The purpose of democracy - supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance - is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures
Walt WhitmanAnd as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.... And as to you corpse, I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, I reach to the leafy lips โ I reach to the polished breasts of melons. And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.
Walt WhitmanI dreamed in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth; I dreamed that was the new City of Friends; Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust loveโit led the rest; It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words.
Walt Whitman