Quotes:
“A contest between intelligence and ignorance”
In a republic like ours, where the citizen is the sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence. The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.
Ulysses S. Grant, 1875-09-29 from the speech “President Grant's Des Moines Address”