to explain AIDS, and those ultra-leftists who attribute AIDS to some ...sort of conspiracy, have a clearly political analysis of the epidemic. But even if one attributes its cause to a microorganism rather than the wrath of God, or the workings of the CIA, it is clear that the way in which AIDS has been perceived, conceptualized, imagined, researched and financed makes this the most political of diseases.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is no such thing as a value-free concept of deviance; to say homosexuals are deviant because they are a statistical minority... is, in practice, to stigmatize them. Nuns are rarely classed as deviants for the same reason, although if they obey their vows they clearly differ very significantly from the great majority of people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right. But they hesitate, waiting for the... other fellow to make the first move--and he, in turn, waits for you. The minute a person whose word means a great deal dares to take the open- hearted and courageous way, many others follow. Not everyone can be turned aside from meanness and hatred, but the great majority of Americans is heading in that direction. I have a great belief in the future of my people and my country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »