We demand that people should be true to the pictures we have of them, no matter how repulsive those pictures may be: we prefer the true portrait in all its homogeneity, to one with a detail added which refuses to fit in.
“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.”
“The past speaks to us in a thousand voices, warning and comforting, animating and stirring to action.”