Some recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States are, more
than any other factor, calculated to develop and foster an element of
national unrest. Its deliberations are beyond the intelligence of many and
above the interests of the majority. Its psychology is that of a divorce
between capital and labor. Its rulings remind me of what transpired in
England early in the nineteenth century.
Many who were not socialists are beginning to turn from the older order,
imbued with the feeling that nothing could happen in the future worse for
the country at large than the conditions that are being endured in the
present.
A revolution arrives after a series of connected events which exhausts the
patience of the public, and events are moving with intensity as well as
rapidity.
DANIEL WEBSTER
You will search the pages of history in vain without finding a parallel to
present conditions.
The war gave Bohemia her freedom; at the same time it licensed a bohemian
poet to keep Italy stewing in her own juice, a bohemian journalist from
New York to direct affairs in Moscow, and a bohemian socialist from
Switzerland to rule over Russia.
Added to this a fashionable ladies' pianist has tried his hand, or should
I say fingers, in the science of unfurling the sails of Poland's new Ship
of State, while shop-keepers direct affairs in Germany and pusilanimous
politicians keep the people of America in a state of tepid trepidation and
flatulent turmoil. Can you wonder that the country is being hypnotized by
the sight of so many cantankerous cataleptics?
Macbeth declared he had waded in so far that returning would be as
perilous as going on. Nothing will move them until they are swamped by
the high tide of reaction and flung as flotsam on the rocks of a stormy
opportunism.
A new Damocles has a sword suspended over the National Capitol, and
liberty hangs to the hinges of the Constitution by a hair.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
While a few people are ready to return to first principles, many are
giving expressions to Garden of Eden proclivities. But instead of the old
Eve, you have the new Amazon; instead of the old serpent, copperheads in
Congress; instead of the old Adam, fresh brands of bluebeards.
Agreeable to the apple of the new Adam's eye and the fruitarian diet of
the new Eden, some ladies have adopted the fig-leaf standard. But let that
pass for the moment, always bearing in mind that he who loses his sense of
humor loses his equilibrium.
Millions of people are dancing their legs off to keep their heads on.
Providence is wiser than the moralists.
There was a way out of the trenches and there is a way out of the
pessimism developed by the dying dispensation. It is not so much a
question of keeping your powder dry as it is of keeping your wits from
congealing.
Beware of nebulous notions and theories. Uncanny kinks lead to calamitous
brain storms. A stitch in the side saves nine--kicks behind the solar
plexus.
BENJAMIN WADE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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