it is not wise to keep the fire going under a slander unless you can get some large advantage out of keeping it alive. Few slanders can stand the wear of silence.
Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition.
My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian-an early Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine. Your people made it tropical for them. . . . The first slave brought into New England out of Africa was an ancestor of mine-for I am a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel.
Inherently, each one of us has the substance within to achieve
whatever our goals and dreams define. What is different
for each of us is the training, education, knowledge and insight to utilize what we already have.
I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me. To misplace an adverb is a thing which I am able to do with frozen indifference; it can never give me a pang. There are subtleties which I cannot master at all - they confuse me, they mean absolutely nothing to me - and this adverb plague is one of them.
Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.