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It is the first American section to be finished to achieve stability in the conditions of its life. It is the first old civilization, the first permanent civilization in America.

Bernard DeVoto

Sure the people are stupid: the human race is stupid. Sure Congress is an inefficient instrument of government. But the people are not stupid enough to abandon representative government for any other kind, including government by the guy who knows.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Government Race Stupid
The only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Medicine Possibility Teaching
The skillful man is, within the function of his skill, a different psychological organization. . . . A tennis player or a watchmaker or an airplane pilot is an automatism but he is also criticism and wisdom.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Airplane Automatism Game Organisation Pilot Player Tennis
History abhors determinism but cannot tolerate chance.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Art History Philosophy
Something can be done with people who put pickled onions in: strangulation seems best.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Done Onions People
It is the first American section to be finished to achieve stability in the conditions of its life. It is the first old civilization, the first permanent civilization in America.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Civilization Condition Country Finish Permanent
Art is man determined to die sane.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Art Determined Men
The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.
BERNARD DEVOTO

May Paper Writing
The mind has its own logic but does not often let others in on it.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Doe Math Mind
When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day’s occupation that is known as the cocktail hour.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Cocktail Evening Occupation
The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches. When you reach the line which marks that drop – for convenience, the one hundredth meridian – you have reached the West.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Average Lines Twenties
Between the amateur and the professional . . . there is a difference not only in degree but in kind.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Airplane Player Wisdom
New England is a finished place. Its destiny is that of Florence or Venice, not Milan while the American empire careens onward toward its unpredicted end. . . .
BERNARD DEVOTO

Civilization Destiny Life
You can no more keep a martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there. The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth and one of the shortest-lived.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Earth Happiest Kissing Life Sudden
You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Kissing Martini Refrigerator
The trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance, except as he can acquire it from others, from the social whole.
BERNARD DEVOTO

Individuality Sacred Trouble

It is the first American section to be finished to achieve stability in the conditions of its life. It is the first old civilization, the first permanent civilization in America.

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It is the first American section to be finished to achieve stability in the conditions of its life. It is the first old civilization, the first permanent civilization in America.

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Popular Authors

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