Contracting State

Famous quotes containing the words contracting and/or state:

“When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs ... I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

“If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)