John Jay Chapman quotes

Good government is the outcome of private virtue. (John Jay Chapman)
Our goodness comes solely from thinking on goodness; our wickedness from thinking on wickedness. We too are the victims of our own contemplation. View quote
John Jay Chapman
Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same - hardihood. Give them raw truth. View quote
John Jay Chapman
People who love soft methods and hate iniquity forget this; that reform consists in taking a bone from a dog. Philosophy will not do it. View quote
John Jay Chapman
People get so in the habit of worry that if you save them from drowning and put them on a bank to dry in the sun with hot chocolate and muffins they wonder whether they are catching cold. View quote
John Jay Chapman
Too much agreement kills the chat. View quote
John Jay Chapman
It is just as impossible to help reform by conciliating prejudice as it is by buying votes. Prejudice is the enemy. Whoever is not for you is against you. View quote
John Jay Chapman
A magazine or a newspaper is a shop. Each is an experiment and represents a new focus, a new ratio between commerce and intellect. View quote
John Jay Chapman
Benevolence alone will not make a teacher, nor will learning alone do it. The gift of teaching is a peculiar talent, and implies a need and a craving in the teacher himself. View quote
John Jay Chapman
When a man talks with absolute sincerity and freedom he goes on a voyage of discovery. The whole company has shares in the enterprise. View quote
John Jay Chapman
Every generation is a secret society and has incommunicable enthusiasms, tastes and interests which are a mystery both to its predecessors and to posterity. (John Jay Chapman)
The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: all the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy. View quote
John Jay Chapman
A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful. View quote
John Jay Chapman
All progress is experimental. View quote
John Jay Chapman
I want to find someone on the earth so intelligent that he welcomes opinions which he condemns. View quote
John Jay Chapman
Politics is organized hatred, that is unity. View quote
John Jay Chapman
The reason for the slow progress of the world seems to lie in a single fact. Every man is born under the yoke, and grows up beneath the oppressions of his age. View quote
John Jay Chapman
The present in New York is so powerful that the past is lost. View quote
John Jay Chapman
A vision of truth which does not call upon us to get out of our armchair - why, this is the desideratum of mankind. View quote
John Jay Chapman
It is three and a half hours long, four characters wide and a cesspool deep. View quote
John Jay Chapman
Wherever you see a man who gives someone else's corruption, someone else's prejudice as a reason for not taking action himself, you see a cog in The Machine that governs us. (John Jay Chapman)