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Best Trivia - Politics
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Favorite Trivia – POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
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| “It’s easy to make an ass out of Trump, just take away the ‘T.'”
John F. Alspaugh
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“While Trump wants the American people to dismiss his vulgar remarks about women as ‘locker-room talk,’ it seems far more likely that the American people will dismiss his claims of a rigged election as ‘padded-room talk.'”
“Steve Danning, The Los Angeles Times – Letters to the Editor, Oct. 19, 2016
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Republican: “A man who, when he makes you a highball, takes the jigger and measures out the whisky. A democrat just pours.” – Eric F. Goldman
Leonard Louis Levinson – Webster’s Unafraid Dictionary: 5,000 Defiant Definitive Put-Downs
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“Diplomat: When a diplomat says yes, he means perhaps; when he says perhaps he means no; and when he says no, he’s no diplomat.”
“Diplomacy: The art of letting someone else have your way.”
Esar’s Comic Dictionary – Evan Esar
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“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.”
George Orwell
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“‘You don’t know how oddly I feel about your coming,’ he [John Hay, Secretary of State] wrote to Mrs. Hay, October 19 [1898], ‘I am longing to see you and yet I feel so dull and worthless I almost dread to have you come and plunge into this life of dreary drudgery. It is going to be vile—the whole business. The men are bad enough—their wives are worse.'”
“‘The real duties of a Secretary of State seem to be three:’—he wrote cynically to Adams, August 5, 1899; ‘to fight claims upon us by other States; to press more or less fraudulent claims of our citizens upon other countries; to find offices for the friends of Senators where there are none.'”
Tyler Dennett – John Hay: From Poetry to Politics
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“The ultimate personification of the gilded grossness of the 1980’s, Donald Trump, is president of the United States. And as a consequence of his excesses—and of the boom in Fake (and Fox) News—an appreciation of powerful independent journalism is reviving. We may even be at the start of a new golden age.” [Epilogue]
Tina Brown – The Vanity Fair Diaries
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| “Congress: Reader, suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.” – Mark Twain
Webster’s Unafraid Dictionary: Defiant Definitive Put-Downs – Leonard Louis Levinson
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“… Unlike most presidents, who have developed tough enough skins during their time in politics to at least pretend to shrug off the humor at their expense, Trump’s skin makes paper seem thick. There’s nothing he hates more than being mocked. Ridicule is his kryptonite.
The Democrats need to appreciate that this is their greatest weapon. The surest way to beat Donald Trump is to get voters laughing at him. His overreactions to being made fun of invariably make him double, triple, quadruple down on his original idiocy, further highlighting his lunacy. Instead of letting him define them as socialists, they must define him as the national buffoon.”
Paul Slansky, The Democrats’ Secret Weapon, LA Times Op-Ed, September 22, 2019
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“Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, that those United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”
John Adams in a letter to Mrs. Adams, July 3, 1776
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| “November 7. It’s Saturday morning [NYC] and still the election has not been called. . . It’s 10:25 a.m., an unseasonably warm, sunny day, and I’m finishing my coffee when a human sound rises from the streets. It’s a cry, a breaking howl, and I don’t need to hear the cheers that follow to know: Trump has lost. I throw open a window to people clapping and hugging on the sidewalk, neighbors leaning from windows, banging pots and pans, whooping and ululating. Down below, the beer deliveryman jumps from his truck and asks the bodega man, ‘Is it Biden? Is it Biden’ Yes, yes. A car pulls over and the driver asks the crowd what happened. ‘It’s Pennsylvania,’ a woman says. ‘They called Pennsylvania. Biden won.’ As news spreads, the applause gets louder, the crowds grow larger, everyone crying and hugging, dancing in the street, popping champagne. I’m standing in the kitchen, putting my coffee cup in the sink, when I feel an internal click and my body bends over, face in hands, sobbing with relief, four years of tension cracking like ice in sudden sunlight.”
Jeremiah Moss – Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York
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“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”
Lord Acton in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton (1887)
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J.K. Rowling’s tweet regarding Trump’s first solo press conference February 16, 2017: “Up until an hour ago, the scariest thing I’d ever watched was Psycho.”
Lorraine Ali, The Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2017
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“England was under the iron rule of a grim and puritanical general, Oliver Cromwell [1653]. As England’s Lord Protector, Cromwell imposed a series of increasingly draconian measures of social and religious control throughout England. Among other things, he imposed strict censorship, banned all plays, established a female dress code, suspended most sporting events, tore down the famous Globe Theatre, nixed the traditional celebration of Christmas…
“Mercifully, Cromwell died in 1658, and England’s totalitarian religious fever began to break. By 1661 the religious zealots were marginalized and a more independent and moderate parliament began liberalizing the country once again. They relaxed censorship, reopened the theatres, loosened up social controls and even restored a limited monarchy, with a second King Charles atop the throne.”
John Pollack – The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics
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| “Mental Test: Most of our troubles would have been averted if the Constitution had provided for mental tests for congressional candidates.”
Esar’s Comic Dictionary – Evan Esar
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| “I have before me the letters I wrote from March through August, 1936, from Germany. I mean I have those that were allowed out—after I caught on that no one was getting them when I spoke of verboten things. They open mail through military nervousness. After the last letter there is one from Sofia, Bularia. I’ll quote direct: “‘I could never tell you the truth about Germany while living there. In fact I told many deliberate lies after I found out the letters weren’t getting out. Fight them with their own weapons—lies, deceit, the dirty dogs (the rulers, not the people) . . . That rotten country (government)! Prisons full of people who did nothing worse than think for themselves, or make a mistake speaking about something Hitler doesn’t like . . . The people are most friendly and kind, but with all their efficiency those that blindly worship Hitler must be damn fools . . . Years ago I saw the same fanatical worship of the Kaiser. It looks as if they have to have a moustache to Heil or Hoch—even if the style changes . . . I got sick to death of seeing Hitler’s picture everywhere. You can’t even admire some fruit in a window but what his picture is in the middle of it.’ “I decided to stay in Germany a while . . . it seemed Hitler would behave until after the Olympic Games . . . It was ‘Über Alles,’ all right at the Olympics. They didn’t like having black and brown skinned athletes win major events, but they fixed it so Germany won by adding a lot of games no other country plays. That’s typical. If they aren’t best in reality, they work it around somehow so they appear to be.”
Maud Parrish – Nine Pounds of Luggage
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| “‘During the Cultural Revolution, everyone wanted to show love for Chairman Mao—everyone had to—so we went to the river. Chairman Mao swam across the Yangtse River, did you know that? So we all thought we should swim across the Xiang river. Many people jumped in—thousands of people—but a terrible, terrible thing happened. Too many people jumped in at once, they pushed to get in the water, so there was not enough room to swim. You could not move your arms! The river looked like soup, and all the peoples’ heads looked like dumplings going up and down. Because they could not move their arms, many people sank to the bottom and died. Really—they looked like dumplings.'” [One of Mark Salzman’s students in China]
Mark Salzman – Iron & Silk
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| “American Fascism will get nowhere without a dictator. Somewhere he exists; somewhere in the murky valleys of politics lurks the American Hitler. Soon or late, he will appear. Let us pray that when he comes, he will have the mark of the beast set on his brow, so we shall know him.” [August 29, 1936] [We know him alright, his name is Donald Trump!]
Philip Dunne – Dear Los Angeles (ed. by David Kpen)
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| “In many respects the parties are mirroring each other, as the incentive structure on both sides is geared toward the extremes. Politics is no longer about capturing the center where most voters gravitate, but revving up the ranks of the most passionate.”
Jonah Goldberg, The Los Angeles Times, February 11, 2019
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| “The Republicans have their splits right after an election and Democrats have theirs just before an election.”
Will Rogers
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| “In April 1898, shortly after the sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor, Congress declared war on Spain. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for [Theodore] Roosevelt, who quickly resigned his post and eagerly formed a collection of college athletes, cowboys, policemen, and miners into a fighting group that went on to achieve lasting glory as the Rough Riders. Roosevelt was lionized in the American press, and his status as a war hero guaranteed a successful political future. “In 1900, despite his many qualms about McKinley, Roosevelt was persuaded to become the vice-presidential running mate. They won the election, of course, and after McKinley’s assassination in 1901, Roosevelt became the twenty-sixth president of the United States, the youngest man, at age forty-two, to serve in the office.”
I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like – Dr. Mardy Grothe
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| “Trump has proved far less competent at dismantling climate action than initially feared. ‘Teddy Roosevelt talked about speaking softly and carrying a big stick,’ said Nigel Purvis, a climate negotiator during the Clinton and George W. Bush administration and chief executive of the firm Colimate Advisors. ‘Donald Trump is tweeting loudly and carrying fiddlesticks. The level of damage is not as much as one might have thought given all the tweeting and speeches.”
Los Angeles Times, Evan Halper
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| Regarding the large number of Democrats to win mid-term elections in California: “Democrats are riding a blue wave while Republicans are wiping out.”
George. Skelton, The Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2018
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| “Politicians campaign in poetry, but they govern in prose.”
Mario Cuomo
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| “He’s a Trumpster,” Russell said of Roos. “But I don’t hold being a fool against anyone but that fool, Trump.”
(Don Russell, owner of Mountain Messenger newspaper) – Los Angeles Times, Diana Marcum, January 7, 2019.
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“If it’s a bunch of clowns
you voted in
election day is comin’
’round again
If you don’t like it now
if it’s more than you’ll allow
if you don’t like who’s in
there, vote ’em out.”
Vote ‘Em Out – Song by Willie Nelson
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| “Bryan is defeated for the third time in his attempt to be President… I voted for him for I feel that some stop must be put to the rottenness in the Republican administration. But, as usual, I’m on the losing side. ‘Bill’ Taft, a jolly looking fat man designated by Roosevelt as his successor, gets the office—and the cancerous growth is to have four more years. I’m not a Democrat, I am of no party. I’m for change—for the operating knife when a party rots in power. I am certainly ashamed of the cowardice of the American voters.” [November 3, 1908]
John Sloan’s New York Scene: From The Diaries, Notes, and Correspondence 1906-1913
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| “In their recent book, How Democrats Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt noted that one way autocratic regimes rise to power is by undermining the media, the legal profession and the judiciary. All are potential independent checks on government… “‘If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court,’ Trump tweeted recently. The president seems to think government lawyers are duty-bound to defend his every whim, and that Republican judges are duty-bound to decide cases in his favor.”
Doyle McManus
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| “The Republicans have become an anti-science, anti-fact, anti-immigrant, anti-cosmopolitan party, and that is just very unappealing to college-educated voters,” Mellman [Mark] said.
“White College Grads, Turned Off by Trump, Could Flip Republican Control Of Congress,” Los Angeles Times, December 25, 2107, Michael Finnegan
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“He looks just like the little man on the wedding cake,” said Alice Roosevelt Longworth about Thomas E. Dewey.
Mrs. Longworth, the colorful daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, became such a fixture in our nation’s capital in the mid-1900’s that she was called ‘Washington’s other monument.’ She made this remark during the 1948 presidential race, when Dewey was heavily favored to defeat Harry S. Truman.
“Once the remark was made, many voters couldn’t get the image out of their minds—Dewey, with his pencil-thin mustache and formal demeanor, did look as stiff as the groom figures seen on wedding cakes. How many votes did it cost Dewey? Enough to give Truman the surprise victory, which he celebrated by hoisting a Chicago Tribune with the famously wrong headline: DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.”
I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like – Dr. Mardy Grothe
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| “Republican Roy Moore’s Democratic rival in Alabama’s U.S. Senate race [Doug Jones] said that he worked as a prosecutor ‘to ensure that men who hurt little girls should go to jail and not to Congress.'”
Michael Finnegan, The Los Angeles Times, December 6, 2017
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“The American electorate in November chose as our president [Trump] an international laughingstock who is ignorant and impetuous, his chief saving grace being that his extremism is tempered by his incompetence.”
Max Boot, The Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2017
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“In America, anybody can be president. That’s one of the risks you take.”
Adlai Stevenson
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“It was challenging to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says, ‘This is what I believe.'”
Rex Tillerson, secretary of state said in an interview after being fired on March 13, 2018.
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| “Donald [Trump] is a believer in the big-lie theory,” his lawyer had told me. “If you say something again and again, people will believe you.” “One of my lawyers said that?” Trump said when I asked him about it. “I think if one of my lawyers said that, I’d like to know who it is, because I’d fire his ass. I’d like to find out who the scumbag is!”
“After The Gold Rush,” Vanity Fair, September 1990 – Marie Brenner
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Brennan’s tweet to Trump: “When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America… America will triumph over you.”
John Brennan (headed CIA from 2013-2017) after Trump fired FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe on March 17, 2018, 26 hours before McCabe would have qualified for a full government pension
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“Over the past nine months, the nation has seen evidence accrue that the man it elected president [Trump] entered office ill-prepared for the job, and whose core personality—vain, venal and vengeful—made him ill-suited for work that requires tact, humility and compassion.”
Editorial – The Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2017
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| “Recently in my psychiatric office, an 11-year-old boy presented me with a photo of himself in a Halloween costume dressed as Robin Hood. When I asked him what he knew of Robin Hood he responded that he was the opposite of President Trump. ‘How,’ I asked. ‘Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave it to the poor, whereas Trump steals from the poor and gives it to the rich,’ he said. From the mouths of babes, as they say.”
Ronald Onkin, MD (Encino), The Los Angeles Times – Letters to the Editor, November 25, 2017
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| “It’s a very dangerous time. We’re all trapped in a badly written dystopian novel. Trump is either a character right out of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ or a ‘Saturday Night Live’ joke that doesn’t need rewriting.”
Kim Drew Wright
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| “‘Trump visited Iraq without your knowledge, without giving you attention, and without asking you to give him permission. What sovereignty are you taking after this?’ tweeted Muntadhar Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist turned politician who once hurled his shoes at then-president George W. Bush when he was visiting Iraq in 2008. “‘Do you have any respect from the world or your people?’ Zaidi tweeted Wednesday. ‘If we had known he was visiting, then Iraq would have prepared for him 30 million shoes.'”
Nabih Bulos – Los Angeles Times, December 28, 2018
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| “Great Offices, and great Honours, are most truly said to be great Burdens: The Slavery of them is but so much greater, because it concerns the Service of the Publick; for the people are a Master scarce ever to be satisfied.” [DCCXVI]
The Moral Maxims And Reflections of the Duke De La Rochefoucauld
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| “U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has a sweetheart deal to stay at a Washington condominium for $50 a night—only on the nights he stays there—in an expensive area. The condo is owned by the wife of a lobbyist for energy companies, one of which just had a pipeline deal approved by the EPA. “The EPA says there’s no conflict of interest. Of course it says that, since Pruitt’s the boss. “Trump isn’t draining the swamp; he’s filling it with his fellow crocodiles.”
Scott McKenzie (La Canada Flintridge), The Los Angeles Times – Letters to the Editor, April 5, 2018
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U.S. Embassy bugs in USSR
The Great Seal bug:
The Soviets had presented a replica of the Great Seal of the United States as a gift to Ambassador Averell Harriman in 1946. The gift hung in the U.S. Embassy for many years, until in 1952, during George F. Kennan’s ambassadorship, U.S. security personnel discovered the listening device embedded inside the Great Seal.
U.S. Embassy construction bug:
In the 1980’s it was discovered that when the new U.S. Embassy was being built that Soviet agents had posed as laborers and installed bugs throughout. They even found the concrete columns riddled with bugs. The building was torn down.
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“An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.”
Simon Cameron |
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“The dangerously retro culture of Fox News is increasingly represented outside the studio doors. President Trump, who appears to gain much of his intel from network programming such as “Hannity,” asked that his female White House staffers ‘dress like women’ shortly after he was sworn in.”
Lorraine Ali – The Los Angeles Times |
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“Am I wise to embrace a Parliamentary career—can I face the continued strain? James Willoughby told me today that he nearly gave up his parliamentary campaign in November, as he just could not stand the ordeal of speaking; when he confessed this to his agent, the man replied, ‘Don’t let not speaking well dishearten you: I have known candidates who could not even read.’”
Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon – Sir Henry Channon |
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“Arose at 5:45 A.M. Read the papers and at 7:10 walked to the station to meet the family. Took 35 minutes. Sure is fine to have them back. This great white jail is a hell of a place in which to be alone. While I work from early morning until late at night, it is a ghostly place…Anyone with imagination can see old Jim Buchanan walking up and down worrying about conditions not of his making. Then there’s Van Buren who inherited a terrible mess from his predecessor as did poor old James Madison… they all walk up and down the halls of this place and moan about what they should have done and didn’t… So the tortured souls who were and are misrepresented in history are the ones who come back. It’s a hell of a place.” [January 6, 1947]
Harry S. Truman 1947 Diary – Harry S. Truman |
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“What is a Communist? One who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings.
Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing,
To fork out his copper and pocket your shilling.”
Ebenezer Elliott |
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“Liberal: One who has both feet firmly planted in the air.”
Anonymous |
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“Mata Hari was the stage name of a Dutch exotic dancer whose scantily clad dance routines and openly promiscuous life style captivated Parisian society in the early 1900’s. She was found guilty—on flimsy evidence—of espionage and executed by a French firing squad in 1917.”
I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like – Dr. Mardy Grothe |
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“Donald Trump invited me to a party tonight to launch Kim Kardashian’s new perfume.
“How’s my champ?’ he shouted when he saw me coming down the red carpet. Ever since I won his Celebrity Apprentice show, this is what Trump always calls me.
Trump’s a polarizing figure, but I love his supreme self-confidence—as confirmed by the titles of his books: Think Like a Billionaire; Think Big and Kick Ass; and my favorite: No Such Thing As Over-Exposure.
Beneath the cocksure bluster, though, Trump’s a very smart businessman, and he’s now seriously considering going for the biggest job of them all—the presidency.
“It’s very tempting,” he confessed tonight. “Everywhere I go, people ask me if I’m running. And I’m considering it. I mean, how many more houses can I buy and sell?
A race between Sarah Palin and Donald Trump for the Republican ticket in 2012 would be a sensational one for the media, and possibly a worrying one for Barack Obama, given the huge popularity both of them have among many mainstream Americans.
One of the many fascinating things about Trump is that he’s never touched a drop of alcohol, smoked a cigarette, or tried a drug. He doesn’t even drink coffee.
His only vice is women.
I once asked him for the secret to his success with the ladies, and he explained: “A lot of it is down to The Look. It doesn’t mean you have to look like Cary Grant, it means you have to have a certain way about you, a stature. I see some successful guys who just don’t have The Look. And they are never going to go out with great women. The Look is very important. I don’t really like to talk about it because it sounds very conceited… but it matters.” [November 10, 2010]
Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney – Piers Morgan |
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 Jeffrey McDaniel, photo by B.A. Van Sise (Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry)
The Quiet World – Jeffrey McDaniel
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words per day.
When the phone rings I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long-distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words.
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.”
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“In the case of the Illinois senate in 1996, my reasoning went like this: I didn’t much appreciate politicians and therefore didn’t relish the idea of my husband becoming one. Most of what I knew about state politics came from what I read in the newspaper, and none of it seemed especially good or productive. My friendship with Santita Jackson [Jesse Jackson’s daughter] had given me a sense that politicians were often required to be away from home. In general, I thought of lawmakers almost like armored tortoises, leather-skinned, slow moving, thick with self-interest. Barack was too earnest, too full of valiant plans, in my opinion, to abide by the hardscrabble, drag-it-out rancor that went on inside the domed capital downstate in Springfield. In my heart, I just believed there were better ways for a good person to have an impact. Quite honestly, I thought he’d get eaten alive.”
Michelle Obama – Becoming |
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“Over the course of the winter of 2011, we’d been hearing news that the reality-show host and New York real-estate developer Donald Trump was beginning to make noise about possibly running for the Republican presidential nomination when Barack came up for reelection in 2012. Mostly, though, it seemed he was just making noise in general, surfacing on cable shows to offer yammering, inexpert critiques of Barack’s foreign policy decisions and openly questioning whether he was an American citizen. The so-called birthers had tried during the previous campaign to feed a conspiracy theory claiming that Barack’s Hawaiian birth certificate was somehow a hoax and that he’d in fact been born in Kenya. Trump was now actively working to revive the argument, making increasingly outlandish claims on television, insisting that the 1961 Honolulu newspaper announcements of Barack’s birth were fraudulent and that none of his kindergarten classmates remembered him. All the while, in their quest for clicks and ratings, news outlets—particularly the more conservative ones—were gleefully pumping oxygen into his groundless claims.
“The whole thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed. But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks. I feared the reaction. I was briefed from time to time by the Secret Service on the more serious threats that came in and understood that there were people capable of being stirred. I tried not to worry, but sometimes I couldn’t help it. What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this, I’d never forgive him.”
Michelle Obama – Becoming
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“He [President Barack Obama] now had about fifty staffers reading and answering his mail. He had Marine helicopter pilots standing by to fly him anywhere he needed to go, and a six-person team that organized thick briefing books so he could stay current on the issues and make educated decisions. He had a crew of chefs looking after his nutrition, and a handful of grocery shoppers who safeguarded us from any sort of food sabotage by making anonymous runs to different stores, picking up supplies without ever revealing whom they worked for.”
Michelle Obama – Becoming |
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“Because people often ask, I’ll say it here directly: I have no intention of running for office, ever. I’ve never been a fan of politics, and my experience over the last ten years has done little to change that. I continue to be put off by the nastiness—the tribal segregation of red and blue, this idea that we’re supposed to choose one side and stick to it, unable to listen and compromise, or sometimes even to be civil.”
Michelle Obama – Becoming |
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“May we be governed by principle, not greed, and be comrades in our republics rather than slaves. We wish to be full members of society, not just props; human beings rather than simple shadows. May the rich not hamper the poor seeking to become rich, nor the poor become rich by stealing from the powerful… May all governments take on the responsibility of promoting prosperity among the poor and honor among the virtuous, not the opposite.
“Clearly, no on person should be of more value than any other because those who partake of excess destroy equality and those who allow excess conspire with those who seek it. Equality is harmony, and thereon rests peace in the Republic. Disrupting equality through excess is out of tune and what was once sweet music becomes simply noise. ” [March 8, 1856]
Francisco P. Ramirez (Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters: 1542 to 2018, ed. by David Kipen) |
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“When I arrived in Philadelphia, General Washington was not there: I was obliged to wait for him for about a week… He invited me to dinner the next day, and we parted. I took good care to keep the appointment. There were only five or six guests. The conversation turned upon the French Revolution. The General showed us a key from the Bastille. These keys, as I have already remarked, were silly toys which were distributed to all and sundry… If Washington had seen the victors of the Bastille in the gutters of Paris, he would have had less respect for his relic…
“Such was my meeting with the soldier-citizen, the liberator of a world. Washington went to his grave before a little fame attached itself to my footsteps; I passed before him as the most insignificant of human beings; he was in all his glory, I in all my obscurity; my name may not have lingered so much as one whole day in his memory: yet I am fortunate indeed that his gaze should have fallen upon me! I have felt warmed by it for the rest of my life: there is virtue in the gaze of a great man.”
François-René de Chateaubriand – The Memoirs of Chateaubriand |
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