John Jay Chapman Quotes

Quotes about:

• All progress is experimental.

  John Jay Chapman

  Work, Progress

  John Jay Chapman (1900). “Practical Agitation”

  46 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Jay Chapman

  Happiness, Worry, People

  90 Copy quote

• Attack another's rights and you destroy your own.

  John Jay Chapman

  Rights, Liberty

  John Jay Chapman (1970). “The Collected Works of John Jay Chapman: Political journalism”

  18 Copy quote

• One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, - to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary, to collect sagas and heap cairns. This instinct as to the enduring value of the past is, one might say, the very basis of civilization.

  John Jay Chapman

  Past, Men, Civilization

  John Jay Chapman (1970). “The Collected Works of John Jay Chapman: Criticism & memoirs”

  7 Copy quote

• Too much agreement kills the chat.

  John Jay Chapman

  Agreement, Too Much

  10 Copy quote

• There are plenty of people to whom the crucial problem of their lives never get presented in terms that they can understand.

  John Jay Chapman

  People, Society, Problem

  John Jay Chapman (1974). “William Lloyd Garrison”, Beekman Books Incorporated

  9 Copy quote

• I want to find someone on the earth so intelligent that he welcomes opinions which he condemns.

  John Jay Chapman

  Intelligent, Earth, Want

  John Jay Chapman, Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe (1937). “John Jay Chapman and his letters ...”

  4 Copy quote

• If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era, -- then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem.

  John Jay Chapman

  Party, Curiosity, Magic

  9 Copy quote

• The world values the seer above all men, and has always done so. Nay, it values all men in proportion as they partake of the character of seers. The Elgin Marbles and a decision of John Marshall are valued for the same reason. What we feel in them is a painstaking submission to facts beyond the author's control, and to ideas imposed on him by his vision. So with Beethoven's Symphonies, with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations - with any conceivable output of the human mind of which you approve. You love them because you say, These things were not made, they were seen.

  John Jay Chapman

  Character, Men, Ideas

  9 Copy quote

• There are lots of people who cannot think seriously without injuring their minds.

  John Jay Chapman

  Thinking, People, Mind

  John Jay Chapman, Mark Antony De Wolfe Howe (1937). “John Jay Chapman and his letters ...”

  5 Copy quote

• The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world of thought.

  John Jay Chapman

  Years, Political, Twenties

  John Jay Chapman (1921). “William Lloyd Garrison”

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Secret, Generations, Enthusiasm

  John Jay Chapman (1970). “The Collected Works of John Jay Chapman: Criticism & memoirs”

  7 Copy quote

• The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.

  John Jay Chapman

  Music, Real, Men

  9 Copy quote

• Our goodness comes solely from thinking on goodness; our wickedness from thinking on wickedness. We too are the victims of our own contemplation.

  John Jay Chapman

  Thinking, Wickedness, Victim

  John Jay Chapman (1900). “Practical Agitation”

  10 Copy quote

• The worst enemy of good government is not our ignorant foreign voter, but our educated domestic railroad president, our prominent business man, our leading lawyer.

  John Jay Chapman

  Business, Men, Worst Enemy

  John Jay Chapman, Richard Stone (1998). “Unbought Spirit: A John Jay Chapman Reader”, p.21, University of Illinois Press

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Jay Chapman

  Hate, Squash, America

  John Jay Chapman, Richard Stone (1998). “Unbought Spirit: A John Jay Chapman Reader”, p.22, University of Illinois Press

  8 Copy quote

• You cannot criticize the New Testament. It criticizes you.

  John Jay Chapman

  Society, New Testament, Criticize

  8 Copy quote

• Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

  John Jay Chapman

  Hatred, Unity, Politics

  14 Copy quote

• The men and woman who make the best boon companions seem to have given up hope of doing something else...some defect of talent or opportunity has cut them off from their pet ambition and has thus left them with leisure to take an interest in their lives of others. Your ambition may be, it makes him keep his thoughts at home. But the heartbroken people - if I may use the word in a mild, benevolent sense - the people whose wills are subdued to fate, give us consolation, recognition, and welcome.

  John Jay Chapman

  Heartbroken, Home, Ambition

  7 Copy quote

• Nothing is more injurious to the character and to the intellect than the suppression of a generous emotion.

  John Jay Chapman

  Happiness, Character, Emotion

  John Jay Chapman (1974). “William Lloyd Garrison”, Beekman Books Incorporated

  16 Copy quote

• 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. He can only get a vision of the unselfish forces in the world by appealing to them, and every appeal is a call to arms. If he fights he must fight, not one man, but a conspiracy. He is always at war with a civilization. On his side is proverbial philosophy, a galaxy of invisible saints and sages, and the half-developed consciousness and professions of everybody. Against him is the world, and every selfish passion in his own heart.

  John Jay Chapman

  Growing Up, Philosophy, Lying

  John Jay Chapman (1900). “Practical Agitation”

  57 Copy quote

• As for boredom ... I notice that it leaves me as soon as I am doing something that has got to be done.

  John Jay Chapman

  Boredom, Done, Leaving Me

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Giving, Prejudice

  8 Copy quote

• A magazine or a newspaper is a shop. Each is an experiment and represents a new focus, a new ratio between commerce and intellect.

  John Jay Chapman

  Focus, Magazines, Ratios

  John Jay Chapman (1900). “Practical Agitation”

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Jay Chapman

  Enemy, Reform, Prejudice

  John Jay Chapman (1900). “Practical Agitation”

  8 Copy quote

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