Famous quotes containing the words american, political and/or figure:
“Evil passions and evil inclinations are much more dangerous than evil books. The sensualist will extract poison from the purest page, the modest can blush without being corrupted.”
—“Colimetis,” U.S. women’s magazine contributor. American Ladies Magazine, pp. 145-7 (April, 1828)
“In a town-meeting, the great secret of political science was uncovered, and the problem solved, how to give every individual his fair weight in the government, without any disorder from numbers. In a town-meeting, the roots of society were reached. Here the rich gave counsel, but the poor also; and moreover, the just and the unjust.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Put in hours and hours of planning, figure everything down to the last detail, then what? Burglar alarms start going off all over the place for no sensible reason. A gun fires of its own accord and a man is shot. And a broken-down old house no good for anything but chasing kids has to trip over us. Blind accidents. What can you do against blind accidents?”
—Ben Maddow (1909–1992)