For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.
Contest
Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.
In 1800, in the first interparty contest, the Federalists warned that presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson, because of his sympathy expressed at the outset of the French Revolution, was ‘the son of a half-breed Indian squaw’ who would put opponents under the guillotine.
I like to think that the best poetry is or involves a contest between ordinary conversation and ritual.
All that is worth seeing in good boxing can best be witnessed in a contest with soft gloves. Every value is called out: quickness, force, precision, foresight, readiness, pluck, and endurance. With these, the rowdy and ‘rough’ are not satisfied.
‘But,’ say the puling, pusillanimous cowards, ‘we shall be subject to a long and bloody war if we declare independence.’ On the contrary, I affirm it the only step that can bring the contest to a speedy and happy issue.
If we despond, public confidence is destroyed, the people will no longer yield their support to a hopeless contest, and American liberty is no more. Through the darkness which shrouds our prospects, the ark of safety is visible. Despondency becomes not the dignity of our cause, nor the character of those who are its supporters.
It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.
Surely these women won’t lose any more of their beauty and charm by putting a ballot in a ballot box once a year than they are likely to lose standing in foundries or laundries all year round. There is no harder contest than the contest for bread, let me tell you that.
The whole gun debate needs to be infused with a discussion about manhood. It’s frustrating to hear debates about gun rights vs. gun control, and yet very few people say what’s hidden in plain sight: It’s really a contest of meanings about manhood.