American Republics

Famous quotes containing the words american and/or republics:

    We talked about and that has always been a puzzle to me
    why American men think that success is everything
    when they know that eighty percent of them are not
    going to succeed more than to just keep going and why
    if they are not why do they not keep on being
    interested in the things that interested them when
    they were college men and why American men different
    from English men do not get more interesting as they
    get older.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting actions. Accordingly, so long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, Royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.
    Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)