Victor Hugo Quotes
I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.
Hugo, Victor. Correspondance, vol. 2, Calmann-Lévy, 1896.
Many of the Americans captured by the Islamic Barbary pirates in the years leading up to the Barbary War were sold into slavery. Eaton, who was the American consul at Tunis, couldn’t help but notice the tragic parallel between the suffering of those captured by the pirates and slaves in the American South.
Most people think that in a democracy, the government has more control over the economy than it really does as Hoover observed almost a century ago. However, the major issue between liberals and conservatives is whether or not the government should use the tools that it does have that might influence the economy and to what extent the government should ameliorate the damage that the poor and middle class suffers from the recession or depression. Unemployment insurance and food stamp distribution are basic examples of amelioration. When the Great Depression hit, Hoover was president and he chose not to use the powers of government and became America’s worst President at managing the economy.
David Walker was a Black Abolitionist who also argued to improve the lot of Negro slaves by educating them and allowing them to participate in Christian worship. Caldwell warned him that since it was unlikely to end slavery, educating the slaves might make them more miserable as they would learn of other possibilities under which most men lived.
Victor-Marie Hugo was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote abundantly in an exceptional variety of genres: lyrics, satires, epics, philosophical poems, epigrams, novels, history, critical essays, political speeches, funeral orations, diaries, letters public and private, as well as dramas in verse and prose.
