Here are a couple of generalisations about England that would be accepted by almost all observers. One is that the English are not... gifted artistically. They are not as musical as the Germans or Italians, painting and sculpture have never flourished in England as they have in France. Another is that, as Europeans go, the English are not intellectual. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic "world view." Nor is this because they are "practical," as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. One has only to look at their methods of town-planning and water-supply, their obstinate clinging to everything that is out-of-date and a nuisance, a spelling system that defies analysis and a system of weights and measures that is intelligible only to compilers of arithmetic books, to see how little they care about mere efficiency.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of its [James A. Garfield's assassination] lessons, perhaps its most important lesson, is the folly, the wickedness, and the d...anger of the extreme and bitter partisanship which so largely prevails in our country. This partisan bitterness is greatly aggravated by that system of appointments and removals which deals with public offices as rewards for services rendered to political parties or to party leaders. Hence crowds of importunate place-hunters of whose dregs [the assassin] Guiteau is the type. The required reform [of the civil service] will be accomplished whenever the people imperatively demand it, not only of their Executive, but also of their legislative officers. With it, the class to which the assassin belongs will lose their occupation, and the temptation to try "to administer government by assassination" will be taken away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The approval of the public is to be avoided like the plague. It is absolutely essential to keep the public from entering if one wi...shes to avoid confusion. I must add that the public must be kept panting in expectation at the gate by a system of challenges and provocations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think it saves much confusion to regard religion as quite distinct from morality, or the right conduct of life--as having necess...arily nothing to do with these, but as a system of faith and worship, a belief in something extranatural.... Indeed, the most religious people are by no means the most moral. Hence it is that religion so rarely changes the man, or makes him practically any better. Let us keep things separated, religion by itself, and morality by itself. Religion implies a belief in the supernatural; in a personal deity who takes sides with or against us. A man may be pure, noble, virtuous, high-minded, spiritual, and not have a religion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In a universe that is all gradations of matter, from gross to fine to finer, so that we end up with everything we are composed of ...in a lattice, a grid, a mesh, a mist, where particles or movements so small we cannot observe them are held in a strict and accurate web, that is nevertheless nonexistent to the eyes we use for ordinary living--in this system of fine and finer, where then is the substance of a thought?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The truth properly means the sum of all true propositions, what omniscience would assert, the whole ideal system of qualities and ...relations which the world has exemplified or will exemplify. The truth is all things seen under the form of eternity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify wit...h themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national... debt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so--called educational system, which... is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one's ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the "educational system" are the prime sources of racism in the United States.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »