Quotes from William Allen White

Three years after he came to town, he was elected one of the members of the common council of the town of Northampton, from Ward Two. It was in that year that the Northampton City Council was faced with the first serious traffic problem that had come up in a hundred years. Fred Jager brought an automobile to town. It was called a Locomobile. It went chugging up and down the streets and scared the horses. The Council resolved that something ought to be done.

As it was, getting out of the car that night Coolidge said to Jager: "It's wonderful to ride in a horseless wagon." Then a pause: "But it won't amount to much!

My old friends in the House{91} were gone. The Western Massachusetts Club, that had its headquarters in the Adams House where most of us lived that came from beyond the Connecticut, was inactive. The committees I had, except the chairmanship of agriculture, did not interest me greatly, and to crown my discontent the Democratic governor sent in a veto which the senate sustained, to a bill authorizing the New Haven Railroad to construct a trolley system in western Massachusetts.

Since others have to tolerate my weaknesses, it is only fair that I should tolerate theirs.

The facts fairly and honestly presented; truth will take care of itself.

A little learning is not a dangerous thing to one who does not mistake it for a great deal.

In education, we are striving not to teach youth to make a living, but to make a life.

I have tried to teach people there are three kicks in every dollar: one, when you make it; two, when you have it. The third kick it when you give it away - and it is the biggest kick of all.

...if ever the sun rises upon Barbecue, its flavor vanishes like Cinderella's silks, and it becomes cold baked beef - staler in the chill dawn than illicit love.

Advertising is the genie which is transforming America into a place of comfort, luxury and ease for millions.

Consistency is the paste jewel that only cheap men cherish.

Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.

Everyone expects to go further than his father went; everyone expects to be better than he was born and every generation has one big impulse in its heart-to exceed all the other generations of the past in all the things that make life worth living.

Whenever a free man is in chains we are threatened also. Whoever is fighting for liberty is defending America.

Greatness, generally speaking, is an unusual quantity of a usual quality grafted upon a common man.

There is no insanity so devastating in man's life as utter sanity.

Liberty is the only thing you can't have unless you give it to others.

I have never been bored an hour in my life. I get up every morning wondering what new strange glamorous thing is going to happen and it happens at fairly regular intervals.

My advice to the women of America is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias.

I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.

I fear vastly more a futile, incompetent old age than I do any form of death.

If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own . . . how much kinder, how much gentler he would be.

Live for today. Multitudes of people have failed to live for today.... What they have had within their grasp today they have missed entirely, because only the future has intrigued them.