41 Quotes by James Bryce

Life is too short for reading inferior books.

Perhaps the most typically American place in America.

There is in the American Government...a want of unity.... The Sailors, the helmsman, the engineer, do not seem to have one purpose or obey one will so that instead of making steady way the vessel may pursue a devious or zigzag course, and sometimes merely turn round and round in the water.

No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

An eminent American is reported to have said to friends who wished to put him forward, 'Gentlemen, let there be no mistake. I should make a good president, but a very bad candidate.

No government demands so much from the citizens as democracy and none gives back so much.

The tendency everywhere in America to concentrate power and responsibility in one man is unmistakable.

It is accepted as an axiom by all Americans that the civil power ought to be not only neutral and impartial as between different forms of faith, but ought to leave these matters entirely on one side, regarding them no more than it regards the artistic or literary pursuits of the citizens.

Of all the differences between the Old World and the New, this is perhaps the most salient. Half the wars of Europe, half the internal troubles that have vexed European States... have arisen from theological differences or from the rival claims of Church and State. This whole vast chapter of debate and strife has remained virtually unopened in the United States. There is no Established Church. All religious bodies are equal before the law, and unrecognized by the law, except as voluntary associations of private citizens.