We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both. —Louis D. Brandeis
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer. —Dean Acheson
Taxes are what we pay for civilized society. —Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. —George Santayana
Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. —Henry James
A democracy—that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people. —Theodore Parker, 1836
All the security around the American president is just to make sure the man who shoots him gets caught. —Norman Mailer
15 March 2012
Pithy quotations
From a collection of several dozen assembled at Harvard Magazine:
The one about memoranda is true, but not necessarily the whole story. Yes, it can have arse-covering properties, but by that very token it can prompt the action it was intended to cause. The knowledge that the request or instruction or wotnot has been formally noted can be a spur to action.
ReplyDeleteI'm not completely sure, but something along the lines of that Brandeis quote ("We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.") is something that Adam Smith (the father of Economics) is reported to have said.
ReplyDeleteDaBris