We are really in a rut with the three-minute song. You know where it's going to go. If you're trying to get your message across sometimes it's wise to say, Why don't we stop here and have a moment of silence, then go in a completely different direction?
I would give the people of America to their first opportunity to elect a president who doesn't belong to either party since George Washington.
It should be possible to say that there really is such as thing as "genius" and that what it is, is precisely a surprising and unexpected movement away from collective patterns of behavior and received wisdom.
All sudden and violent changes, whatever their causes or character, must tend to decrease the respect for status quo as a natural order of things.
This nation's impulse is toward the future, and tradition seems more of a shackle to it than an inspiration.
Americans as no one else in the Old World are looking ahead and are future-minded without the limitations of traditions and can look ahead without the burdens of the past.
Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, and all flock to their aid.
People in both parties are restless for change, ready to break free of old patterns in Washington.
We live in a new and exceptional age. America is another word for Opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine Providence in behalf of the human race; and a literal, slavish following of precedents, as by a justice of the peace, is not for those who at this hour lead the AMERICAN CIVILIZATION.
