It's true we Americans don't know very much about you Japanese and never did. And now I realize you know even less about us. You c...an kill us, all of us or part of us, but if you think that's going to put the fear of God into the United States of America and stop them from sending other flyers to bomb you, you're wrong--dead wrong. They'll come by night, and they'll come by day--thousands of them. They'll blacken your skies and burn your cities to the ground and make you get down on your knees and beg for mercy. You wanted it. You asked for it. You started it. And now you're going to get it. And it won't be finished until your dirty little empire is wiped off the face of the earth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We may suspect that makers of jokes and smart remarks resemble poets at least in this, that they too would be excluded from Plato'...s Republic; for it is of the nature of Utopia and the Crystal Palace, as Dostoevsky said, that you can't stick your tongue out at it. A joke expresses tension, which it releases in laughter; it is a sort of permissible rebellion against things as they are--permissible, perhaps, because this rebellion is at the same time stoically resigned, it acknowledges that things are as they are, and that they will, after the moment of laughter, continue to be that way. That is why jokes concentrate on the most sensitive areas of human concern: sex, death, religion, and the most powerful institutions of society; and poems do the same.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Universal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience, ...he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal court of Britain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... every sapient prophecy with regard to America has been disproved. We were forewarned that she was too free, and her liberty ha...s proved her security; too peaceable, and she has been found sufficient for her defence; too large, and her size has ensured her union. The bonds of union, indeed, are more numerous and intimate than can be easily conceived by foreigners. A people who have bled together for liberty, who equally appreciate and equally enjoy that liberty which their own blood or that of their fathers has purchased, who feel, too, that the liberty which they love has found her last asylum on their shores--such a people are bound together by ties of amity and citizenship far beyond what is usual in national communities.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When in the enfranchisement of the black men [women] saw another ignorant class of voters placed about their heads, and beheld the... danger of a distinctively "male" government, forever involving the nations of the earth in war and violence; and demanded for the protection of themselves and children, that woman's voice should be heard and her opinions in public affairs be expressed by the ballot, they were coolly told that the black man had earned the right to vote, that he had fought and bled and died for his country. It was not because the three-penny tax on tea was so exorbitant that our Revolutionary fathers fought and died, but to establish the principle that such taxation was unjust. It is the same with this woman's revolution; though every law were as just to woman as to man, the principle that one class may usurp the power to legislate for another is unjust, and all who are now in the struggle from love of principle would still work on until the establishment of the grand and immutable truth, "All governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man's ...intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man's self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... it is the right and duty of every woman to employ the power of organization and agitation in order to gain those advantages wh...ich are given to the one sex and unjustly withheld from the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »