Poor heretics there be,Which think to establish dangerous constancy,But I have told them, ‘Since you will be true,You shall be true to them, who are false to you.
Any individual can contribute its own belief. And our society or even our government are made by the people. The people would have the final voice, but it requires each individual to act. If we don't act, then the result is very clear. So for too long Americans take liberty as granted. We think we are in the safe hand, the democracy and the liberty, which is not true. And it can be even getting much worse than today.
You know, I think there are certain words like 'illegitimate' that should not be used to describe a person. And certainly, we have come far enough in our technology that our language can evolve, because it has an impact.
People are timid and apologetic; they are no longer upright; they dare not say "I think," "I am," but quote some saint or sage. They are ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day.
If one is to deal with people on a large scale and say what one thinks, how can one avoid melancholy? I don’t admit to being hopeless, though: only the spectacle is a profoundly strange one; and as the current answers don’t do, one has to grope for a new one, and the process of discarding the old, when one is by no means certain what to put in their place, is a sad one.
Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers. We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers. The great dangers are within us. Why worry about what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think instead of what threatens our souls.
Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.
In the '70s, everybody thought drugs were just good times. People didn't really know about drug addiction, or that such a thing existed. When I grew up in the '70s I thought you had to take drugs. It was almost like I didn't think you had a choice.
The little incidents and accidents of every day fill us with emotion, anxiety, annoyance, passion, as long as they are close to us, when they appear so big, so important, so serious; but as soon as they are borne down the restless stream of time they lose what significance they had; we think no more of them and soon forget them altogether. They were big only because they were near.
Everybody should be ashamed who uses the wonders of science and engineering without thinking and having mentally realized not more of it than a cow realizes of the botany of the plants which it eats with pleasure.