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“I make it a policy never to believe more than a third of what men tell me,” Mrs. Grace said with her amused, half-lidded smile. “At work or anywhere.
“Your mother says that to justify the fact that she isn’t being fair to you,” Mrs. Grace said calmly. “Which is mostly what people mean when they say ‘life isn’t fair.’ It isn’t, which is why people should endeavor to be more fair to one another, not less.”
“A successful dinner party needs just one person all the others loathe, Pete—it gives everyone something to unite against.”
“Our people all spoke different languages and maybe still do; we look different; we live in every possible location from cities to towns, mountains to plains. But”—she waved at the Bill of Rights, including its sister documents off in the Library of Congress—“this unites us. A government established for an articulated principle, not tribal allegiances or lines drawn on a map.”
Nothing wreaks havoc like a weak man—because they never learn, so they just go blithely on, leaving pain and wreckage behind them.”
“Firebrands ask questions, and a nation where you can’t ask questions is one that is going downhill.”
sometimes think this country is an eternal battle between our best and our worst angels. Hopefully we’re listening to the good angel more often than the bad one.” She sighed. “We do that, and change will come.”
Margaret Chase Smith, who had stood on the Senate floor, looked him in the eye, and said: Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism
