The law before us, my lords, seems to be the effect of that practice of which it is intended likewise to be the cause, and to be d...ictated by the liquor of which it so effectually promotes the use; for surely it never before was conceived by any man entrusted with the administration of public affairs, to raise taxes by the destruction of the people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one's enemies as if they may one day become one's friends; as it commonly hap...pens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The superstition respecting power and office is going to the ground. The stream of human affairs flows its own way, and is very li...ttle affected by the activity of legislators. What great masses of men wish done, will be done; and they do not wish it for a freak, but because it is their state and natural end.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My desire is that your office [the New York Customhouse] shall be conducted on strictly business principles.... In making appointm...ents and removals of subordinates, you should be perfectly independent of mere influence. Neither my recommendation, nor that of the Secretary of the Treasury, nor the recommendation of any Member of Congress, or other influential person, should be specially regarded. Let appointments and removals be made ... by fixed rules.... Let no man be put out merely because he is a friend of the late collector [Chester A. Arthur], and no man be put in merely because he is our friend.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mrs. Sneed and her daughter, Miss Austine Sneed, are visiting us--Washington correspondents of excellent character.... We are much... interested in their accounts of Washington affairs. Nothing could be further from our desire than to return to Washington and again enter its whirl, either socially or politically, but we are interested in seeing Washington with the roof off.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I was duped ... by the Secretary of the treasury [Alexander Hamilton], and made a fool for forwarding his schemes, not then suffic...iently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned the deepest regret.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It was... obviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Bourgeois existence is the regime of private affairs ... and the family is the rotten, dismal edifice in whose closets and crannie...s the most ignominious instincts are deposited. Mundane life proclaims the total subjugation of eroticism to privacy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »