“Disloyalty in trusted servants is one of the most disheartening things that can happen to a public performer.”
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods (1920) http://books.google.com/books?id=l0u-YrUcJeMC
Context: Disloyalty in trusted servants is one of the most disheartening things that can happen to a public performer. But it must not be thought that I say this out of personal experience: for in the many years that I have been before the public my secret methods have been steadily shielded by the strict integrity of my assistants, most of whom have been with me for years. Only one man ever betrayed my confidence, and that only in a minor matter. But then, so far as I know, I am the only performer who ever pledged his assistant to secrecy, honor and allegiance under a notarial oath.
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Harry Houdini 4
Austro-Hungarian born American magician, escapologist, and … 1874–1926Related quotes
“One of the most spiritual things that can happen to you is a human breakthrough.”
Variant: One of the most spiritual things you can do is embrace your humanity.
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 144
“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants.”
Kansas City Star (7 May 1918)
1910s
Context: The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
“The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”
Source: The Rosa Luxemburg Reader
“Being a politician is a poor profession. Being a public servant is a noble one.”
On Growing Up: Letters to American Boys & Girls (1962); also quoted in Herbert Hoover On Growing Up: Letters from and to American Children (1990) edited by Timothy Walch
Speech in Leeds (13 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 61-62.
1925
“Worse things can happen to one.”
Statement of August 1934, after being expelled from Germany, quoted in Dorothy Thompson : A Legend In Her Time (1973) by Marion K. Sanders, p. 199
Context: As far as I can see, I really was put out of Germany for the crime of blasphemy. … My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man, after all. This is a crime against the reigning cult in Germany, which says that Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people — an old Jewish idea. To question this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you are German you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American, so I merely was sent to Paris. Worse things can happen to one.