Education (1902)
“It is high time the ideal of success should be replaced with the ideal of service.”
No known source; it appears to be a paraphrase of the last sentence of Einstein's "An Ideal of Service to Our Fellow Man". Earliest known attribution is in the Washingon Afro-American, AFRO Magazine Section, Sept 21, 1954, p. 2 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=I8slAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6_QFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4494,1273325
Disputed
“Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments.”
1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)
Context: Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.
1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)
Context: It can safely be assumed that self-interest will always place sufficient emphasis on the business side of newspapers, so that they do not need any outside encouragement for that part of their activities. Important, however, as this factor is, it is not the main element which appeals to the American people. It is only those who do not understand our people, who believe that our national life is entirely absorbed by material motives. We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction. No newspaper can be a success which fails to appeal to that element of our national life. It is in this direction that the public press can lend its strongest support to our Government. I could not truly criticize the vast importance of the counting room, but my ultimate faith I would place in the high idealism of the editorial room of the American newspaper.
"Ignorance of Death" (1940), line 3; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 78.
The Complete Poems
Upon the fall of his ministry; said to journalist Sir Henry William Lucy, The Diary of a Journalist (Vol. 1), E. P. Dutton, 1920), p 93.
"December 11 : Wind", p. 152
A Year in the Maine Woods (1995)
"Aging Rebel: Vladimir Zhirinovsky Is Enjoying Another Moment" in The Moscow Times https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2016/09/02/aging-rebel-vladimir-zhirinovsky-is-enjoying-another-moment-a55177 (2 September 2016)
