“The surest effect of exalting government is to make it easier for some people to drag others down.”

Variant: Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

(10 January 2005)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2005
Context: The writing of a novel or short story or poem or whatever should elevate the audience, not drag the writer down to some level beneath herself. And she — the author — should fight always to prevent that dragging down, especially when the only possible benefit of allowing it to happen is monetary.

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 2: The Charlock’s Shade, Ch. 16: Outlook Unsettled (p. 136-137)

Smashing Pumpkins (1996)

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter V, TRANSFORMATION, p. 173.

Source: The Book of Tomorrow

Source: "Quick Quotations" in My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)
Context: The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn’t make any sense if quoted as it stands.

No. 2.
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series II (1866)