Quotes From History

I know the campaign season is over, but the following resonated with me sometime around mid-October:"I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization." - Justice Oliver Wendell HolmesApparently this derives from a conversation between Holmes and a younger secretary. The quote is from Felix Frankfurter, Mr. Justice Holmes and the Supreme Court, 2nd Ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961)

Churchill On America---And A Brief Research Project

I just heard a British commentator this morning, on NPR, applying a Winston Churchill quote roughly as follows in relation to America's Panic of 2008:"America will always do the right thing, but only after exhausting all other options."I love it. Being an incurably curious academic, I searched for the source. After a little work I found these other versions:"The Americans will always do the

Chardin On The Significance of History

"Everything is the sum of the past and...nothing is comprehensible except through its history." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man (New York: 1964), 12.