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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

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John Jay Chapman
Age: 71 †
Born: 1862
Born: March 2
Died: 1933
Died: November 4
Author
Biographer
Lawyer
Poet
New York City
New York
History
Drawing
Scratches
Keep
Endure
Diaries
Past
Instinct
Enduring
Sagas
Might
Record
Collect
Saga
Men
Civilization
Deepest
Heap
Value
Impulse
Diary
Records
Basis
Impulses
Values
Bases
Scratch

More quotes by John Jay Chapman

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Nothing is more injurious to the character and to the intellect than the suppression of a generous emotion.
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Learning is not easy, but hard culture is severe. The steps to Parnassus are steep and terribly arduous.
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When a man talks with absolute sincerity and freedom he goes on a voyage of discovery. The whole company has shares in the enterprise.
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Inspired teachers ... cannot be ordered by the gross from the factory. They must be discovered one by one, and brought home from the woods and swamps like orchids. They must be placed in a conservatory, not in a carpenter shop and they must be honored and trusted.
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Attack another's rights and you destroy your own.
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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.
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You cannot criticize the New Testament. It criticizes you.
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I want to find someone on the earth so intelligent that he welcomes opinions which he condemns.
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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.
John Jay Chapman
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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.
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There are lots of people who cannot think seriously without injuring their minds.
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The power of quotation is as dreadful a weapon as any which the human intellect can forge.
John Jay Chapman
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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.
John Jay Chapman
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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
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So long as there is any subject which men may not freely discuss, they are timid upon all subjects.
John Jay Chapman
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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
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A vision of truth which does not call upon us to get out of our armchair - why, this is the desideratum of mankind.
John Jay Chapman
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All progress is experimental.
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If any of you ... have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well.
John Jay Chapman
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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