Orts #745

 
If democratic people are naturally brought toward peace by their interests and instincts, they are constantly drawn to war and revolutions by their armies.
     — Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835/40)
 
 
Politics is often a millstone around democracy’s neck, . . .
     — the opening line of Terry Fallis’s second novel, The High Road (2010)
 
 
To America one schoolmaster is worth a dozen poets, and the invention of a machine or the improvement of an implement is of more importance than a masterpiece of Raphael.
     — Benjamin Franklin



Comparison is the death of joy.
     — Mark Twain