“One thing that leads us astray here is that the selector seems to be in a position of power. That makes him seem like a judge. If you regard someone judging you as a customer instead of a judge, the expectation of fairness goes away. The author of a good novel wouldn't complain that readers were unfair for preferring a potboiler with a racy cover. Stupid, perhaps, but not unfair.”

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Letter to William Charles Jarvis (1820)
1820s
Context: You seem to consider the federal judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions, a very dangerous doctrine, indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have with others the same passions for the party, for power and the privilege of the corps. Their power is the more dangerous, as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.

Source: Lion of Macedon

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 2: 1919

Handwriten message on Elvis' King James -Bible

Source: Surfacing

Source: Shantaram

As quoted in A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965) by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., p. 291 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=uFhNxX5lrNEC&pg=PA291&dq=stupidity

Source: Nothing Lasts Forever