Category: Politics & Law

“There are three things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond and to know one’s self.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard Improved, 1750

“ ‘Tis not improbable that a Man may receive more solid Satisfaction from Pudding, while he is living, than from Praise, after he is dead.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard Improved, 1750 (emphases in original)

“Pardoning the Bad, is injuring the Good.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1748

“How the future manifests itself and brings to pass what it holds is a multifaceted phenomenon that is not necessarily guided by theoretical forces or mathematical models. Instead, causal agents that engender knowing and purposeful human behavior, individual and collective, fundamentally shape that narrative.” – Judge Victor Marrero, State of New York v. Deutsche Telecom (February 10, 2020)

“One Man may be more cunning than another, but not more cunning that every body else.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1745

“There are no fools so troublesome as those that have wit.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1745

“No gains without pains.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1745

“Where there’s no Law, there’s no Bread.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1744

“Death takes no bribes.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1742

“Wish not so much to live long as to live well.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1738

“Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1738

“Let thy vices die before thee.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1738

“If you wou’d not be forgotten As soon as you are dead and rotten, Either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1738

“Who has deceiv’d thee so oft as thyself?” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1738

“There are three faithful friends, an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1738

“The noblest question in the world is What Good may I do in it?” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1737 (emphasis in original)

“The greatest monarch on the proudest throne, is oblig’d to sit upon his own arse.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1737

“He that would live in peace & at ease, Must not speak all he knows, nor judge all he sees.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1736

“There is no little enemy.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1733

“Distrust & caution are the parents of security.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1733

“To lengthen thy Life, lessen thy Meals.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1733

“The poor have little, beggars none, the rich too much, enough not one.” – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard, 1733 (emphasis in original)

“Outrages are frequently committed on the natives by thoughtless or mischievous white men: the Indians retaliate according to a law of their code, which requires blood for blood; their act of what with them is pious vengeance resounds throughout the land and is represented as wanton and unprovoked; the neighborhood is roused to arms; a war ensues, which ends in the destruction of half the tribe, the ruin of the rest and their expulsion from their hereditary homes. Such is too often the real history of Indian warfare, which in general is traced up only to some vindictive act of a savage; while the outrage of the scoundrel white man that provoked it is sunk in silence.” – Washington Irving, Astoria

“The daily routine had ceased to be a novelty. All the details of the journey and the camp had become familiar to us. We had seen life under a new aspect; the human biped had been reduced to his primitive condition. We had lived without law to protect, a roof to shelter, or garment of cloth to cover us. One of us at least had been without bread, and without salt to season his food. Our idea of what is indispensable to human existence and enjoyment had been wonderfully curtailed, and a horse, a rifle and a knife seemed to make up the whole of life’s necessaries. For these once obtained, together with the skill to use them, all else that is essential would follow in their train, and a host of luxuries besides. One other lesson our short prairies experience had taught us; that of profound contentment in the present, and utter contempt for what the future might bring forth.” – Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail

“The emigrants felt a violent prejudice against the French Indians, as they called the trappers and traders. They thought, and with some justice, that these men bore them no good will. Many of them were firmly persuaded that the French were instigating the Indians to attack and cut them off. On visiting the encampment we were at once struck with the extraordinary perplexity and indecision that prevailed among the emigrants. They seemed like men totally out of their element; bewildered and amazed, like a troop of schoolboys lost in the woods. It was impossible to be long among them without being conscious of the high and bold spirit with which most of them were animated. But the forest is the home of the backwoodsman. On the remote prairie he is totally at a loss. He differs as much from the genuine ‘mountain-man,’ the wild prairie hunter, as a Canadian voyageur, paddling his canoe on the rapids of the Ottawa, differs from an American sailor among the storms of Cape Horn. Still my companion and I were somewhat at a loss to account for this perturbed state of mind. It could not be cowardice: these men were of the same stock with the volunteers of Monterey and Buena Vista. Yet for the most part, they were the rudest and most ignorant of the frontier population; they knew absolutely nothing of the country and its inhabitants; they had already experienced much misfortune, and apprehended more; they had seen nothing of mankind, and had never put their own resources to the test.” – Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail (emphasis in original)

“The didactic mission of preserving the past as an object for the future, narrated by the stark finality of ‘never again,’ renders the structural violence of the present illegible while monetizing the promises of witnessing, thus profiting from the illusion that it is possible to coexist with the past.” – Julia Michiko Hori, “Berthing Violent Nostalgia: Restored Slave Ports and the Royal Caribbean Historic Falmouth Cruise Terminal”

“The past is neither inert nor given. The stories we tell about what happened then, the correspondences we discern between today and times past, and the ethical and political stakes of those stories redound in the present. If slavery feels proximate rather than remote and freedom seems increasingly elusive, this has everything to do with our own dark times. If the ghost of slavery still haunts our present, it is because we are still looking for an exit from the prison.” – Saidiyah V. Hartman, Love Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route

“If the monuments of civilization are almost always monuments to barbarism, what would it mean to let them fall into disrepair?” – Julia Michiko Hori, “Berthing Violent Nostalgia: Restored Slave Ports and the Royal Caribbean Historic Falmouth Cruise Terminal”

“The cease of majesty dies not alone but like a gulf doth draw what’s near it with it: it is a massy wheel, fix’d on the summit of the highest mount, to whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things are mortis’d and adjoin’d; which, when it falls, each small annexment, petty consequence, attends the boisterous ruin.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

“Generally speaking—this isn’t always true, but generally—your worst volunteer is better than your best conscript.” – Justin King, Beau of the Fifth Column, January 6, 2020