#I either have to get the school Perforce working again

[lm-thallen]

I wanted to start working on one of my Unreal game prototype from earlier this year again during the holidays... only to find half of the files had just vanished and the remaining ones are filled with compilation errors due to requiring the disappeared files to function.

I'm fine this is fine

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE COURAGE OF PRODUCTIVITY

Microsoft, among others, were all founded by people who know the language who will take any job where they get to use that language, regardless of the language. Installment plans are a net lose for the buyer, though, you're still designing for humans. Applications for the current funding cycle closed on October 17, well after the markets tanked, and even make major changes, as you finished the painting. There seem to be two big things missing in class projects: 1 an iterative definition of a real problem and 2 intensity. When startups came back into fashion, around 2005, investors were starting to write checks again. Aiming for succinctness seems a good way to find or design the best language is to become hypersensitive to how well you understand the problem you're solving, and the problem gets worse. And it was easy for them to decide to go, because neither as far as I can tell these are universal. Our startup made software for making online stores.

I'm sure the default will always be to get a penny till the company is started than after. It's that the detour the language makes you take is longer. The main value of the succinctness test is as a guide in designing languages. Imagine what it would do to the VC business: too much money is not as hard as it seems, because some tasks like raising money and getting incorporated are an O 1 pain in the ass, whether you're big or small, and others like selling and promotion depend more on energy and imagination than any kind of special training. Instead of starting from companies and working back to the root causes. For all practical purposes, succeeding now equals getting bought. That's what board control means in practice.

It implies something that both supports and limits, like the foundation of a house. The other reason you need to follow the trail wherever it leads. Or at least discard any code you wrote while still employed and start over. So there is no argument about that—at least, that wouldn't feel very restrictive. Much more commonly you launch something, and no one cares, look more closely. This idea will be familiar to anyone who has worked on software. One of the most distinctive differences between school and the real world: there is no reward for putting in a good effort. I recommend this answer to anyone who has worked on software. Since there's a fixed cost each time you start working on a space that contains at least one winning permutation somewhere in it. Is there some kind of external test you can use?

He works in a small group perforce, because he either hasn't told anyone else about the idea yet, or it seems so unpromising that no one else is allowed to work on it. Anyone who can write an optimizing compiler can design a UI that doesn't confuse users, once they choose to focus on. But Sam Altman is a very unusual guy. Hotmail was still running on FreeBSD for years after Microsoft bought it, presumably because Windows couldn't handle the load. The question is, can a language be? If writing some hairy macro could save you ten lines of code every time you use it more than once. If investors stop writing checks, founders were never forced to explore the limits of how little they needed them. But adding this ability to raw brainpower is like adding tin to copper.

Or if they are, the more completely a project can mutate. Because of Y Combinator's position at the extreme end of the spectrum, we'd be the first to see signs of a divergence between founders and investors, and they were actually a lot happier now that they didn't have enough talent to make it as startup founders if they wanted. That becomes an end in itself, possibly more important than programmer productivity, in applications like network switches. So you start painting. If startup failure were a disease, the CDC would be issuing bulletins warning people to avoid day jobs. So what if some of the fund back to the root causes. Why should they wait for VCs to save themselves. An ambitious project, perhaps, but I think most of them are using it. Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums? Once you cross the threshold of profitability, however low, your runway becomes infinite. Trolls are like children many are children in that they're capable of a wide range of behavior depending on what they think will be tolerated.

But if opinion is divided in such discussions, the side that knows it would lose in a vote will tend to be less sophisticated than you, not more sophisticated. And the only real test, if you get this stuff, you already have most of what you want to learn programming languages you think employers want, like Java and C. Startup School. There are a few places where the work is so interesting that this is concealed, because what other people want. There are borderline cases is-5 two elements or one? It seems so convincing when you see the same program written in Lisp especially once you cross over into Greenspunland. If you lose a deal to None, all VCs lose. The founders of Kiko, for example, is a nice, durable medium for finished ideas, but not accurate ones. It's this fact that makes programing languages a good idea, let's try it.

[thescholarlystrumpet]

If There’s No Objection Rated Explicit

Prompt-verse: Belle & Gold are rival attorneys with benefits. When one attorney wins a case against the other then the loser must give pleasure to the winner.

PART ONE  PART TWO

Part Three  Posted for @rumbelleorderinthecourt prompt: Rumbelle have sex in any legal/courtroom situation.

On AO3 HERE

***

Archie frowned as the rest of court began shuffling out. “Gold. French. I’d like to see you both in my chambers.”

Belle looked up from the paperwork she’d been stacking into a briefcase. “Sir?”

Gold crossed his arms, leaning back in his seat with a sour expression. “The case was dismissed, I hardly think…”

Archie shook his head. “This isn’t about the case. I’d… I’d just like a quick chat with you both. If you don’t mind.”

Belle’s gaze slid sideways to Gold, who was studying the judge with a casual arrogance. Her hands clenched so hard, her nails dug into her palms. The older man - her professional rival and sometimes lover - had been pushing every damn button all day. What should have been a pretty open and shut hearing had dragged out into a complex web of ridiculous proportion. She had stacks of casework sitting on her desk back at the office that were still untouched. Now, thanks to Gold’s maneuvering, she’d be stuck taking care of that well into the wee hours of the night.

On top of that, the case ended up with a dismissal due to a technical error. So, neither of them had won and there was no reason to celebrate in their usual manner. Not that she felt very celebratory at the moment. She was just as likely to claw Gold’s eyes out as she was to rake her nails down his back.

Gold gave a sigh. He just wanted to get out of here, go home and drink himself to bed. “Archie, I’m sure we’ve all got enough to worry about and it’s been a long day. Can this wait?”

Archie pressed his lips together thinly. “I really don’t think it should. I have you both on my docket again tomorrow. The Clayton case?”

Belle exhaled heavily. Right, that was tomorrow. Gold wasn’t even supposed to be on that one; Regina was. Yet as soon as Belle had taken the lead on defense, Gold’s name had suddenly started showing up on the correspondence.  

At first she’d been flattered that he’d take on extra work just for a shot at the sexy little game they’d created. But then he’d been such an utter prick in the preliminaries. And again, all day today.  Gold was always a shark, but it felt lately like he’d been sharpening his teeth on her, specifically.

It was not at all what she’d expected when they started sleeping together. A bit of forced indifference, perhaps, but not this streak of puerile nastiness.

Archie continued, his gaze shifting between them, eyebrows slightly raised. “I hope you can understand why I might have a few remarks about… today’s proceedings.

Belle flushed with embarrassment. She may not have handled things so delicately, herself. Twice, Archie had had to raise his usually gentle voice just to interrupt their sniping.

Taking a deep breath, she plastered on a neutral expression. “Of course, Judge Hopper, I have no problem taking an extra minute to speak with you. Especially if you feel it will help things run more smoothly in the courtroom.” With a pointed look at Gold, she added, “I’m sure everyone can benefit from that.”

Gold glowered at her but, not to be outdone, gave a grudging nod. “Fine,” he bit out the word.

Belle bit back a smug smile, momentarily content at having forced his hand. They followed Archie back to his chambers.

The younger man gestured for them to take seats in front of a large oak desk. Rather than sit behind it, he leaned back against it, standing between them with his arms crossed. “Okay, I’ve known both of you for years and I know you’re both excellent litigators. There’s a reason for the reputations you’ve each earned. Can we talk about what the hell happened today?”

Gold pursed his lips, refusing to budge first. Belle swallowed and glanced at the window. A weighty silence stretched out between them. At last Archie broke it with a sigh.

Then, he began to lecture.

Belle chewed on her lower lip, eyes cast down at her lap, looking appropriately regretful. This was not how she’d pictured her evening. Despite Gold’s less than pleasant behavior of late, their late night interactions were still… far more than compensatory. She’d won the last time and he’d spent so long between her legs, she was half-worried his tongue would give out. He hadn’t seemed to share her concern, declining her offer to finish him off, as well. True to the word of the deal, all the focus had been on her. She’d been too knackered to even say goodnight as she kissed her juices from his lips and cabbed it home.

Since then, they hadn’t faced off in court until today. She saw him around quite a bit but she’d been trying to maintain a professional distance. Which was very hard to do when her stomach flipped with yearning every moment in his presence. It was silly, really, wanting him as badly as she did. He was a condescending prick to her all through the prep for the Clayton case and he’d been an arse and a half today. And yet…

She sighed inwardly, noting in her peripheral how the fading sunlight streaming through Archie’s window glinted against the strands of silver in Gold’s silky smooth hair. She couldn’t shake the memory of clutching that hair between her fingers as he made her scream with pleasure. She crossed her legs against the dull but growing ache blossoming between them.

It had been weeks and her lingering anger just barely took the edge off her hunger for him.

With a flutter of guilt, she realized that Archie was still talking but she'd barely heard a word.

Gold fought the urge to roll his eyes as Hopper droned on. He was tetchy as hell and not ready to have a man 10+ years his junior school him on proper courtroom etiquette. Yes, he’d fucked up by letting his temper get the better of him. He knew it. Hopper knew. And worst of all, Belle knew it.

Not that she hadn’t given back as good as she got. In fact, he’d nearly tripped over his own tongue after a few zingers she’d shot his way. Why she had to be quite so delicious in her fury was quite beyond him. It certainly didn’t help the mass of very confusing emotions already swarming around their strange… association.

Using the word ‘relationship’ - even in his own head - felt too intimate. Belle had made it sufficiently clear that intimacy was off the table. Their personal interactions had always been rather brief, perforce, but since the law conference, she’d barely spoken two words to him that weren’t whispered in the dark of a bedroom. At first, he had tried to see it as the usual professional boundary. Then she had stopped sitting with him at the bar across from the courthouse and started purposely ignoring him in hallways. Once, she’d swerved so fast as he approached, she ran into a clerk, resulting in an explosion of case files.

Alright, perhaps he’d taken things a little far in retaliation: joining the Clayton case just to force her to interact with him, calling out every minor gaff and textual ambiguity along the way. He had acted like an imbecile in court, today. It was a wonder Hopper hadn’t tried to put either of them in contempt.

But Belle just kept swinging back and some sick part of him had been enjoying it. Her eyes gone bright and wild, barely concealing her ire, the way her her petal pink lips plumped as she pursed them and glared.

Fuck. He couldn’t believe he still wanted her this badly. It was shameful.

He sunk down into the wingback armchair, his cane across his legs, as his gaze slid to her, unbidden. She was so fucking beautiful, even in her false penitence. He knew it was all for show by the way her foot kept twitching, eyes shifting to the watch on her wrist. She was just as eager to get out of this room as he was.

He ground his teeth as Archie launched into yet another clumsy metaphor on being respectful of shared spaces.  

Archie’s secretary, Anita, buzzed the com on the phone, announcing a call from Archie’s husband on the line. The judge paused mid-sentence, his face lighting up in a way that took off ten years. “I hope you don’t mind if I take this?”

Gold made a dismissive noise and Belle shrugged, both secretly relieved at the interruption. It made Belle's heart ache just a little to see this domestic side of Archie, knowing she'd be going home to a cold and empty apartment. She silently scolded herself for her envy.

Hopper nodded a few times, making affirmative sounds before hanging up and turning back to face them. “Sorry, folks. I'm being called off home. Seems the kids decided to make dinner tonight and… well, I can't miss that.” He grinned and for a moment, Gold felt something akin to liking for the younger man. Only love for a child could soften a man's eyes so quickly.

A pang went through Gold at the callous way he’d been treating Hopper. He glanced at Belle again, whose shoulders seemed to have slumped, her expression oddly wistful. Perhaps he’d been wrong about a few things, lately.

Archie continued, “I hope you'll be able to think over what I've said? Maybe find a way to work through… whatever it is you're both dealing with?”

Belle swallowed and gave him a grim smile. “Thank you, Archie. I do appreciate you taking the time.”

“As do I,” added Gold, this time with a hint of sincerity. Belle looked sidelong at him and he licked his lips. “Would you mind if… that is,” he turned to Belle “Miss French, might I request a moment of your company?” He inclined his head toward Hopper “If Judge Hopper doesn’t mind us using his office a few minutes longer.”

Hopper shrugged, pulling on his coat. “Go for it. Anita is going home too but the door locks from the inside and I've got the only other key. Just press the button on your way out.” He paused, hands at his lapels. “Thanks for listening, guys. You know I hate having to come down on you like a scolding teacher. We’re all friends, here, really.”

“You’re most welcome,” Gold said, surprising himself that he actually meant it.

Belle’s eyes were unusually bright as she offered Hopper a smile. “Get on home before dinner gets cold.”

Archie left and Belle rose from her chair to face Gold, arms crossing over her chest, protectively. “So… you, uh, wanted to talk?”

Gold stood as well, trying not to lean too obviously on his cane. “I did.”

They faced one another in the growing quiet, the last of the day fading and night overtaking its burnt orange light. Belle shifted in her heels. Gold twisted his cane.

“Mr. Gold,” she began.

“Belle, I…” Gold began simultaneously, taking a small step toward her. He recoiled at once as his surname left her lips. She called him 'Gold' in private but she never used the honorific 'Mister.' The addition was an unnecessary formality to put between them. His stomach turned sour.

The change in his demeanor was sharp and immediate. His face shuttered, arms holding his cane out in front of him, both hands settled atop it.

Belle frowned, “Can you just… please tell me what's wrong? Why have you been… just tearing me to pieces, lately?”

Gold scoffed, “Miss French, if my critiques have so thoroughly riled you, perhaps it's your own capacity to receive criticism you ought to examine.”

A heat rose in Belle's cheeks and she brought her hands to her hips. “Seriously? That's what you wanted to say? After sitting through all that crap from Archie? You ask me to stay not to apologize but to tell me I can't take criticism?”

“If the shoe fits,” Gold sneered, cocking one hip. A glance toward her laughably impractical shoes left him trying very hard not to stare, instead, at the shapely legs that rose from them. Trying and failing.

Belle was fighting the urge to smack him silly when she realized he was looking at her legs with a barely disguised hunger. Despite herself, she felt a jolt of desire run the length of her spine, heat curling in her belly and the apex of her thighs.

“You know what?,” Belle ground out through half clenched teeth. “I don't need to fucking care what you think of my work. And you know why?”

He gave a humorless smirk and Belle was struck with the urge to bite his lower lip and make him change his tune. Make him beg to get on his knees for her, again.

“Why is that, I wonder?”

Trying to shake it off, she strode toward him and poked a finger into his perfectly pressed silk tie. “Because you're a fucking asshole, Gold.”

He lifted his chin to look down his nose at her, attempting to shut out the delicious smell of whatever she used in her hair. His hands were starting to shake with the need to reach out, to caress her, to crush her to him and never let go. He tightened his grip on his cane handle, knuckles going white. “You eat with that mouth?” he returned weakly, his voice rougher than he'd expected.

Belle pursed her lips. “You know exactly what I do with this mouth.” Her voice was low and breathy, her pupils blown as she held his gaze.

“Fuck…” he breathed, cursing himself inwardly as he felt his trousers get tighter.

Belle licked her lips and for just a moment, neither of them could move, stuck in a tableau of aroused frustration. Belle sucked in a breath and dropped her hands to his belt buckle. It was all Gold could to do nod his assent before they both began tearing at the other’s clothing. Their kisses were messy and biting, stoking the rising flame but leaving no room for tenderness. Belle’s knickers and Gold’s trousers hit the floor. In minutes she was atop Hopper’s desk with her skirt hitched to her waist, Gold dropping to his knees just as she’d imagined. He wasted no time in covering her with his mouth, suckling her lower lips and swirling his tongue over her clit before sliding it as far inside as it could go. Belle leaned back on one hand, using the other to cover her mouth. She gasped and moaned into her palm as Gold growled into her slick flesh, fucking her with his tongue until her thighs began to shake. Just as she was on the verge of climax, he withdrew and pulled himself to his feet.

“Gold! What the hell?”she panted.

Gold leaned over her, his mouth shiny with her wetness. “Tell me you want me, Belle,” he breathed, kissing her hard, her taste salty-sweet on his lips. His cock brushed against her entrance and Belle spread her legs to welcome him.

“Yes,” she whispered, trying to nudge him forward with the heel of one foot at the small of his back. “Fucking hell, Gold, don’t make me wait…”

“I need to hear it,” he growled, nearly shaking with the effort of not simply burying himself inside her. “Please, Belle… say the words. Tell me you want me…”

“Yes,” Belle groaned, “Of course I want you. How could you ever think anything else?”

Gold exhaled a heavy breath, sliding home with a single thrust. Belle arched her back, shunting her hips toward him as he buried his face against her neck. He set an almost brutal pace, pulling out only slightly as though he couldn’t bear to withdraw from her any further before filling her again, over and over. The heavy desk creaked with their efforts, sweat dripping down his spine as he stifled his ridiculously needy little sounds in the soft flesh of her neck and shoulder. Belle began to shudder against him, her inner muscles fluttering and clenching hard. With one more thrust, she was coming, her free hand clutching at his hair. His pace grew erratic, his bad leg beginning to ache. With a final groan, he spilled himself deep within her.

They both caught their breath a minute before Gold stumbled back, pulling up his underwear and trousers before collapsing into the chair behind him.

Belle righted her blouse, her hair hopelessly disheveled and lips swollen with his kisses. She was agonizingly beautiful and he was dangerously close to begging her to come home with him. Not even for a repeat performance - though he’d be happy to give one after a proper refractory period - but just to lay in his arms and let him breathe her in. Just to spend a few more moments reflected in her eyes. She slid slowly from the desk to her feet and came to stand in front of his chair, lightly stroking his sweat-soaked hair.

“Hey…” she started softly, urging him to look at her with a touch to his cheek.

Gold raised his eyes to hers, hesitantly. “Hey.”

“What was that about, anyway? Thinking I wouldn’t… that I didn’t want you?”

He swallowed, his mouth opening and closing silently. “It’s… it’s nothing.”

Belle shook her head. “It’s not nothing. Is that why you’ve been such a… well, such a beast the last few weeks?”

He exhaled loudly, pulling away from her gentle hand at his face. “Belle. I don’t… Let’s not do this. It’s not important.”

She leaned in to capture his face between both hands. “Like hell it’s not. You’ve been awful to me lately and while you make the apology almost worth it, I’d like to know what’s going on.”

He gaped at her. “I was awful to you ? After you’ve been blanking me at every turn? You nearly killed a man just to avoid walking next to me…”

Belle cringed at the memory of the incident with the law clerk. Then the weight of Gold’s words sunk in. Blanking me at every turn.

Oh.

Oh, she’d been such an idiot.

Not just keeping a professional distance or maintaining her composure, in her effort to keep her eyes and hands to herself, she’d been actively ignoring him. In fact, now that she took the time to think about it, they had barely had a two-way conversation (even during their sexual trysts) since they got back from the conference.

She hadn’t given a single thought to how that might make a man feel. Gold always appeared so confident, so aloof, she’d never have guessed her silence could even scratch the surface of his armor, let alone hurt him. Then again, how much of her own self-assured poise was a really just a facade?

The bitterness was starting to overtake the afterglow of orgasm and Gold began to tense up, readying himself to leave, when Belle deposited herself into his lap and kissed him. It was different from the kisses they’d exchanged earlier. This one was slow and sweet, an invitation rather than an admonishment.

He returned the kiss all too eagerly, arms wrapping around her. When they broke apart for breath, there was a glow to her cheeks that made his knees go watery all over again.

“I’m sorry. I never meant to treat you that way, Gold. I thought I was just… I don’t know…. Being professional. Keeping our private, ehm, activities, private. I had no idea I was shutting you out so completely, I swear, I do want you.”

He eyed her skeptically and she pressed another heated kiss to his lips.

“Can you have any doubt how I feel after we just violated Archie’s office?” she teased.

He bit back a grin at that, ducking his head. He ran a hand over her messy hair and shrugged. “I know I’ve been an utter pratt. You didn’t deserve that either. I'm sorry, too.” Meeting her eyes again, he gave a slight shake of the head, his hair swaying with the motion. “That night at the conference… I honestly never expected….” he sighed. “I have been awful - you’re right. I’ve never… I’m not a very good man, Belle.”

Belle made a noncommittal sound. “You’re not always ‘nice,’ I’ll grant you that. And that’s fine by me, ‘nice’ is boring, anyway. But I know you’re a better man than you think you are. Certainly a better man than you pretend to be."

“You can’t know that,” he rasped, a lump suddenly rising in his throat.

“Well, I’ve collected quite a bit of evidence in the time I’ve known you that points me in that direction. Plus, I’ve got a hunch.” She rubbed her nose against his, affectionately.

He released a little chuckle. “Good lawyers don’t trust hunches.”

“Bad men don’t apologize for their mistakes. Or at least they don’t apologize and mean it.” She cocked her head to the side. “Do you mean it?”

With every fibre of my being, Gold thought vehemently. What he said was “Come home with me tonight and I’ll prove it.”

Belle gave him a playful swat on the shoulder, getting to her feet. “Not tonight. Someone drew out a case for hours today which means I’ve still got to get a ton of paperwork done. But… maybe this weekend? Depending on the outcome of the Clayton trial, of course.” She winked.

Gold smiled, something warm settling in his chest, occupying that formerly-constricted space between heartbeats. “You’re on, sweetheart.”

[ryanlawlessuntapped]

People Who Live in Glass Arenas Shouldn't Throw Stones

I like deconstructing quotes. They are often misattributed, misworded, misguided, or misused. I like setting things right when I see any or all of those happen.

The following quote from Theodore Roosevelt is a good example of those last two observations. It’s often simply referred to as “The Man in the Arena” and has been cited by many, from Nelson Mandela to Richard Nixon. Maybe you are already familiar with it, but just in case you’re not:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Rousing, yes? Makes you feel like you can take on the world. Nice work, Teddy. You wrote a humdinger of a speech. Well, more likely an aide acting as a speechwriter did, but who’s keeping track at this point.

It’s actually only a small part of a larger text. 8743 words if I’m not mistaken, of which this oft-cited piece of rhetoric contributes a paltry 140 words. Less than 1% of the total text. 

It’s basically a Tweet.

I can almost guarantee that nobody quoting this paragraph knows much about the context it was delivered. They probably don’t care, either; it serves a narrow focus and that’s good enough.

Apropos of that narrow focus, the utility of this quote comes from its criticism of critics. Irony notwithstanding, this a useful tool to have when people say things about you that you don’t like. 

It helps if you’ve actually accomplished something, or at least attempted to accomplish something, but the quote works like a cross brandished against vampires. It’s meant to stave off anything even remotely unflattering about you or something you like. I mean, Miley Cyrus has it tattooed on her so it must have power, right?

The power to protect fragile egos. Most definitely.

See, criticism isn’t a bad thing. Name anything you love and I bet that it exists thanks to criticism. Here are a couple of easy examples that might appeal to some of my readers:

1. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu created due to criticisms of Japanese jiu-jitsu not working for smaller practitioners who needed to be able to fight from their backs more effectively.

2. Heavy metal music created due to criticisms of rock music becoming soft and corporate at the time.

3. Mental health programs created due to criticisms of sanitariums and asylums and the inhumane and dehumanizing practices used on patients.

4. Marriage rights for same-sex partners created due to inequalities in hetero versus homosexual relationship rights.

5. Voting rights for women and minorities created due to gender and racial inequalities imposed on large segments of the population.

Should I go on? 

Because the list of things we have today that are vast improvements over what came before all did so because of criticism. 

“Man in the arena” or not, we owe a lot of high-quality innovations to the critics who weren’t afraid to say “You can do better. I can do better. We can do better.”

Which was ultimately the point of the speech in its entirety. Not the snippet that everyone knows as the “Man in the Arena” but the entire 8743 speech titled “Citizenship In A Republic” that Theodore Roosevelt gave on April 23, 1910, in Paris.

Also, it was never meant to be directed at criticism. It was an attack on cynicism.

Cynicism.

Not criticism.

In fact, it’s a better speech if you replace the word “critic” with “cynic” and read it that way. 

The cynic doesn’t count. 

They’re less than zeros.

However, the critic does count. 

The critics challenge the status quo. They might not innovate on their own, but they prompt innovation from others. The world moves forward thanks to criticism. 

Attacking critics with this quote is misguided and a misuse.

It’s an especially heinous misuse when someone trots it out because a critic got into that person’s feeling box.

It’s a deflection, not a counter. I always find that a little sad when I see it used for those reasons. Partly because the point of the speech, in its entirety, is that a nation is only as strong as its average citizen; it’s a takedown of individualism and a call to strengthened ties within a nation. (It’s also a bit of a love letter to France, but I’m not going to get into that part.)

I feel like I’ve already given enough information here to make my American readers dizzy and everyone else a little bit circumspect in the use of this quote the next time someone says something critical. Criticism has most definitely made the world around us better. Try to remember that critics aren’t the problem. 

Cynicism is.

And I can’t think of anything quite so cynical as repurposing a great quote to suit the needs of your moment because you don’t like what someone had to say about you or your beliefs. 

That’s an empty defense and, as Roosevelt said in the very same speech, “Woe to the empty phrase-maker...” 

P.S. Here is the full speech. The full speech, that is; not just the part you like. I dare you to read it.

Citizenship In A Republic

Strange and impressive associations rise in the mind of a man from the New World who speaks before this august body in this ancient institution of learning. Before his eyes pass the shadows of mighty kings and war-like nobles, of great masters of law and theology; through the shining dust of the dead centuries he sees crowded figures that tell of the power and learning and splendor of times gone by; and he sees also the innumerable host of humble students to whom clerkship meant emancipation, to whom it was well-nigh the only outlet from the dark thraldom of the Middle Ages.  This was the most famous university of mediaeval Europe at a time when no one dreamed that there was a New World to discover. Its services to the cause of human knowledge already stretched far back into the remote past at a time when my forefathers, three centuries ago, were among the sparse bands of traders, ploughmen, wood-choppers, and fisherfolk who, in hard struggle with the iron unfriendliness of the Indian-haunted land, were laying the foundations of what has now become the giant republic of the West. 

To conquer a continent, to tame the shaggy roughness of wild nature, means grim warfare; and the generations engaged in it cannot keep, still less add to, the stores of garnered wisdom which where once theirs, and which are still in the hands of their brethren who dwell in the old land. To conquer the wilderness means to wrest victory from the same hostile forces with which mankind struggled on the immemorial infancy of our race. 

The primaeval conditions must be met by the primaeval qualities which are incompatible with the retention of much that has been painfully acquired by humanity as through the ages it has striven upward toward civilization. In conditions so primitive there can be but a primitive culture. At first only the rudest school can be established, for no others would meet the needs of the hard-driven, sinewy folk who thrust forward the frontier in the teeth of savage men and savage nature; and many years elapse before any of these schools can develop into seats of higher learning and broader culture.  The pioneer days pass; the stump-dotted clearings expand into vast stretches of fertile farm land; the stockaded clusters of log cabins change into towns; the hunters of game, the fellers of trees, the rude frontier traders and tillers of the soil, the men who wander all their lives long through the wilderness as the heralds and harbingers of an oncoming civilization, themselves vanish before the civilization for which they have prepared the way. 

The children of their successors and supplanters, and then their children and their children and children's children, change and develop with extraordinary rapidity. 

The conditions accentuate vices and virtues, energy and ruthlessness, all the good qualities and all the defects of an intense individualism, self-reliant, self-centered, far more conscious of its rights than of its duties, and blind to its own shortcomings. 

To the hard materialism of the frontier days succeeds the hard materialism of an industrialism even more intense and absorbing than that of the older nations; although these themselves have likewise already entered on the age of a complex and predominantly industrial civilization.  As the country grows, its people, who have won success in so many lines, turn back to try to recover the possessions of the mind and the spirit, which perforce their fathers threw aside in order better to wage the first rough battles for the continent their children inherit. 

The leaders of thought and of action grope their way forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clear-sightedly, that the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of value only as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes from devotion to loftier ideals. The new life thus sought can in part be developed afresh from what is roundabout in the New World; but it can developed in full only by freely drawing upon the treasure-houses of the Old World, upon the treasures stored in the ancient abodes of wisdom and learning, such as this is where I speak to-day. 

It is a mistake for any nation to merely copy another; but it is even a greater mistake, it is a proof of weakness in any nation, not to be anxious to learn from one another and willing and able to adapt that learning to the new national conditions and make it fruitful and productive therein. It is for us of the New World to sit at the feet of Gamaliel of the Old; then, if we have the right stuff in us, we can show that Paul in his turn can become a teacher as well as a scholar.  Today I shall speak to you on the subject of individual citizenship, the one subject of vital importance to you, my hearers, and to me and my countrymen, because you and we a great citizens of great democratic republics. A democratic republic such as ours - an effort to realize its full sense government by, of, and for the people - represents the most gigantic of all possible social experiments, the one fraught with great responsibilities alike for good and evil. The success or republics like yours and like ours means the glory, and our failure of despair, of mankind; and for you and for us the question of the quality of the individual citizen is supreme. 

Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man or very few men, the quality of the leaders is all-important. If, under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough, then the nations for generations lead a brilliant career, and add substantially to the sum of world achievement, no matter how low the quality of average citizen; because the average citizen is an almost negligible quantity in working out the final results of that type of national greatness. 

But with you and us the case is different. With you here, and with us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average women, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional cries which call for heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. 

The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.  It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any republic, in any democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn from the classes represented in this audience to-day; but only provided that those classes possess the gifts of sympathy with plain people and of devotion to great ideals. 

You and those like you have received special advantages; you have all of you had the opportunity for mental training; many of you have had leisure; most of you have had a chance for enjoyment of life far greater than comes to the majority of your fellows. To you and your kind much has been given, and from you much should be expected. 

Yet there are certain failings against which it is especially incumbent that both men of trained and cultivated intellect, and men of inherited wealth and position should especially guard themselves, because to these failings they are especially liable; and if yielded to, their- your- chances of useful service are at an end. 

Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. 

There are many men who feel a kind of twister pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. 

A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. 

They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.  It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. 

The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who "but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier."  France has taught many lessons to other nations: surely one of the most important lesson is the lesson her whole history teaches, that a high artistic and literary development is compatible with notable leadership im arms and statecraft. The brilliant gallantry of the French soldier has for many centuries been proverbial; and during these same centuries at every court in Europe the "freemasons of fashion: have treated the French tongue as their common speech; while every artist and man of letters, and every man of science able to appreciate that marvelous instrument of precision, French prose, had turned toward France for aid and inspiration. 

How long the leadership in arms and letters has lasted is curiously illustrated by the fact that the earliest masterpiece in a modern tongue is the splendid French epic which tells of Roland's doom and the vengeance of Charlemange when the lords of the Frankish hosts where stricken at Roncesvalles. Let those who have, keep, let those who have not, strive to attain, a high standard of cultivation and scholarship. 

Yet let us remember that these stand second to certain other things. There is need of a sound body, and even more of a sound mind. But above mind and above body stands character - the sum of those qualities which we mean when we speak of a man's force and courage, of his good faith and sense of honor. I believe in exercise for the body, always provided that we keep in mind that physical development is a means and not an end. I believe, of course, in giving to all the people a good education. 

But the education must contain much besides book-learning in order to be really good. We must ever remember that no keenness and subtleness of intellect, no polish, no cleverness, in any way make up for the lack of the great solid qualities. Self restraint, self mastery, common sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility and yet of acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution - these are the qualities which mark a masterful people. 

Without them no people can control itself, or save itself from being controlled from the outside. I speak to brilliant assemblage; I speak in a great university which represents the flower of the highest intellectual development; I pay all homage to intellect and to elaborate and specialized training of the intellect; and yet I know I shall have the assent of all of you present when I add that more important still are the commonplace, every-day qualities and virtues.  Such ordinary, every-day qualities include the will and the power to work, to fight at need, and to have plenty of healthy children. The need that the average man shall work is so obvious as hardly to warrant insistence. There are a few people in every country so born that they can lead lives of leisure. These fill a useful function if they make it evident that leisure does not mean idleness; for some of the most valuable work needed by civilization is essentially non-remunerative in its character, and of course the people who do this work should in large part be drawn from those to whom remuneration is an object of indifference. 

But the average man must earn his own livelihood. He should be trained to do so, and he should be trained to feel that he occupies a contemptible position if he does not do so; that he is not an object of envy if he is idle, at whichever end of the social scale he stands, but an object of contempt, an object of derision. In the next place, the good man should be both a strong and a brave man; that is, he should be able to fight, he should be able to serve his country as a soldier, if the need arises. 

There are well-meaning philosophers who declaim against the unrighteousness of war. They are right only if they lay all their emphasis upon the unrighteousness. War is a dreadful thing, and unjust war is a crime against humanity. But it is such a crime because it is unjust, not because it is a war. The choice must ever be in favor of righteousness, and this is whether the alternative be peace or whether the alternative be war. The question must not be merely, Is there to be peace or war? The question must be, Is it right to prevail? Are the great laws of righteousness once more to be fulfilled? And the answer from a strong and virile people must be "Yes," whatever the cost. 

Every honorable effort should always be made to avoid war, just as every honorable effort should always be made by the individual in private life to keep out of a brawl, to keep out of trouble; but no self-respecting individual, no self-respecting nation, can or ought to submit to wrong.  Finally, even more important than ability to work, even more important than ability to fight at need, is it to remember that chief of blessings for any nations is that it shall leave its seed to inherit the land. It was the crown of blessings in Biblical times and it is the crown of blessings now. The greatest of all curses in is the curse of sterility, and the severest of all condemnations should be that visited upon willful sterility. 

The first essential in any civilization is that the man and women shall be father and mother of healthy children, so that the race shall increase and not decrease. If that is not so, if through no fault of the society there is failure to increase, it is a great misfortune. 

If the failure is due to the deliberate and wilful fault, then it is not merely a misfortune, it is one of those crimes of ease and self-indulgence, of shrinking from pain and effort and risk, which in the long run Nature punishes more heavily than any other. If we of the great republics, if we, the free people who claim to have emancipated ourselves form the thraldom of wrong and error, bring down on our heads the curse that comes upon the willfully barren, then it will be an idle waste of breath to prattle of our achievements, to boast of all that we have done. No refinement of life, no delicacy of taste, no material progress, no sordid heaping up riches, no sensuous development of art and literature, can in any way compensate for the loss of the great fundamental virtues; and of these great fundamental virtues the greatest is the race's power to perpetuate the race. Character must show itself in the man's performance both of the duty he owes himself and of the duty he owes the state. 

The man's foremast duty is owed to himself and his family; and he can do this duty only by earning money, by providing what is essential to material well-being; it is only after this has been done that he can hope to build a higher superstructure on the solid material foundation; it is only after this has been done that he can help in his movements for the general well-being. He must pull his own weight first, and only after this can his surplus strength be of use to the general public. 

It is not good to excite that bitter laughter which expresses contempt; and contempt is what we feel for the being whose enthusiasm to benefit mankind is such that he is a burden to those nearest him; who wishes to do great things for humanity in the abstract, but who cannot keep his wife in comfort or educate his children.  Nevertheless, while laying all stress on this point, while not merely acknowledging but insisting upon the fact that there must be a basis of material well-being for the individual as for the nation, let us with equal emphasis insist that this material well-being represents nothing but the foundation, and that the foundation, though indispensable, is worthless unless upon it is raised the superstructure of a higher life. 

That is why I decline to recognize the mere multimillionaire, the man of mere wealth, as an asset of value to any country; and especially as not an asset to my own country. If he has earned or uses his wealth in a way that makes him a real benefit, of real use- and such is often the case- why, then he does become an asset of real worth. But it is the way in which it has been earned or used, and not the mere fact of wealth, that entitles him to the credit. There is need in business, as in most other forms of human activity, of the great guiding intelligences. Their places cannot be supplied by any number of lesser intelligences. 

It is a good thing that they should have ample recognition, ample reward. But we must not transfer our admiration to the reward instead of to the deed rewarded; and if what should be the reward exists without the service having been rendered, then admiration will only come from those who are mean of soul. The truth is that, after a certain measure of tangible material success or reward has been achieved, the question of increasing it becomes of constantly less importance compared to the other things that can be done in life. 

It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and their can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself. But the man who, having far surpassed the limits of providing for the wants; both of the body and mind, of himself and of those depending upon him, then piles up a great fortune, for the acquisition or retention of which he returns no corresponding benefit to the nation as a whole, should himself be made to feel that, so far from being desirable, he is an unworthy, citizen of the community: that he is to be neither admired nor envied; that his right-thinking fellow countrymen put him low in the scale of citizenship, and leave him to be consoled by the admiration of those whose level of purpose is even lower than his own.  My position as regards the moneyed interests can be put in a few words. In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run identical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property. 

In fact, it is essential to good citizenship clearly to understand that there are certain qualities which we in a democracy are prone to admire in and of themselves, which ought by rights to be judged admirable or the reverse solely from the standpoint of the use made of them. 

Foremost among these I should include two very distinct gifts - the gift of money-making and the gift of oratory. Money-making, the money touch I have spoken of above. It is a quality which in a moderate degree is essential. It may be useful when developed to a very great degree, but only if accompanied and controlled by other qualities; and without such control the possessor tends to develop into one of the least attractive types produced by a modern industrial democracy. 

So it is with the orator. 

It is highly desirable that a leader of opinion in democracy should be able to state his views clearly and convincingly. But all that the oratory can do of value to the community is enable the man thus to explain himself; if it enables the orator to put false values on things, it merely makes him power for mischief. Some excellent public servants have not that gift at all, and must merely rely on their deeds to speak for them; and unless oratory does represent genuine conviction based on good common sense and able to be translated into efficient performance, then the better the oratory the greater the damage to the public it deceives. 

Indeed, it is a sign of marked political weakness in any commonwealth if the people tend to be carried away by mere oratory, if they tend to value words in and for themselves, as divorced from the deeds for which they are supposed to stand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the ready talker, however great his power, whose speech does not make for courage, sobriety, and right understanding, is simply a noxious element in the body politic, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them. To admire the gift of oratory without regard to the moral quality behind the gift is to do wrong to the republic.  Of course all that I say of the orator applies with even greater force to the orator's latter-day and more influential brother, the journalist. The power of the journalist is great, but he is entitled neither to respect nor admiration because of that power unless it is used aright. He cna do, and often does, great good. He can do, and he often does, infinite mischief. 

All journalists, all writers, for the very reason that they appreciate the vast possibilities of their profession, should bear testimony against those who deeply discredit it. Offenses against taste and morals, which are bad enough in a private citizen, are infinitely worse if made into instruments for debauching the community through a newspaper. Mendacity, slander, sensationalism, inanity, vapid triviality, all are potent factors for the debauchery of the public mind and conscience. 

The excuse advanced for vicious writing, that the public demands it and that demand must be supplied, can no more be admitted than if it were advanced by purveyors of food who sell poisonous adulterations. In short, the good citizen in a republic must realize that the ought to possess two sets of qualities, and that neither avails without the other. He must have those qualities which make for efficiency; and that he also must have those qualities which direct the efficiency into channels for the public good. He is useless if he is inefficient. 

There is nothing to be done with that type of citizen of whom all that can be said is that he is harmless. Virtue which is dependant upon a sluggish circulation is not impressive. There is little place in active life for the timid good man. The man who is saved by weakness from robust wickedness is likewise rendered immune from robuster virtues. The good citizen in a republic must first of all be able to hold his own. He is no good citizen unless he has the ability which will make him work hard and which at need will make him fight hard. The good citizen is not a good citizen unless he is an efficient citizen.  But if a man's efficiency is not guided and regulated by a moral sense, then the more efficient he is the worse he is, the more dangerous to the body politic. Courage, intellect, all the masterful qualities, serve but to make a man more evil if they are merely used for that man's own advancement, with brutal indifference to the rights of others. 

It speaks ill for the community if the community worships these qualities and treats their possessors as heroes regardless of whether the qualities are used rightly or wrongly. 

It makes no difference as to the precise way in which this sinister efficiency is shown. 

It makes no difference whether such a man's force and ability betray themselves in a career of money-maker or politician, soldier or orator, journalist or popular leader. 

If the man works for evil, then the more successful he is the more he should be despised and condemned by all upright and far-seeing men. To judge a man merely by success is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at large habitually so judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness because the wicked man triumphs, they show their inability to understand that in the last analysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, and that by such admiration of evil they prove themselves unfit for liberty. 

The homely virtues of the household, the ordinary workaday virtues which make the woman a good housewife and housemother, which make the man a hard worker, a good husband and father, a good soldier at need, stand at the bottom of character. But of course many other must be added thereto if a state is to be not only free but great. Good citizenship is not good citizenship if only exhibited in the home. 

There remains the duties of the individual in relation to the State, and these duties are none too easy under the conditions which exist where the effort is made to carry on the free government in a complex industrial civilization. Perhaps the most important thing the ordinary citizen, and, above all, the leader of ordinary citizens, has to remember in political life is that he must not be a sheer doctrinaire. 

The closest philosopher, the refined and cultured individual who from his library tells how men ought to be governed under ideal conditions, is of no use in actual governmental work; and the one-sided fanatic, and still more the mob-leader, and the insincere man who to achieve power promises what by no possibility can be performed, are not merely useless but noxious.  The citizen must have high ideals, and yet he must be able to achieve them in practical fashion. No permanent good comes from aspirations so lofty that they have grown fantastic and have become impossible and indeed undesirable to realize. The impractical visionary is far less often the guide and precursor than he is the embittered foe of the real reformer, of the man who, with stumblings and shortcoming, yet does in some shape, in practical fashion, give effect to the hopes and desires of those who strive for better things. 

Woe to the empty phrase-maker, to the empty idealist, who, instead of making ready the ground for the man of action, turns against him when he appears and hampers him when he does work! Moreover, the preacher of ideals must remember how sorry and contemptible is the figure which he will cut, how great the damage that he will do, if he does not himself, in his own life, strive measurably to realize the ideals that he preaches for others. 

Let him remember also that the worth of the ideal must be largely determined by the success with which it can in practice be realized. We should abhor the so-called "practical" men whose practicality assumes the shape of that peculiar baseness which finds its expression in disbelief in morality and decency, in disregard of high standards of living and conduct. Such a creature is the worst enemy of the body of politic. But only less desirable as a citizen is his nominal opponent and real ally, the man of fantastic vision who makes the impossible better forever the enemy of the possible good.  We can just as little afford to follow the doctrinaires of an extreme individualism as the doctrinaires of an extreme socialism. Individual initiative, so far from being discouraged, should be stimulated; and yet we should remember that, as society develops and grows more complex, we continually find that things which once it was desirable to leave to individual initiative can, under changed conditions, be performed with better results by common effort. It is quite impossible, and equally undesirable, to draw in theory a hard-and-fast line which shall always divide the two sets of cases. 

This every one who is not cursed with the pride of the closest philosopher will see, if he will only take the trouble to think about some of our closet phenomena. For instance, when people live on isolated farms or in little hamlets, each house can be left to attend to its own drainage and water-supply; but the mere multiplication of families in a given area produces new problems which, because they differ in size, are found to differ not only in degree, but in kind from the old; and the questions of drainage and water-supply have to be considered from the common standpoint. It is not a matter for abstract dogmatizing to decide when this point is reached; it is a matter to be tested by practical experiment. 

Much of the discussion about socialism and individualism is entirely pointless, because of the failure to agree on terminology. It is not good to be a slave of names. I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action. 

The individualism which finds its expression in the abuse of physical force is checked very early in the growth of civilization, and we of to-day should in our turn strive to shackle or destroy that individualism which triumphs by greed and cunning, which exploits the weak by craft instead of ruling them by brutality. We ought to go with any man in the effort to bring about justice and the equality of opportunity, to turn the tool-user more and more into the tool-owner, to shift burdens so that they can be more equitably borne. 

The deadening effect on any race of the adoption of a logical and extreme socialistic system could not be overstated; it would spell sheer destruction; it would produce grosser wrong and outrage, fouler immortality, than any existing system. But this does not mean that we may not with great advantage adopt certain of the principles professed by some given set of men who happen to call themselves Socialists; to be afraid to do so would be to make a mark of weakness on our part.  But we should not take part in acting a lie any more than in telling a lie. We should not say that men are equal where they are not equal, nor proceed upon the assumption that there is an equality where it does not exist; but we should strive to bring about a measurable equality, at least to the extent of preventing the inequality which is due to force or fraud. 

Abraham Lincoln, a man of the plain people, blood of their blood, and bone of their bone, who all his life toiled and wrought and suffered for them, at the end died for them, who always strove to represent them, who would never tell an untruth to or for them, spoke of the doctrine of equality with his usual mixture of idealism and sound common sense. He said (I omit what was of merely local significance): 

"I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal-equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. 

They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all - constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, everywhere."

We are bound in honor to refuse to listen to those men who would make us desist from the effort to do away with the inequality which means injustice; the inequality of right, opportunity, of privilege. We are bound in honor to strive to bring ever nearer the day when, as far is humanly possible, we shall be able to realize the ideal that each man shall have an equal opportunity to show the stuff that is in him by the way in which he renders service. There should, so far as possible, be equal of opportunity to render service; but just so long as there is inequality of service there should and must be inequality of reward. 

We may be sorry for the general, the painter, the artists, the worker in any profession or of any kind, whose misfortune rather than whose fault it is that he does his work ill. But the reward must go to the man who does his work well; for any other course is to create a new kind of privilege, the privilege of folly and weakness; and special privilege is injustice, whatever form it takes.  To say that the thriftless, the lazy, the vicious, the incapable, ought to have reward given to those who are far-sighted, capable, and upright, is to say what is not true and cannot be true. Let us try to level up, but let us beware of the evil of leveling down. If a man stumbles, it is a good thing to help him to his feet. Every one of us needs a helping hand now and then. 

But if a man lies down, it is a waste of time to try and carry him; and it is a very bad thing for every one if we make men feel that the same reward will come to those who shirk their work and those who do it. Let us, then, take into account the actual facts of life, and not be misled into following any proposal for achieving the millennium, for recreating the golden age, until we have subjected it to hardheaded examination. 

On the other hand, it is foolish to reject a proposal merely because it is advanced by visionaries. If a given scheme is proposed, look at it on its merits, and, in considering it, disregard formulas. It does not matter in the least who proposes it, or why. If it seems good, try it. If it proves good, accept it; otherwise reject it. 

There are plenty of good men calling themselves Socialists with whom, up to a certain point, it is quite possible to work. If the next step is one which both we and they wish to take, why of course take it, without any regard to the fact that our views as to the tenth step may differ. 

But, on the other hand, keep clearly in mind that, though it has been worth while to take one step, this does not in the least mean that it may not be highly disadvantageous to take the next. It is just as foolish to refuse all progress because people demanding it desire at some points to go to absurd extremes, as it would be to go to these absurd extremes simply because some of the measures advocated by the extremists were wise.  The good citizen will demand liberty for himself, and as a matter of pride he will see to it that others receive liberty which he thus claims as his own. Probably the best test of true love of liberty in any country in the way in which minorities are treated in that country. Not only should there be complete liberty in matters of religion and opinion, but complete liberty for each man to lead his life as he desires, provided only that in so he does not wrong his neighbor. 

Persecution is bad because it is persecution, and without reference to which side happens at the most to be the persecutor and which the persecuted. Class hatred is bad in just the same way, and without regard to the individual who, at a given time, substitutes loyalty to a class for loyalty to a nation, of substitutes hatred of men because they happen to come in a certain social category, for judgement awarded them according to their conduct. 

Remember always that the same measure of condemnation should be extended to the arrogance which would look down upon or crush any man because he is poor and to envy and hatred which would destroy a man because he is wealthy. 

The overbearing brutality of the man of wealth or power, and the envious and hateful malice directed against wealth or power, are really at root merely different manifestations of the same quality, merely two sides of the same shield. 

The man who, if born to wealth and power, exploits and ruins his less fortunate brethren is at heart the same as the greedy and violent demagogue who excites those who have not property to plunder those who have. 

The gravest wrong upon his country is inflicted by that man, whatever his station, who seeks to make his countrymen divide primarily in the line that separates class from class, occupation from occupation, men of more wealth from men of less wealth, instead of remembering that the only safe standard is that which judges each man on his worth as a man, whether he be rich or whether he be poor, without regard to his profession or to his station in life. Such is the only true democratic test, the only test that can with propriety be applied in a republic. 

There have been many republics in the past, both in what we call antiquity and in what we call the Middle Ages. They fell, and the prime factor in their fall was the fact that the parties tended to divide along the wealth that separates wealth from poverty. It made no difference which side was successful; it made no difference whether the republic fell under the rule of and oligarchy or the rule of a mob. 

In either case, when once loyalty to a class had been substituted for loyalty to the republic, the end of the republic was at hand. There is no greater need to-day than the need to keep ever in mind the fact that the cleavage between right and wrong, between good citizenship and bad citizenship, runs at right angles to, and not parallel with, the lines of cleavage between class and class, between occupation and occupation. Ruin looks us in the face if we judge a man by his position instead of judging him by his conduct in that position.  In a republic, to be successful we must learn to combine intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction. Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth. Bitter internecine hatreds, based on such differences, are signs, not of earnestness of belief, but of that fanaticism which, whether religious or anti-religious, democratic or anti-democratic, it itself but a manifestation of the gloomy bigotry which has been the chief factor in the downfall of so many, many nations.  Of one man in especial, beyond anyone else, the citizens of a republic should beware, and that is of the man who appeals to them to support him on the ground that he is hostile to other citizens of the republic, that he will secure for those who elect him, in one shape or another, profit at the expense of other citizens of the republic. It makes no difference whether he appeals to class hatred or class interest, to religious or antireligious prejudice. The man who makes such an appeal should always be presumed to make it for the sake of furthering his own interest. 

The very last thing an intelligent and self-respecting member of a democratic community should do is to reward any public man because that public man says that he will get the private citizen something to which this private citizen is not entitled, or will gratify some emotion or animosity which this private citizen ought not to possess. Let me illustrate this by one anecdote from my own experience. 

A number of years ago I was engaged in cattle-ranching on the great plains of the western Unite States. There were no fences. The cattle wandered free, the ownership of each one was determined by the brand; the calves were branded with the brand of the cows they followed. If on a round-up and animal was passed by, the following year it would appear as an unbranded yearling, and was then called a maverick. By the custom of the country these mavericks were branded with the brand of the man on whose range they were found. 

One day I was riding the range with a newly hired cowboy, and we came upon a maverick. We roped and threw it; then we built a fire, took out a cinch-ring, heated it in the fire; and then the cowboy started to put on the brand. 

I said to him, "It So-and-so's brand," naming the man on whose range we happened to be. He answered: "That's all right, boss; I know my business." 

In another moment I said to him: "Hold on, you are putting on my brand!" To which he answered: "That's all right; I always put on the boss's brand." 

I answered: "Oh, very well. Now you go straight back to the ranch and get whatever is owing to you; I don't need you any longer." 

He jumped up and said: "Why, what's the matter? I was putting on your brand." 

And I answered: "Yes, my friend, and if you will steal for me then you will steal from me."  Now, the same principle which applies in private life applies also in public life. If a public man tries to get your vote by saying that he will do something wrong in your interest, you can be absolutely certain that if ever it becomes worth his while he will do something wrong against your interest. 

So much for the citizenship to the individual in his relations to his family, to his neighbor, to the State. There remain duties of citizenship which the State, the aggregation of all the individuals, owes in connection with other States, with other nations. 

Let me say at once that I am no advocate of a foolish cosmopolitanism. I believe that a man must be a good patriot before he can be, and as the only possible way of being, a good citizen of the world. Experience teaches us that the average man who protests that his international feeling swamps his national feeling, that he does not care for his country because he cares so much for mankind, in actual practice proves himself the foe of mankind; that the man who says that he does not care to be a citizen of any one country, because he is the citizen of the world, is in fact usually and exceedingly undesirable citizen of whatever corner of the world he happens at the moment to be in. 

In the dim future all moral needs and moral standards may change; but at present, if a man can view his own country and all others countries from the same level with tepid indifference, it is wise to distrust him, just as it is wise to distrust the man who can take the same dispassionate view of his wife and mother. However broad and deep a man's sympathies, however intense his activities, he need have no fear that they will be cramped by love of his native land.  Now, this does not mean in the least that a man should not wish to good outside of his native land. On the contrary, just as I think that the man who loves his family is more apt to be a good neighbor than the man who does not, so I think that the most useful member of the family of nations is normally a strongly patriotic nation. 

So far from patriotism being inconsistent with a proper regard for the rights of other nations, I hold that the true patriot, who is as jealous of the national honor as a gentleman of his own honor, will be careful to see that the nations neither inflicts nor suffers wrong, just as a gentleman scorns equally to wrong others or to suffer others to wrong him. 

I do not for one moment admit that a man should act deceitfully as a public servant in his dealing with other nations, any more than he should act deceitfully in his dealings as a private citizen with other private citizens. I do not for one moment admit that a nation should treat other nations in a different spirit from that in which an honorable man would treat other men.  In practically applying this principle to the two sets of cases there is, of course, a great practical difference to be taken into account. We speak of international law; but international law is something wholly different from private of municipal law, and the capital difference is that there is a sanction for the one and no sanction for the other; that there is an outside force which compels individuals to obey the one, while there is no such outside force to compel obedience as regards to the other. International law will, I believe, as the generations pass, grow stronger and stronger until in some way or other there develops the power to make it respected. But as yet it is only in the first formative period. 

As yet, as a rule, each nation is of necessity to judge for itself in matters of vital importance between it and its neighbors, and actions must be of necessity, where this is the case, be different from what they are where, as among private citizens, there is an outside force whose action is all-powerful and must be invoked in any crisis of importance. It is the duty of wise statesman, gifted with the power of looking ahead, to try to encourage and build up every movement which will substitute or tend to substitute some other agency for force in the settlement of international disputes. 

It is the duty of every honest statesman to try to guide the nation so that it shall not wrong any other nation. But as yet the great civilized peoples, if they are to be true to themselves and to the cause of humanity and civilization, must keep in mind that in the last resort they must possess both the will and the power to resent wrong-doings from others. The men who sanely believe in a lofty morality preach righteousness; but they do not preach weakness, whether among private citizens or among nations. 

We believe that our ideals should be so high, but not so high as to make it impossible measurably to realize them. We sincerely and earnestly believe in peace; but if peace and justice conflict, we scorn the man who would not stand for justice though the whole world came in arms against him.  And now, my hosts, a word in parting. 

You and I belong to the only two republics among the great powers of the world. The ancient friendship between France and the United States has been, on the whole, a sincere and disinterested friendship. A calamity to you would be a sorrow to us. 

But it would be more than that.

In the seething turmoil of the history of humanity certain nations stand out as possessing a peculiar power or charm, some special gift of beauty or wisdom of strength, which puts them among the immortals, which makes them rank forever with the leaders of mankind. 

France is one of these nations. 

For her to sink would be a loss to all the world. There are certain lessons of brilliance and of generous gallantry that she can teach better than any of her sister nations. When the French peasantry sang of Malbrook, it was to tell how the soul of this warrior-foe took flight upward through the laurels he had won. Nearly seven centuries ago, Froissart, writing of the time of dire disaster, said that the realm of France was never so stricken that there were not left men who would valiantly fight for it. 

You have had a great past. I believe you will have a great future. Long may you carry yourselves proudly as citizens of a nation which bears a leading part in the teaching and uplifting of mankind.