Steve Schiff

“They had used the prerogatives of democracy to destroy the hopes of democracy.”
― Brenda Wineapple, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation

“The fundamental bedrock of liberty is tolerance,” he said in July 1925. And as if he could darkly anticipate the implications of the Scopes trial not just for Bryan, or Tennessee, or 1925, but for the future of a nation that was said to cherish liberty, he explained, “Tolerance means a willingness to let other people do, think, act and live as we think is not right; the antithesis of this is intolerance and means we demand the right to make others live as we think is right, not as they think is right.” Otherwise, as he had declared, no one was safe.”
― Brenda Wineapple, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation

“Add that to your table of definitions for what it means to be a human being. We make things that we hope will be bigger than us, and then we’re desolate when that’s what they become.”
― Richard Powers, Playground

“The size of the electorate, the impossibility of educating it sufficiently, the fierce ignorance of these millions of semi-literate, priest-ridden and parson-ridden people have gotten me to the point where I want to confine the actions of majorities.”
― Brenda Wineapple, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation