The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)
Context: I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses — you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.
“As of rioting, the old Roman way of dealing with that is always the right one; flog the rank and file, and fling the ring-leaders from the Tarpeian rock.”
Quoted by Matthew Arnold, Cornhill Magazine, August 1868
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Thomas Arnold 5
English headmaster of Rugby School 1795–1842Related quotes
“The greatest danger is always from the traitors amongst one's own ranks.”
Revolution by Number
"The Symbols"
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
Context: p>The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down;
The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown;The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May;
But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way.Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes,
Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.</p
Source: Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It (1944), Ch. 1
“The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.”
“The Leaders of Men”, speech at the University of Tennessee (17 June 1890), in The Politics of Woodrow Wilson, p. 74 http://books.google.com/books?id=rxC4IG60KTwC&pg=PA74&dq=%22ear+of+the+leader+must+ring+with+the+voices+of+the+people%22
1890s
“I was always attracted to the way rock stars dressed and the way their girlfriends dressed.”
Interview Magazine (December 15, 2010)
“Tis pride, rank pride, and haughtiness of soul:
I think the Romans call it Stoicism.”
Act I, scene iv.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)