Famous quotes containing the words poor, law and/or system:
“A new disease? I know not, new or old,
But it may well be called poor mortals’ plague:
For, like a pestilence, it doth infect
The houses of the brain ...
Till not a thought, or motion, in the mind,
Be free from the black poison of suspect.”
—Ben Jonson (c. 1572–1637)
“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Nobody is glad in the gladness of another, and our system is one of war, of an injurious superiority. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It is our system; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and hatreds of his competitors.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)