Famous quotes containing the words trial and, trial, conviction, alfred, dreyfus and/or island:
“Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident—the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.”
—Edward C. Banfield (b. 1916)
“In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Too much traffic with a quotation book begets a conviction of ignorance in a sensitive reader. Not only is there a mass of quotable stuff he never quotes, but an even vaster realm of which he has never heard.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)
“Flash’d from his bed the electric tidings came,
He is no better, he is much the same.”
—Anonymous.
Parody of the style of poet laureate Alfred Austin (1835-1913)
““I am innocent, Long live France! I am innocent,” Dreyfus kept repeating, over and over, while they reviled him. All he needed was a crown of thorns.”
—Norman Reilly Raine (1895–1971)
“We crossed a deep and wide bay which makes eastward north of Kineo, leaving an island on our left, and keeping to the eastern side of the lake. This way or that led to some Tomhegan or Socatarian stream, up which the Indian had hunted, and whither I longed to go. The last name, however, had a bogus sound, too much like sectarian for me, as if a missionary had tampered with it; but I knew that the Indians were very liberal. I think I should have inclined to the Tomhegan first.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)