While there exists a comparatively comprehensive record of his lectures,
political addresses and public documents, there is an all too meagre transcript
remaining of his spontaneous comments. Of those that survive, the following
have been taken from his letters to me, all written during his term in the
Senate. They are illustrative of his style, terse, sometimes blunt, but
to the point.
******
"I am older than you are. I decided long ago that we
all have some of the weaknesses of a Hickman, a Loeb, a Leopold,
a Judd, a Snyder. This is not nice reading, it contains an important truth."
******
"Mr. Judson's death is a tremendous loss to the city of Big Rapids.
He was a worth while citizen. His death simply reminds me that I shall follow
suit at no distant date. I am not allowing myself to worry about that. We
have all got to go sooner or later and I am not so sure that it makes a
large amount of difference as to when we go. We are soon forgotten at best.
It would be foolish, however, to live in order to be remembered. We would
simply fool ourselves. I presume it is best that the old world should go
on revolving even after we are dead because it is hard enough to live under
the most favorable circumstances. Perhaps I ought to say, it is hard enough
for the majority to live. There are some of the parasites who are coming
along without very much work and probably getting considerable joy out of
life, but I don't happen to belong to that class."
******
"I do not wonder that men sometimes get utterly discouraged in
trying to be decent. After all, I suppose the real satisfaction comes to
the individual. Of course, I am obliged to live with myself, and of course
I like good company. In order to have good company I must behave myself."
******
"On Tuesday night Mary and I occupied a box at the Auditorium
and listened to an address by Aimee Semple McPherson of Los Angeles, California.
I spent a portion of my valuable time in studying Aimee as a human nature
specimen. To be perfectly frank about the matter she was not excelled by
P.T. Barnum. In fact she is a fitting successor to Barnum."
******
"There is no place on earth like the United States Senate for
the study of human nature and to no small extent brute nature."
******
"You are all wrong about my birthday. In reality a birthday does
not differ from any other day. I have sense enough to know that I am getting
nearer and nearer to the jumping off place. I am trying to cultivate a philosophy
that will enable me to jump off gracefully. There is always something for
me to growl about, and I presume that holds true of most men. There have
been a good many times in my life when I would have been glad to jump the
job. At least I thought so. Perhaps I was not giving the matter very serious
consideration."
******
"The truth of the matter is property and more property is the
slogan of the day. Money rules the politics of Illinois, money rules the
politics of nearly every State in the Union, money rules the home, the Church,
the School, and every other organization."
******
"There are just any number of men wandering up and down the country
sure they are born saviors, whereas they are born chumps. They cannot help
it any more than a toadstool can help being a toadstool."
******
NOTE: This advice was given to me with reference to a speaker I desired
for a certain function.
"So far as I am personally concerned, I would rather that you would
secure Dawes than any other man. He is not afraid of the Devil nor of Coolidge."
******
"I would rather command my own self-respect than to be President
of the United States, without it."
******
"I think that a man is a fool for giving advice unless he is
paid for it. Once in a while, if he is paid for his advice, the victim may
profit thereby."
******
"After you have lived fifty more years, you will discover that
there is no human organization in the world that does not contain a sucker,
a bull-head or a catfish. The only thing under God's Heaven that any manager
can do is to make the best of the situation. You will keep right on learning.
I think I learn more in a year now than I did when I was twenty-one, more
than I did when I was thirty-one, and even more than I did when I was seventy-one."
******
"Well, I am hoping that you will get some joy out of this season
of the year. After all I feel a little like the life prisoner at Jackson
Prison who wrote me this morning. In the last paragraph of a little Christmas
sketch he had written he said
'We are devoutly thankful that Christmas comes but once a year.'" December
24, 1927.
******
"I could write pages and pages along the same line as is given
in your letter. Hypocrisy is a common characteristic of all men and women.
Life seems to be a burlesque, an attempt to misrepresent almost everything.
None of your statements as to the mediocrity of men, as to the cowardice
of men, surprise me at all. I have been through it all and whatever
position you occupy will furnish you a further number
of illustrations of mediocrity and moral cowardice. Again and again I have
asked myself, 'Is the game worth playing?' Whether it is or whether it is
not, I have certain obligations and those obligations I must consider, consequently
I have refrained from 'blowing out the light', a thing I would have done
years ago had I followed my inclinations at times of mental depression.
Even this would indicate inexcusable cowardice."
******
"For God's sake, don't worry! There isn't a single reason in
the world why you should worry. If you feel that you desire some other field,
by all means go to it as soon as you can. I know what your trouble is so
far as you have any. Your troubles and my troubles are identical. I know
that you might be a better mixer. You have got to carry a large tank of
'soft soap' and use it freely even if you want to kick yourself after you
have done so. Your job demands that kind of camouflage."
******
"Will you tell me what line of human effort is free from objectionable
features? Take my own business, for example: all my life I have been obliged
to do a thousand and one things that I have positively loathed, and you
might just as well make up your mind first as last that if you accomplish
anything you will have the disagreeable to contend with. Gumshoe tactics
and diplomacy have always played an important part in social and business
relations."
******
"Let me ask you once and for all to quit talking about regrets.
Damn regrets. I quit talking about regrets many years ago. All any man can
do is to use the best judgment he has and then work for the improvement
of his judgment. I love teaching and yet there are times I get thoroughly
disheartened, but I recover from my dumps and go on my way rejoicing. You
will meet mediocre men as long as there are men to meet, and some of them
will be coining more money than you are coining."
******
Apropos of the dynamiting of a school house at Bath, Michigan.
"You refer to the calamity at Bath. Every newspaper announces that
a manic committed the act. How easy it is to explain human conduct. All
you have to do is to apply a number or a name. The truth of the matter is,
the man who
A Few Philosophical Comments of the "Good Gray Governor"
committed the crime was regarded as a good neighbor, as a helpful neighbor,
as a real man. All that can be positively said is that he opposed the high
school tariff. He was the type of man who could grow a feeling of hatred
that would destroy the world if he could make the necessary contact. He
was simply devilish, that's all."
******
"For a long time I have tried to work for the under-dog, but
very frequently the under-dog bites me when he ought to come around and
lick my hand."
******