COACHES HOT SEAT NFL

Coaches Hot Seat NFL Quotes of the Day – Friday, August 31, 2018 – Amos Alonzo Stagg

“I pray not for victory, but to do my best.”

And

“To me, the coaching profession is one of the noblest and most far-reaching in building manhood. No man is too good to be the athletic coach for youth”

And

“All football comes from Stagg.” Knute Rockne

And

“Winning isn’t worthwhile unless one has something finer and nobler behind it.”

Wikipedia: Amos Alonzo Stagg

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Coaches Hot Seat NFL Quotes of the Day – Thursday, August 30, 2018 – Bud Wilkinson

“Football in its purest form remains a physical fight. As in any fight, if you don’t want to fight, it’s impossible to win.”

And

“Morale and attitude are the fundamental ingredients to success.”

And

“If a team is to reach its potential, each player must willingly subordinate his own personal goals to the good of the team.”

And

“We compete, not so much against an opponent, but against ourselves. The real test is this: Did I make my best effort on every play?”

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“I feel more strongly about this than anything else in coaching: Anybody who lacks discipline, who doesn’t want to be part of the team, who doesn’t want to meet the requirements – has to go. It’s that simple.”

And

“The man who tried his best and failed is superior to the man who never tried.”

And

“Losing is easy. It’s not enjoyable, but it’s easy.”

And

“If you are going to be a champion, you must be willing to pay a greater price.”

Wikipedia:  Bud Wilkinson

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Coaches Hot Seat NFL Quotes of the Day – Wednesday, August 29, 2018 – Darrell Royal

“A boy shows how much he wants to play in the spring, when it’s tough, and during two a days, when it’s hot and tough. I don’t count on the boy who waits till October, when it’s cool and fun, then decides he wants to play. Maybe he’s better than three guys ahead of him, but I know those three won’t change their minds in the fourth quarter.”

And

“Breaks balance out. The sun don’t shine on the same ol’ dog’s rear end every day.”

And

“Football doesn’t build character. It eliminates the weak ones.”

And

“I learned this about coaching: You don’t have to explain victory and you can’t explain defeat.”

And

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

And

“Once you cross the 50 you feel like an unsaddled horse.”

And

“Punt returns will kill you quicker than a minnow can swim a dipper.”

And

“You know, a football coach is nothing more than a teacher. You teach them the same subject, and you have a group of new guys every year.”

And

“You’ve got to think lucky. If you fall into a mudhole, check your back pocket – you might have caught a fish.”

And

“You’ve got to be in a position for luck to happen. Luck doesn’t go around looking for a stumblebum.”

And

“On game day, I am more nervous than a pig in a packing plant.”

And

“There’s an old saying, ‘You dance with who brung ya.’”

And

“Really, it was said about two-thirds in jest. Since we won the Arkansas and Notre Dame games with fourth-down and short-yardage passes, another image has arisen. I’ve been pictured as a man who takes chances. Two stinkin’ plays, and I’m a helluva gambler.”

And

“Some of them are so green you could hide ‘em on top of a lettuce leaf.”

And

“He could run like small-town gossip.”

And

“Ol’ Ugly is better than Ol’ Nothing.”

And

“They’re gonna come after us with their eyes pulled up like BBs.”

And

“There was a hornet’s nest waiting for us in Houston, and we were walking into it like Little Red Riding Hood with jam on her face.”

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“Winning coaches must treat mistakes like copperheads in the bedclothes – avoid them with all the energy you can muster.”

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“The best thing a coach can hope for is to please the majority. And the only way to please the majority is to win.”

And

“I’m pretty thin-skinned. When they say, ‘Do you want some constructive criticism?’ I say, ‘No.’”

And

“It’s an in-the-trench battle. It’s meat on meat, flesh on flesh and stink on stink. And that’s the only way you can play it.”

And

“Trends are bunk. Only angry people win football games.”

And

“We don’t want candy stripes on our uniforms. These are work clothes.”

And

“He’s as quick as a hiccup.”

And

“He doesn’t have a lot of speed, but maybe Elizabeth Taylor can’t sing.”

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“I didn’t want to stay until I had used up all the enjoyment because that’s too long to stay anywhere.”

And

“If worms carried pistols, birds wouldn’t eat ’em.”

Wikipedia: Darrell Royal

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Coaches Hot Seat NFL Quotes of the Day – Tuesday, August 28, 2018 – Frank Leahy

“Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.”

And

“Give me a lead of 14-0 at halftime and I will dictate the final score.”

And

“There are no shortcuts in life – only those we imagine.”

And

“When the going gets tough, let the tough get going.”

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“A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.”

And

“Lads, you’re not to miss practice unless your parents died or you died.”

Wikipedia: Frank Leahy

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Coaches Hot Seat NFL Quotes of the Day – Monday, August 27, 2018 – Knute Rockne

“A coach’s greatest asset is his sense of responsibility – the reliance placed on him by his players.”

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“Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.”

And

“Drink the first. Sip the second slowly. Skip the third.”

And

“Four years of football are calculated to breed in the average man more of the ingredients of success in life than almost any academic course he takes.”

And

“It isn’t necessary to see a good tackle. You can hear it.”

And

“The essence of football is blocking, tackling, and execution based on timing, rhythm and deception.”

And

“The secret is to work less as individuals and more as a team. As a coach, I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.”

And

“We count on winning. And if we lose, don’t beef. And the best way to prevent beefing is – don’t lose.”

And

“Show me a good and gracious loser and I’ll show you a failure.”

And

“One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it.”

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“The best thing I ever learned in life was that things have to be worked for. A lot of people seem to think there is some sort of magic in making a winning football team. There isn’t, but there’s plenty of work.”

And

“I’ve found that prayers work best when you have big players.”

And

“Win or lose, do it fairly.”

And

“Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up”

And

“No star playing, just football.”

And

“Tell the public about the boys. They’re the ones that do the work and they should get the credit. The people are interested in them, not me.”

And

“Most men, when they think they are thinking, are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

And

“Let’s win one for the Gipper.”

Wikipedia:  Knute Rockne

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Coaches Hot Seat NFL Quotes of the Day – Sunday, August 26, 2018 – John Updike

“A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.”

And

‘Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.”

And

‘Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.”

And

“Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.”

And

“If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.”

And

“Sex is like money; only too much is enough.”

And

“We are most alive when we’re in love.”

And

“When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.”

And

“I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.”

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“We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.”

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“I secretly understood: the primitive appeal of the hearth. Television is — its irresistible charm — a fire.”

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‘Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself.”

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“It was true of my generation, that the movies were terribly vivid and instructive. There were all kinds of things you learned. Like the 19th century novels, you saw how other social classes lived — especially the upper classes. So in a funny way, they taught you manners almost. But also moral manners. The gallantry of a Gary Cooper or an Errol Flynn or Jimmy Stewart. It was ethical instruction of a sort that the church purported to be giving you, but in a much less digestible form. Instead of these remote, crabbed biblical verses, you had contemporary people acting out moral dilemmas. Just the grace, the grace of those stars — not just the dancing stars, but the way they all moved with a certain grace. All that sank deep into my head, and my soul.”

And

“In the old movies, yes, there always was the happy ending and order was restored. As it is in Shakespeare’s plays. It’s no disgrace to, in the end, restore order. And punish the wicked and, in some way, reward the righteous.”

And

“Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.”

And

“The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it.”

And

“America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.”

And

“Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.”

And

“Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.”

Wikipedia Page:  John Updike

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Coaches Hot Seat NFL Quotes of the Day – Saturday, August 25, 2018 – William Faulkner

“A gentleman can live through anything.”

And

“A man’s moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.”

And

“A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.”

And

“All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.”

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“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”

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“An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why.”

And

“Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.”

And

“Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.”

And

“Given a choice between grief and nothing, I’d choose grief.”

And

“Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.”

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“I believe that man will not merely endure. He will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

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“I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.”

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“I’m bad and I’m going to hell, and I don’t care. I’d rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.”

And

“I’m inclined to think that a military background wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

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“It’s a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can’t eat for eight hours; he can’t drink for eight hours; he can’t make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.”

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“Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That’s how he finds that he can bear anything.”

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“My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.”

And

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.”

And

“The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.”

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“There is something about jumping a horse over a fence, something that makes you feel good. Perhaps it’s the risk, the gamble. In any event it’s a thing I need.”

And

“Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday’s omissions and regrets.”

And

‘We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid.”

And

“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”

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“Even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as an honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.”

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“Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid. Ain’t nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.”

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“I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.” Nobel Prize Speech, December 1950

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“Mr. Khrushchev says that Communism, the police state, will bury the free ones. He is a smart gentleman, he knows that this is nonsense since freedom, man’s dim concept of and belief in the human spirit is the cause of all his troubles in his own country. But if he means that Communism will bury capitalism, he is correct. That funeral will occur about ten minutes after the police bury gambling. Because simple man, the human race, will bury both of them. That will be when we have expended the last grain, dram, and iota of our natural resources. But man himself will not be in that grave. The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.” Speech in New York, October 1959

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“No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual’s individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only. Whatever its symbol — cross or crescent or whatever — that symbol is man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race. Its various allegories are the charts against which he measures himself and learns to know what he is. It cannot teach a man to be good as the textbook teaches him mathematics. It shows him how to discover himself, evolve for himself a moral codes and standard within his capacities and aspirations, by giving him a matchless example of suffering and sacrifice and the promise of hope.” Paris Review Interview, 1958

And

The two great men in my time were Mann and Joyce. You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with “faith.”

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“Life is motion, and motion is concerned with what makes man move — which is ambition, power, pleasure. What time a man can devote to morality, he must take by force from the motion of which he is a part. He is compelled to make choices between good and evil sooner or later, because moral conscience demands that from him in order that he can live with himself tomorrow. His moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.”

Wikipedia: William Faulkner

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Coaches Hot Seat NFL Quotes of the Day – Friday, August 24, 2018 – Plato

“A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.”

And

“A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.”

And

“And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.”

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“Courage is knowing what not to fear.”

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“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”

And

“For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.”

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“I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.”

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“Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.”

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“Life must be lived as play.”

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“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

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“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

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“Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”

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“If on the other hand I tell you that to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others is really the very best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living.”

And

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”

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“Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.”

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“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”

And

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

And

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”

And

“There is truth in wine and children”

And

“Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.”

And

“Those who tell the stories rule society.”

And

“There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.”

And

“The measure of a man is what he does with power.”

And

“Death is not the worst that can happen to men.”

And

“Character is simply habit long continued.”

Wikipedia:  Plato

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Coaches Hot Seat NFL Quotes of the Day – Thursday, August 23, 2018 – James Dean

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”

And

“There is no way to be truly great in this world. We are all impaled on the crook of conditioning.”

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“Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that’s all you have.”

And

“Only the gentle are ever really strong.”

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“Being a good actor isn’t easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I’m done.”

And

“When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn’t acting. It’s following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that.”

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“If a man can bridge the gap between life and death, if he can live on after he’s dead, then maybe he was a great man.”

And

“To grasp the full significance of life is the actor’s duty; to interpret it is his problem; and to express it is his dedication.”

And

“The gratification comes in the doing, not in the results.”

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“The only greatness for man is immortality.”

And

“I also became close to nature, and am now able to appreciate the beauty with which this world is endowed.”

Wikipedia: James Dean

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Coaches Hot Seat NFL Quotes of the Day – Wednesday, August 22, 2018 – Carl Sagan

“All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.”

And

“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”

And

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

And

“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”

And

“I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.”

And

“I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.”

And

“If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?”

And

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

And

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”

And

“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”

And

“Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.”

And

“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”

And

“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”

And

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

And

“The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.”

And

“The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.”

And

“The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.”

And

“We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

and

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”

And

“Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.”

And

“The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key.”

And

“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever it has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?”

And

“The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science.”

And

“Matter is composed chiefly of nothing.”

And

“Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.”

And

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

And

“Humans are very good at dreaming, although you’d never know it from your television.”

And

“In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist’s signature.”

And

“We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.”

And

“As a boy Kepler had been captured by a vision of cosmic splendour, a harmony of the worlds which he sought so tirelessly all his life. Harmony in this world eluded him. His three laws of planetary motion represent, we now know, a real harmony of the worlds, but to Kepler they were only incidental to his quest for a cosmic system based on the Perfect Solids, a system which, it turns out, existed only in his mind. Yet from his work, we have found that scientific laws pervade all of nature, that the same rules apply on Earth as in the skies, that we can find a resonance, a harmony, between the way we think and the way the world works. When he found that his long cherished beliefs did not agree with the most precise observations, he accepted the uncomfortable facts, he preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions. That is the heart of science.”

And

“Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

And

“A scientific colleague tells me about a recent trip to the New Guinea highlands where she visited a stone age culture hardly contacted by Western civilization. They were ignorant of wristwatches, soft drinks, and frozen food. But they knew about Apollo 11. They knew that humans had walked on the Moon. They knew the names of Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins. They wanted to know who was visiting the Moon these days.”

And

“Education on the value of free speech and the other freedoms reserved by the Bill of Rights, about what happens when you don’t have them, and about how to exercise and protect them, should be an essential prerequisite for being an American citizen — or indeed a citizen of any nation, the more so to the degree that such rights remain unprotected. If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.”

And

“When we consider the founders of our nation: Jefferson, Washington, Samuel and John Adams, Madison and Monroe, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine and many others; we have before us a list of at least ten and maybe even dozens of great political leaders. They were well educated. Products of the European Enlightenment, they were students of history. They knew human fallibility and weakness and corruptibility. They were fluent in the English language. They wrote their own speeches. They were realistic and practical, and at the same time motivated by high principles. They were not checking the pollsters on what to think this week. They knew what to think. They were comfortable with long-term thinking, planning even further ahead than the next election. They were self-sufficient, not requiring careers as politicians or lobbyists to make a living. They were able to bring out the best in us. They were interested in and, at least two of them, fluent in science. They attempted to set a course for the United States into the far future — not so much by establishing laws as by setting limits on what kinds of laws could be passed. The Constitution and its Bill of Rights have done remarkably well, constituting, despite human weaknesses, a machine able, more often than not, to correct its own trajectory. At that time, there were only about two and a half million citizens of the United States. Today there are about a hundred times more. So if there were ten people of the caliber of Thomas Jefferson then, there ought to be 10 x 100 = 1,000 Thomas Jefferson’s today. Where are they?”

Wikipedia:  Carl Sagan

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