“Our people do not want barren theories from their democracy. Maury Maverick has expressed very quaintly, but clearly, what they really want when he says: 'We Americans want to talk, pray, think as we please — and eat regular.”
Speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco (1939), reported in Eugene C. Gerhart, America's Advocate: Robert H. Jackson (1958), p. 456
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Robert H. Jackson 96
American judge 1892–1954Related quotes

The Question of German Guilt (1947)
Context: We are sorely deficient in talking with each other and listening to each other. We lack mobility, criticism and self-criticism. We incline to doctrinism. What makes it worse is that so many people do not really want to think. They want only slogans and obedience. They ask no questions and they give no answers, except by repeating drilled-in phrases. They can only assert and obey, neither probe nor apprehend. Thus they cannot be convinced, either. How shall we talk with people who will not go where others probe and think, where men seek independence in insight and conviction?

Wheaton, Illinois http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/wheaton-illinois-sep1590-backup-copy.html (April 11, 1997)
In Concert
“Malraux and the Statues at Bamberg”, p. 191
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Source: Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God

2007-11-12
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
MSNBC
Television
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21771581/
explaining to his ombudsman, Laurie Dhue, what to do about mail complaining about the low quality of Fox News Channel material; November 2007

Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 9, A Boat.
Context: I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoyed rather than what I wanted; and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them, because they see and covet something that He has not given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.