Public Servants Quotes

You should be just as respectful to authority figures and public servants, even if you can now drain them dry. Because your kids are watching you. Also, because it's still illegal to drain authority figures and public servants dry. ~ Molly Harper

Teachers are our greatest public servants; they spend their lives educating our young people and shaping our Nation for tomorrow. ~ Solomon Ortiz

Because we've been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It's ultimately just about that complicated: it hurts. It denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systemic, if hard experience seems to teach that everything you're supposed to believe in's really a game based on lies. Young Voters have been taught well and thoroughly. You may not personally remember Vietnam or Watergate, but it's a good bet you remember 'No new taxes' and 'Out of the loop' and 'No direct knowledge of any impropriety at this time' and Did not inhale' and 'Did not have sex with that woman' and etc. etc. It's depressing and painful to believe that the would-be 'public servants' you're forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously with such a straight face that you just know they have to believe you're an idiot. So who wouldn't fall all over themselves for a top politician who actually seemed to talk to you like you were a person, an intelligent adult worthy of respect? ~ David Foster Wallace

Early Trans-Atlantic Voyages
"Since Columbus' discovery of the islands in the Caribbean, the number of Spanish ships that ventured west across the Atlantic had consistently increased. For reasons of safety in numbers, the ships usually made the transit in convoys, carrying nobility, public servants and conquistadors on the larger galleons that had a crew of 180 to 200. On these ships a total of 40 to 50 passengers had their own cabins amidships. These ships carried paintings, finished furniture, fabric and, of course, gold on the return trip. The smaller vessels including the popular caravels had a crew of only 30, but carried as many people as they could fit in the cargo holds. Normally they would carry about 100 lesser public servants, soldiers, and settlers, along with farm animals and equipment, seeds, plant cuttings and diverse manufactured goods. ~ Hank Bracker

It is only when there is the supervision and critical oversight from the people that the government will be in a position to do an even better job, and employees of government departments will be the true public servants of the people. ~ Wen Jiabao

If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused." I notice too, that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear: "This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

You may not personally remember Vietnam or Watergate, but it's a good bet you remember "No new taxes" and "Out of the loop" and "No direct knowledge of any impropriety at this time" and "Did not inhale" and "Did not have sex with that Ms. Lewinsky" and etc. etc. It's painful to believe that the would-be "public servants" you're forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously and with such a straight face that you know they've just got to believe you're an idiot. So who wouldn't yawn and turn away, trade apathy and cynicism for the hurt of getting treated with contempt? ~ David Foster Wallace

I can be a champion and a public servant also. ~ Manny Pacquiao

The people must remain ever vigilant against tyrants masquerading as public servants. ~ George Washington

The First Lady is an unpaid public servant elected by one person - her husband. ~ Lady Bird Johnson

Chet couldn't wipe away his smile. "I have learned much since we parted ways, and one of those lessons is that a static force, even in mass, can be crushed by a dynamic one."

Wellington's face stiffened. "What kind of foolish talk is that?"

"You will find out. On the Fourth of July, as you sit here in your governor's mansion pandering to your public servants - using them to climb into more power, you will learn what it feels like to have everything you believe in shatter before your very eyes."

Wellington shifted irritably in his seat. "What sort of riddle is that, Chet? You and I have been in this political game our entire lives. You know how it works, and that's not going to change. Ever. One party controls the knobs of politics with one hand, and the other party controls the knobs with the other hand. But they are all one body, members of a political ruling class. That's what we do. This isn't anything new."

Chet pushed his brows over his eyes in a gaze that could melt steel. "You will not be able to stop the ramifications of its impact. This thing I'm about to unleash upon you, I'm doing to you because you are an evil man. I used to be, I'll give you that. But I changed, luckily, before death found me. And I will not let you get away with what you are doing to this country."

Wellington was aghast. "So you're involved with terrorism now, are you? What are you going to do?"

Chet shook his head. "The tru ~ Rich Hoffman

Why are congressmen called public servants? You never see servants that anxious to keep their jobs. ~ Robert Quillen

In the end, Ted Kennedy was a politician, plain and simple. Yet he embodied how politics and public service can be successfully intertwined. You can't be a good public servant without being a good politician. Kennedy was both. ~ Chuck Todd

Firefighters are some of the most selfless public servants you will ever encounter. ~ Denis Leary

I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds. As I develop and serve, be patient. God is not finished with me yet. ~ Jesse Jackson

We make our public servants jump through quite a few hoops, you know. We get hysterical if they accept a $50 lunch from a lobbyist. We get hysterical if they accept a ride on some corporate jet. ~ Christopher Buckley

A motto of many politicians, public servants and money bags: Ask not 'What can I do for you?' but 'What can I do you for? ~ H.M. Forester

Men may make progress, but man never changes. Man loves power and money. No matter the skin color, religion or income level. These symbols of our nation make men drunk with power, who then justify their lust for more by claiming they are public servants. ~ Glenn Beck

Canberra was my home for many years, and there's a lot to love about it. It has a small population with a strong sense of community and is top-heavy with interesting, highly educated, socially progressive people - the opposite of the stereotypical image of dull public servants. ~ Judy Horacek

By the time the think-tank lifers arrived in Baghdad, the crucial roles in the reconstruction had already been outsourced to Halliburton and KPMG. THeir job as the public servants was simply to administer the petty cash, which in Iraq took the form of handling shrink-wrapped bricks of hundred-dollar bills to contractors. It was a graphic glimpse into the acceptable role of government in a corporatist state - to act as a conveyor belt for getting public money into private hands, a job for which ideological commitment is far more relevant than elaborate field experience. ~ Naomi Klein

How, Yusef wondered, can two men joke like that and tomorrow be enemies. Perhaps they'd been enemies yesterday. He decided public servants weren't human. ~ Thomas Pynchon

People who are government servants, public servants, should not be paid more than the taxpayers who are paying for it. ~ Mitt Romney

If my church attempted to influence me in a way which was improper or which affected adversely my responsibilities as a public servant sworn to uphold the Constitution, then I would reply to them that this was an improper action on their part. It was one to which I could not subscribe. ~ John F. Kennedy

After Dickinson and Adams had it out over the Olive Branch Petition, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, that he and Dickinson "are not to be on speaking terms." How sad is it that this tiff sort of cheers me up? If two of the most distinguished, dedicated, and thoughtful public servants in the history of this republic could not find a way to agree to disagree, how can we expect the current crop of congressional blockheads to get along? ~ Sarah Vowell

There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.
I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. ~ Daniel Webster

I have criticisms of Ronald Reagan, but he lives in another universe from the kind of political theater that is represented by people, like Sarah Palin, who aren't really public servants. ~ Eugene Jarecki

You don't have to be an elected official to be a public servant. ~ William J. Clinton

I respect the office of the presidency, but I never worship at the shrines of our public servants ... The Washington press corps has the privilege of asking the president of the United States what he is doing and why. ~ Helen Thomas

The People of God have to elect public servants who know the difference between serving the public and killing the public, and that those who can't tell the difference don't belong in public office. ~ Frank Pavone

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste. ~ Thomas Jefferson

We need to remember that the separation of church and state must never mean the separation of religious values from the lives of public servants ... If we who serve free men today are to differ from the tyrants of this age, we must balance the powers in our hands with God in our hearts. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

I think that the best profession or the best thing to do is to be a public servant. I mean there's nothing better than working for the people - for the common people and being a public servant, and I have seen this. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

Flickr is no such thing, just as Google is not operating a library. They are commercial enterprises designed to maximize revenue, not defend political expression, preserve our collective heritage, or facilitate creativity, and the people who work there are private employees, not public servants.7 ~ Astra Taylor

Arizonians are deeply proud of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's service to this country. She will always be remembered by Arizonans and all Americans as an extraordinary public servant. ~ Jon Kyl

It is important that politicians defend their ability to act without fear or favour, and it is in the public interest that they hold ministers and public servants to account. ~ Jeremy Corbyn

I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be. ~ Scott McClellan

It's painful to believe that the would-be 'public servants' you're forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously and with such a straight face that you know they've just got to believe you're an idiot. ~ David Foster Wallace

Ronald Reagan, whatever his pros and cons were, was a public servant in the end. ~ Eugene Jarecki

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I believe that Bill Clinton will be remembered as one of our nation's great Presidents, and Senator Clinton as one of our nation's great public servants. ~ Joe Andrew

Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made. ~ Grover Cleveland

We have lost a true public servant with the passing of Alan Nunnelee, who dedicated so much of his life to improving Mississippi, my thoughts and prayers are with Tori and the entire Nunnelee family at this sad time. ~ Thad Cochran

If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants ~ Tony Judt

What the public hates the most is when they think the politicians aren't listening to them. They understand that we can't solve all their problems with a snap of our fingers, but they sure want us to try because we are public servants. ~ Chuck Schumer

Let the record show that you can be a United States senator for 21 years. You can be 79 years old. You can be the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and one of the most recognizable and widely-respected veteran public servants in your nation. But if you are female while all of those things, men who you defeat in arguments will still respond to you by calling you hysterical and telling you to calm down. They'll patronize you and say they admire your passion, 'sweetie,' but they deal in facts, not your silly, girly feelings. It's inescapable. You can set your watch by it. ~ Dianne Feinstein

Bureaucrats do not, as a whole, like to make decisions. Decisions require a degree of courage and responsibility, qualities in short supply among public servants on both sides of the Great Divide. ~ Kati Marton

Millions of public workers have become a kind of privileged new class - a new elite, who live better than their private sector counterparts. Public servants have become the public's masters. No wonder the public is upset. ~ Mortimer Zuckerman

We must hold to a rigid accountability those public servants who show unfaithfulness to the interests of the nation or inability to rise to the high level of the new demands upon our strength and our resources. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Liberty is not a matter of words, but a positive and important condition of society. Its greatest safeguard after placing its foundations in a popular base, is in the checks and balances imposed on the public servants. ~ James F. Cooper

The simple index fund solution has been adopted as a cornerstone of investment strategy for many of the nation's pension plans operated by our giant corporations and state and local governments. Indexing is also the predominant strategy for the largest of them all, the retirement plan for federal government employees, the Federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). The plan has been a remarkable success, and now holds some $173 billion of assets for the benefit of our public servants and members of armed services. ~ David F. Swensen

Throughout my entire public career I have followed the personal philosophy that I am a free man, an American, a public servant, and a member of my party, in that order always and only. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

The United States is considered a puritanical society by many Western nations. For example, they can't believe we hassle public servants like General David Petraeus because he had a mistress. In France, if a powerful man doesn't have a mistress, he's considered a wimp. ~ Bill O'Reilly

Government employees are public servants and prohibited by the Constitution from inhibiting religious freedom, that is a far cry from sneaking around and into a church and acting like KGB agents. ~ Mathew Staver

The Viennese wash everything. Where else in the world does the government hire public servants to wash public telephone booths and the glass over traffic lights? Every time I see someone doing these things, I smile like a child. ~ Jonathan Carroll

How sad is it that this tiff sort of cheers me up? If two of the most distinguished, dedicated, and thoughtful public servants in the history of this republic could not find a way to agree to disagree, how can we expect the current crop of congressional blockheads to get along? While ~ Sarah Vowell

Let us, while never forgetting our womanhood, drop all emphasis on sex, and put it on being public servants. ~ Bertha Knight Landes

REAL Entrepreneurs will be the one's who change the world for the better.
Governments must become PUBLIC servants to create the best context and mindsets for people to succeed. We need to ReThink Entrepreneurial success and the role of Public Service in supporting that ... or we, and our children, will pay the ultimate price. ~ Tony Dovale

The Open Market Committee, as presently established, is plainly not in the public interest. This committee must be operated by purely public servants, representatives of the people as a whole and not any single interest group. The Open Market Committee should be abolished, and its powers transferred to the Federal Reserve Board - the present public members of the committee, with reasonably short terms of office. ~ Wright Patman

Most of all, be honest with yourself and make sure those in political office, our so called public servants, are being honest, holding them accountable for their actions! ~ David Pratt

Words without deeds is an affront to the principle that guides our Nation and makes a mockery of the values we as public servants claim to love. ~ Jon Corzine

Manufactured scandals prohibit public servants from doing the job they were elected or appointed to do. ~ Charles B. Rangel

Public Servant: Persons chosen by the people to distribute the graft. ~ Mark Twain

I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy. ~ Daniel Webster

The police have lost sight of the fact that they are public servants. ~ Steven Magee

I find that the great majority of public servants across the entire political spectrum come because they believe in the United States and they want to change the world. ~ Condoleezza Rice

A police officer wears a uniform. They're sworn to uphold the law. They're public servants. And they should not be above the law. ~ Marc Morial

Just a donation request to support the brave public servants of Los Angeles during this time of budgetary shortfalls. ~ Kate Danley

I believe if a private citizen is able to affect public opinion in a constructive way he doesn't have to be an elected public servant to perform a public service. ~ Warren Beatty

What if we were to subject public servants like politicians to a battery of psychological tests like the MMPI? Maybe we could determine which of them were more likely to become corrupt and save them the trouble of lengthy, expensive campaigns where they are ultimately harassed by greedy corporations. ~ Aaron B. Powell

The librarian of today, and it will be true still more of the librarians of tomorrow, are not fiery dragons interposed between the people and the books. They are useful public servants, who manage libraries in the interest of the public ... Many still think that a great reader, or a writer of books, will make an excellent librarian. This is pure fallacy. ~ William Osler

But veteran lawmakers torn apart by PTSD don't have a choice about being Exhibit A in the case against Washington politics. When you see what can happen to a page or a junior congressman, it passes on in a very real way, not in a history-class sense, that reality of what political power really is, .. Who are we to impose this emotional albatross on public servants? As a nation, we pretend to elect our leaders. It seems unjust to make them a special class to suffer for our sins over wrongheaded laws, or pay a continuing emotional price for securing their future careers. ~ Leon Kass

Your public servants serve you right; indeed often they serve you better than your apathy and indifference deserve. ~ Adlai Stevenson I

It's incumbent on good public servants to maintain their voices and originality of thinking. ~ Ronan Farrow

The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals. ~ Glenn Greenwald

The public," he said, "bless them. It's the same in tailoring: they always think they know more about your job than you do, and then you get the blame when it ends up looking a mess." He ~ K.J. Parker

Being silenced by our technologies - in a way, "cured of talking." These silences - often in the presence of our children - have led to a crisis of empathy that has diminished us at home, at work, and in public life. I've said that the remedy, most simply, is a talking cure. This book is my case for conversation. ~ Sherry Turkle

My eyes narrowed. He wanted me to lie for him?
Minias leaned so close to the barrier of ever-after that it buzzed a harsh warning. "If you don't, I'll give the public what they expect." His eyes went to the people clustered at the window. "Proof that you deal in demons ought to do wonders for your ... sterling reputation."
Mmmm. There is that. ~ Kim Harrison

An editor doesn't just read, he reads well, and reading well is a creative, powerful act. The ancients knew this and it frightened them. Mesopotamian society, for instance, did not want great reading from its scribes, only great writing. Scribes had to submit to a curious ruse: they had to downplay their reading skills lest they antagonize their employer. The Attic poet Menander wrote: "those who can read see twice as well." Ancient autocrats did not want their subjects to see that well. Order relied on obedience, not knowledge and reflection. So even though he was paid to read as much as write messages, the scribe's title cautiously referred to writing alone (scribere = "to write"); and the symbol for Nisaba, the Mesopotamian goddess of scribes, was not a tablet but a stylus. In his excellent book A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel writes, "It was safer for a scribe to be seen not as one who interpreted information, but who merely recorded it for the public good."
In their fear of readers, ancients understood something we have forgotten about the magnitude of readership. Reading breeds the power of an independent mind. When we read well, we are thinking hard for ourselves - this is the essence of freedom. It is also the essence of editing. Editors are scribes liberated to not simply record and disseminate information, but think hard about it, interpret, and ultimately, influence it. ~ Susan Bell

Not because they were servants were we so reserved, for many noble persons are forced to serve through necessity, but by reason the vulgar sort of servants are as ill bred as meanly born, giving children ill examples and worse counsel. ~ Margaret Cavendish

With our young, awakened eyes, we saw that the classical conception of the fatherland held by our teachers resolved itself here into a renunciation of personality such as one would not ask of the meanest servants. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

I think TV is all about not turning off the public, it's about not being too sexy, not being too much of anything really. ~ Kelly Brook

Newspapers with declining circulations can complain all they want about their readers and even say they have no taste. But you will still go out of business over time. A newspaper is not a public trust - it has a business model that either works or it doesn't. ~ Marc Andreessen

The loan crisis and the increasing slashing of funds for students, coupled with the astronomical rise in tuition, represent an unparalleled attack on the social state. The hidden agenda here is that when students graduate with such high debts, they rarely choose a career in public service; instead, they are forced to go into the corporate sector, and I see these conditions, in some ways, as being very calculated and as part of a larger political strategy to disempower students. ~ Henry Giroux

Several themes describe misconceptions about mental illness and corresponding stigmatizing attitudes. Media analyses of film and print have identified three: people with mental illness are homicidal maniacs who need to be feared; they have childlike perceptions of the world that should be marveled; or they are responsible for their illness because they have weak character (29-32). Results of two independent factor analyses of the survey responses of more than 2000 English and American citizens parallel these findings (19,33):

- fear and exclusion: persons with severe mental illness should be feared and, therefore, be kept out of most communities;
- authoritarianism: persons with severe mental illness are irresponsible, so life decisions should be made by others;
- benevolence: persons with severe mental illness are childlike and need to be cared for.
- Although stigmatizing attitudes are not limited to mental illness, the public seems to disapprove persons with psychiatric disabilities significantly more than persons with related conditions such as physical illness (34-36). ~ Matthew W. Corrigan

Therefore those governing the State ought primarily to devote themselves to the service of individual groups and of the whole commonwealth, and through the entire scheme of laws and institutions to cause both public and individual well-being to develop spontaneously out of the very structure and administration of the state. ~ Pope Leo XIII

The way we function in society - it doesn't make sense sometimes because it's all based on how you look and then how badly you should feel after you eat the food we just advertised. And then when someone in the public eye goes up or down, it's like a major moment. ~ Raven-Symone

Under the old social philosophy which had governed the Middle Ages, temporal, and therefore all economic, activities were referred to an eternal standard. The production of wealth, it distribution and exchange were regulated with a view to securing the Christian life of Christian men. In two points especially was this felt: First in securing the independence of the family, which can only be done by the wide distribution of property, in others words the prevention of the growth of a proletariat; secondly, in the close connection between wealth and public function. ~ Hilaire Belloc

If sanity ever returns to our society and we stop taking pretentious elites seriously, one of the signs will be that the public will force the removal of those ugly pieces of twisted metal that are called 'art' in front of government buildings. ~ Thomas Sowell

Far from being reluctantly propelled into hostilities by popular war fever, leaders incite that fever in order to gather support for their war policies. Thereby do they attempt to distract the public from pressing domestic matters, serve the overseas interests of U.S. investors, justify gargantuan military budgets, and present themselves as great leaders. ~ Michael Parenti

The unbearable silliness of English newspapers from about 1900 onward has had two main causes. One is that nearly the whole of the Press is in the hands of a few very big capitalists who are interested in the continuance of capitalism and therefore in preventing the public from learning to think; the other is that peacetime newspapers live off advertisements for consumption goods, building societies, cosmetics and the like, and are therfore interested in maintaining a "sunshine mentality" which will induce people to spend money. Optimism is good for trade, and more trade means more advertisements. Therefore, don't let people know the facts about the political and economic situation; divert their attention to giant pandas, channel swimmers, royal weddings and other soothing topics. ~ George Orwell

I'm going to continue working as a model. I want to do it all! And I think it's possible to keep working while you go to school. Christy Turlington did it. Natalie Portman did it. Emma Watson just did it! And those are just women in the public eye, but plenty of others do it, too. You know, women around the world are great at multitasking. We do it well. ~ Karlie Kloss

I think the New York Public Library is so, so amazing. It's literally the coolest place - It's good shelter from the sun and it's the most beautiful building. It's really, really fun. ~ Natalie Portman

Some nights he sat up late on his front porch with a glass of Jack and listened to the trucks heading south on 220, carrying crates of live chickens to the slaughterhouses - always under cover of darkness, like a vast and shameful trafficking - chickens pumped full of hormones that left them too big to walk - and he thought how these same chickens might return from their destination as pieces of meat to the floodlit Bojangles' up the hill from his house, and that meat would be drowned in the bubbling fryers by employees whose hatred of the job would leak into the cooked food, and that food would be served up and eaten by customers who would grow obese and end up in the hospital in Greensboro with diabetes or heart failure, a burden to the public, and later Dean would see them riding around the Mayodan Wal-Mart in electric carts because they were too heavy to walk the aisles of a Supercenter, just like hormone-fed chickens. ~ George Packer

Normally, anything done in the name of 'the kids' strikes me as either slightly sentimental or faintly sinister - that redolence of moral blackmail that adheres to certain charitable appeals and certain kinds of politician. (Not for nothing is baby-kissing the synonym for public insincerity.) ~ Christopher Hitchens

There is in every breast a sensibility to marks of honor, of favor, of esteem, and of confidence, which, apart from all considerations of interest, is some pledge for grateful and benevolent returns. Ingratitude is a common topic of declamation against human nature; and it must be confessed, that instances of it are but too infrequent and flagrant both in public and in private life. But the universal and extreme indignation which it inspires, is itself a proof of the energy and prevalence of the contrary sentiment. ~ James Madison

The government is a very large constructor. They have schools, colleges, hospitals and courts, offices. We are trying to influence the public works department to adopt green buildings. ~ Jamshyd Godrej

What is called the morality of a society is no more than a consequence of the morality of individuals. There is, by the same token, no such thing as a purely private morality, for the morals of private citizens are public in effect, and are increasingly so. ~ Wendell Berry

Building on exhaustive research and probing into such diverse enterprises as textbook production and marketing, public education, and state-level politics, Adam R. Shapiro has situated the Scopes trial within a much broader context than any scholar before him. Trying Biology also demonstrates how ideologues have used differing interpretations of the Scopes trial to advance their agendas. By situating the trial within this much broader framework, the author has significantly enlarged our understanding of the conversations between religion and science in twentieth-century America. ~ Randall Balmer

The work directed against mosquitoes carrying yellow fever had an equally good effect upon malaria, especially when anti-anopheles work was extended to the suburbs of the city. Before the year 1901 Havana had yearly from 300 to 500 deaths from malaria, rising as high in 1898 as 1,900 deaths. Since 1901 there has been a steady decrease in the malaria death rate until 1912, when there were only four deaths. Four deaths from malaria in a city in the tropics the size of Havana, about 300,000 population, means the extinction of malaria in that city. ~ William Crawford Gorgas

I like to read the bible in public places where people are watching me read it. And I like to mumur out to myself: 'Bullshit!' ~ Zach Galifianakis