Will Jones

“... another intellectual folk custom that contributes to the pervasiveness of American complacency: since the "system" passes the historical test as being generally progressive, a progressive evolution of democratic forms over time is assumed. Complementing this belief (the focus here remains upon the mainstream cultural presumptions of American society) is a generalized intuition concerning the relative ease with which democratic forms have come to exist and are maintained in America. Few central ideas about America have less historical basis of support than this one.”
― Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America

“It is one of the enduring ironies of history that established systems of hierarchy rarely find it necessary to rely on sensible defenses as an essential means of maintaining power.”
― Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America

“I had as yet no notion that life every now and then becomes literature—not for long, of course, but long enough to be what we best remember, and often enough so that what we eventually come to mean by life are those moments when life, instead of going sideways, backwards, forward, or nowhere at all, lines out straight, tense and inevitable, with a complication, climax, and, given some luck, a purgation, as if life had been made and not happened.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories