“A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest.”

William at a meeting about Philips actions (1566), as quoted in William the Silent, William of Nausau, Prince of Orange, 1533-1584 (1944), p. 78

Source: Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (1796), P. 21.

Source: Pigs in Heaven

Source: Shantaram

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: No matter how honest and decent we are in our private lives, if we do not have the right kind of law and the right kind of administration of the law, we cannot go forward as a nation. That is imperative; but it must be an addition to, and not a substitute for, the qualities that make us good citizens. In the last analysis, the most important elements in any man’s career must be the sum of those qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak of as character. If he has not got it, then no law that the wit of man can devise, no administration of the law by the boldest and strongest executive, will avail to help him. We must have the right kind of character-character that makes a man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, and a good husband-that makes a man a good neighbor. You must have that, and, then, in addition, you must have the kind of law and the kind of administration of the law which will give to those qualities in the private citizen the best possible chance for development. The prime problem of our nation is to get the right type of good citizenship, and, to get it, we must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive.

To Henry Rutgers Marshall (7 February 1899)
1920s, The Letters of William James (1920)

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 38 (pp. 663-664)

Remarks on the 1992 Los Angeles civil disorder, Today show (30 April 1992)

Source: Ghost Town