Poems List
[ Of Archibald Primrose, Fifth Earl of Rosebery :] [A] man who never missed a chance of missing an opportunity.
[ When Isadora Duncan regretted that they could not have a child together, saying, “Think what a child it would be, with my body and your brain” :] I know, but suppose the child was so unlucky as to have my body and your brain?
[ Referring to film producer Samuel Goldwyn :] Well, Mr. Goldwyn, there is not much use in going on. There is this difference between you and me: You are only interested in art and I am only interested in money.
We speak of war gods, but not of mathematician gods, poet or painter gods, or inventor gods. Nobody has ever called me a god; I am at best a sage. We worship all the conquerors, but have only one Prince of Peace, who was horribly put to death, and if he lived in these islands, would have some difficulty in getting exempted from military service as a conscientious objector.
If you don’t begin to be a revolutionist at the age of twenty, then at fifty you will be a most impossible old fossil. If you are a red revolutionary at the age of twenty, you have some chance of being up-to-date when you are forty!
Democracy, then, cannot be government by the people: it can only be government by consent of the governed. Unfortunately, when democratic statesmen propose to govern us by our own consent, they find that we don’t want to be governed at all, and that we regard rates and taxes and rents and death duties as intolerable burdens. What we want to know is how little government we can get along with without being murdered in our beds.
Comments (0)
NoComments