>My contribution was to provide a quote from an early US statesman whose beliefs about charity seem different from yours
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>Obviously things change. Robin Williams once said 'The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses." She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, "you want a piece of me?"' Maybe the change in thinking about charity mirrors that.
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Without getting into the argument on anything but a semantic level, Lincoln's use of 'charity' here refers to an attitude of forgiveness rather than a redistribution of material wealth.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
