putterings 138 < 139 > 140 index
sputtering, instead of
Owning your own home is America’s unique recipe for avoiding revolution and promoting pseudo-equality at the same time. To keep citizens puttering in their yards instead of sputtering on the barricades, the government has gladly deprived itself of billions in tax revenues by letting home “owners” deduct mortgage interest payments.
—
ex Florence King, Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye “Democracy” (1989) : 71 (borrow-able at archive.org)
being #25 under heading “Home and Houses,” in
Robert Andrews, comp., The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993) : 418
aside —
best to see the full passage in the 1989 volume.
Florence King (1936-2016), wikipedia