It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic g...
Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. speaks plainly to this purpose, saying, 'that the institution of youth should be accommodated to that form of government under which they live; forasmuch as it makes exceedingly...
[N]ow that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the sup...
Human nature turns out to be more complicated than the idea that people will get along if only the rules are clear enough. Uncertainty, the ultimate evil that modern law seeks to eradicate, generally fosters cooperation, not the opposite.
America’s been ruined by one word: Bankers. No, two words: Bankers and lawyers. Make that three words. Add politicians to that list. Oh, and don’t forget the lobbyists.
Just because you don’t have an arrest record doesn’t mean you’re not a criminal. As proof, note some of the cleanest rap sheets in America belong to politicians.
What a fine fellow is Quincey! I believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy’s death as any of us, but he bore himself through it like a moral Viking. If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the wor...
Yet while Vidal writes best about power, politics, and history White’s strengths are sex, art and – sometimes – love. Each tends to stumble when he enters the other’s domain.
A younger writer, David Leavitt, would later say he envied White for having “such a representative life”. And it’s true: the zeitgeist blew through White more easily than it did through most people.
Seventies macho was both a look – moustache, jeans, leather jacket – and an attitude – cool, heartless, virile – that were reactions against the old-style homosexuality of too much art and too much emotion.
Our leaders know we’re turning into a giant ghetto and they are taking every last hubcap they can get their hands on before the rest of us wake up and realize what’s happened.
Being in the building with Sarah Palin that night is a transformative and oddly unsettling experience. It’s a little like having live cave-level access for the ripping-the-heart-out-with-the-bare-hands scene in
Execution is everything. Even if you start a business with the wrong idea or too many competitors, you can out-execute all the better ideas in the right market.
He was like a man who had served a term in prison or had been to Harvard College or had left for a long time with foreigners in South America. He was like a person who had been somewhere that other people are not likely to go or had done something th...
It was like being born in Germany after World War II, being from Japan after Pearl Harbor, or America after Hiroshima. History was a bitch sometimes. You couldn't change where you were from. But still, you didn't have to stay there.
Ina May Gaskin is the most important person in maternity care in North America, bar none.
While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me.
Freedom is more than just a willingness to live; it is a force that binds us all. Being truly free is seeing America as our "heart and home." Uniting around a common good will help bring us together in true happiness into the future.
Freedom is more than just a willingness to live. It is a force that binds us all. Being truly free is seeing America as our "Heart and Home". Uniting around a common good will bring us true happiness into the future.
I sketched North America onto my crude and now crowded map, and Hao was astounded to learn that it was not a piece of Europe, as he had always assumed.
What has made America amazing has been the fact that throughout our history, throughout the more than 200 years of our history, there have been men and women of courage who stood up and decided it was more important to look out for the future of thei...
