173 quotes found
"Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio —- empty boasting of American power, American virtue, American know-how —- has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades. ... Here at home —- within the family, so to speak —- our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others."
"Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know."
"The century after the Civil War was to be an Age of Revolution—of countless, little-noticed revolutions, which occurred not in the halls of legislatures or on battlefields or on the barricades but in homes and farms and factories and schools and stores, across the landscape and in the air—so little noticed because they came so swiftly, because they touched Americans everywhere and every day. Not merely the continent but human experience itself, the very meaning of community, of time and space, of present and future, was being revised again and again, a new democratic world was being invented and was being discovered by Americans wherever they lived."
"The great obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
"Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge."
"I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early."
"These creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer. The story of discoverers could be told in simple chronological order, since the latest science replaces what went before. But the arts are another story — a story of infinite addition. We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination."
"The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge."
"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers."
"The institutional scene in which American man has developed has lacked that accumulation from intervening stages which has been so dominant a feature of the European landscape."
"While the Jeffersonian did not flatly deny the Creator's power to perform miracles, he admired His refusal to do so."
"While the easiest way in metaphysics is to condemn all metaphysics as nonsense, the easiest way in morals is to elevate the common practice of the community into a moral absolute."
"The variety of minds served the economy of nature in many ways. The Creator, who designed the human brain for activity, had insured the restlessness of all minds by enabling no single one to envisage all the qualities of the creation. Since no one by himself could aspire to a serene knowledge of the whole truth, all men had been drawn into an active, exploratory and cooperative attitude."
"Jefferson refused to pin his hopes on the occasional success of honest and unambitious men; on the contrary, the great danger was that philosophers would be lulled into complacence by the accidental rise of a Franklin or a Washington. Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion."
"Jeffersonian isolationism expressed an essentially cosmopolitan spirit. The Jeffersonian was determined — even at the expense of separating himself from the rest of the globe, and even though he be charged with provincial selfishness — to preserve America as an uncontaminated laboratory."
"Since the Creator had made the facts of the after-life inaccessible to man, He must not have required that man understand death in order to live fruitfully."
"We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place."
"IN THE last half century a larger and larger proportion of our experience, of what we read and see and hear, has come to consist of pseudo‑events. We expect more of them and we are given more of them. They flood our consciousness. Their multiplication has gone on in the United States at a faster rate than elsewhere. Even the rate of increase is increasing every day. This is true of the world of education, of consumption, and of personal relations."
"The news leak is a pseudo‑event par excellence. In its origin and growth, the leak illustrates another axiom of the world of pseudo‑events: pseudo‑events produce more pseudo‑events."
"Pseudo‑events spawn other pseudo‑events in geometric progression. This is partly because every kind of pseudo-event (being planned) tends to become ritualized, with a protocol and a rigidity all its own. As each type of pseudo-event acquires this rigidity, pressures arise to produce other, derivative, forms of pseudo‑event which are more fluid, more tantalizing, and more interestingly ambiguous."
"These pseudo‑events which flood our consciousness must be distinguished from propaganda. The two do have some characteristics in common. But our peculiar problems come from the fact that pseudo‑events are in some respects the opposite of the propaganda which rules totalitarian countries. Propaganda — as prescribed, say, by Hitler in Mein Kampf — is information intentionally biased. Its effect depends primarily on its emotional appeal. While a pseudo‑event is an ambiguous truth, propaganda is an appealing falsehood. Pseudo‑events thrive on our honest desire to be informed, to have “all the facts,” and even to have more facts than there really are."
"The American citizen thus lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves."
"In the age of pseudo‑events it is less the artificial simplification than the artificial complication of experience that confuses us. Whenever in the public mind a pseudo‑event competes for attention with a spontaneous event in the same field, the pseudo‑event will tend to dominate. What happens on television will overshadow what happens off television."
"Pseudo‑events do, of course, increase our illusion of grasp on the world, what some have called the American illusion of omnipotence. Perhaps, we come to think, the world’s problems can really be settled by “statements,” by “Summit” meetings, by a competition of “prestige,” by overshadowing images, and by political quiz shows."
"Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety."
"A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness."
"The image, more interesting than its original, has become the original. The shadow has become the substance."
"By a diabolical irony the very facsimiles of the world which we make on purpose to bring it within our grasp, to make it less elusive, have transported us into a new world of blurs."
"A sign of a celebrity is often that his name is worth more than his services."
"Of all nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody's image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us."
"As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America. has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves."
"We must first awake before we can walk in the right direction. We must discover our illusions before we can even realize that we have been sleepwalking. The least and the most we can hope for is that each of us may penetrate the unknown jungle of images in which we live our daily lives. That we may discover anew where dreams end and where illusions begin. This is enough. Then we may know where we are, and each of us may decide for himself where he wants to go."
"The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world."
"The American settlers came to take and shape the land. The first occupants of the land — the "Indians" whom the European migrants encountered — would not be treated, in the pattern of the Romans, as people to be incorporated into an empire. Instead, they were treated as part of the landscape. Most of them were simply cleared away, like the forest, or pushed back, like the wilderness."
"The cities of Italy are now deluged with droves of these creatures [tour groups], for they never separate, and you see them, forty in number, pouring along a street with their director — now in front, now at the rear, circling them like a sheep dog — and really the process is as like herding as may be."
"A love of books, of holding a book, turning its pages, looking at its pictures, and living its fascinating stories goes hand-in-hand with a love of learning."
"Every child in American should have access to a well-stocked school library. … An investment in libraries is an investment in our children's future."
"I'm not wild about the term first lady. I'd just like to be called Laura Bush."
"We talk about issues, but I'm not his adviser, I'm his wife... I find that it's really best not to give your spouse a lot of advice. I don't want a lot of advice from him."
"In almost every single way, George and I share the same values. And if we differ on some issues, it's very, very minor."
"In contrast to my husband, I can pronounce the word nuclear."
"AIDS respects no national boundaries; spares no race or religion; devastates men and women, rich and poor. No country can ignore this crisis. Fighting AIDS is an urgent calling — because every life, in every land, has value and dignity."
"Education is spreading hope. Millions are now learning to live with HIV/AIDS — instead of waiting to die from it."
"All people need to know how AIDS is transmitted, and every country has an obligation to educate its citizens. This is why every country must also improve literacy, especially for women and girls, so that they can make wise choices that will keep them healthy and safe."
"Mrs. Bush: I don’t think there is anything wrong with singing it in Spanish. The point is it’s the United States national anthem and what people want is it to be sung in a way that respects the United States and our culture. At the same time, we are a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of many, many languages, because immigrants come and bring their languages. Larry King: Is that an issue you disagree with your husband? He says it should be sung in English. Mrs. Bush: I think it should be sung in English, of course."
"I also want to encourage anyone who has been affected by hurricane Ka, uh, Karina..."
"Ann Curry: You know the American people are suffering watching -- Mrs. Bush: Believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this, and certainly the commander in chief, who has asked our military to go into harm's way."
"When I was in my 20s, I was a bookworm — spent 12 hours of the day in the library. How I met George, I'll never know."
"The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone."
"Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open."
"In the United States, the presidency is not just about one person. The presidency is about all of the people who join with that president in years of service to our remarkable nation. They are the people who never fly on Air Force One, but who put in countless late nights and earlier mornings, who spend less time with their family and friends and more time hard at work caring for our country. The presidency is about the men and women of our military who serve every president and who make the ultimate sacrifice to protect us and keep us safe. The stones in the walls represent your years of service."
"A presidential library is not just about one president; each library is about our nation and the world during that time. The George W. Bush Presidential Center reflects George’s role as the first president of the 21st century. Like our new era, the building and its grounds are designed to be forward-looking, and they’re green and sustainable. They celebrate the native environment of our home state of Texas. The archives housed here are completely digital. And the entire Bush Center is designed to present the past and engage the future. We welcome scholars, and students, and the community at large to gather here for generations to come."
"The Center is designed to be human in scale, because, like the White House, presidential libraries belong to all Americans. The people across our nation were the ones who inspired us every day. Here, we remember the heartbreak and the heroism of September 11th, and the bravery of those who answered the call to defend our country. We remember the volunteers of all ages and all walks of life who came to the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. And we remember all the people who step forward to help others -- whether to teach a child to read, or to feed a hungry family."
"The White House has disinvited the poets/to a cultural tea in honor of poetry/after the Secret Service got wind of a plot/to fill Mrs. Bush’s ears with anti-war verse./Were they afraid the poets might persuade/a sensitive girl who always loved to read,/a librarian who stocked the shelves with Poe/and Dickinson? Or was she herself afraid/to be swayed by the cooing doves, and live at odds/with the screaming hawks in her family?/The Latina maids are putting away the cups/and the silver spoons, sad to be missing out/on música they seldom get to hear/in the hallowed halls. . . The valet sighs/as he rolls the carpets up and dusts the blinds./Damn but a little Langston would be good/in this dreary mausoleum of a place!/Why does the White House have to be so white?/The chef from Baton Rouge is starved for verse/uncensored by Homeland Security./NO POETRY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!/Instead the rooms are vacuumed and set up/for closed-door meetings planning an attack/against the ones who always bear the brunt/of silencing: the poor, the powerless,/the ones who serve, those bearing poems, not arms./So why be afraid of us, Mrs. Bush?/you’re married to a scarier fellow./We bring you tidings of great joy-/not only peace but poetry on earth."
"("In February of 2003, the first lady had cancelled a White House poetry symposium honoring Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. Laura Bush had feared the invited poets might invoke poems critical of invading Iraq. I asked Grace Paley for her response to Laura Bush’s action.") GP: Well, it was probably the most extraordinary event to happen to American poets, and Laura Bush did it. It couldn’t have happened, though, really, without — you know, when people say, “What can poets do?” I often say, “Just what any other working group could do to get anything accomplished, and that is to organize.”...So I owe — we — all poets owe a great deal to Laura Bush, Sam Hamill and the computer, because, as this happened, within about two days, there were about — I don’t know — 15,000 poets writing letters, writing, sending poems to Laura Bush, poems of protest."
"Bring me men to match my mountains, Bring me men to match my plains, Men with empires in their purpose, And new eras in their brains."
"We felt the universe wuz safe, an' God wuz on his throne."
"The sweet mellifluous milking of the cow."
"He had a startling genius, but somehow it did n't emerge; Always on the evolution of things that would n't evolve; Always verging toward some climax, but he never reached the verge; Always nearing the solution of some theme he could not solve."
"There are purple grapes in the Land of Git-Thare."
"I say the very things that make the greatest Stir An' the most interestin' things, are things that did n't occur."
"Strew gladness on the paths of men— You will not pass this way again."
"A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead; They followed still his crooked way And lost a hundred years a day; For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent."
"We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry. There will come with the greater love of science greater love to one another. Living more nearly to Nature is living farther from the world and from its follies, but nearer to the world's people; it is to be of them, with them, and for them, and especially for their improvement. We cannot see how impartially Nature gives of her riches to all, without loving all, and helping all; and if we cannot learn through Nature's laws the certainty of spiritual truths, we can at least learn to promote spiritual growth while we are together, and live in a trusting hope of a greater growth in the future."
"The great gain would be freedom of thought. Women, more than men, are bound by tradition and authority. What the father, the brother, the doctor, and the minister have said has been received undoubtingly. Until women throw off this reverence for authority they will not develop. When they do this, when they come to truth through their investigations, when doubt leads them to discovery, the truth which they get will be theirs, and their minds will work on and on unfettered."
"I know I shall be called heterodox, and that unseen lightning flashes and unheard thunderbolts will be playing around my head, when I say that women will never be profound students in any other department except music while they give four hours a day to the practice of music. I should by all means encourage every woman who is born with musical gifts to study music; but study it as a science and an art, and not as an accomplishment; and to every woman who is not musical, I should say, 'Don't study it at all;' you cannot afford four hours a day, out of some years of your life, just to be agreeable in company upon possible occasions. If for four hours a day you studied, year after year, the science of language, for instance, do you suppose you would not be a linguist? Do you put the mere pleasing of some social party, and the reception of a few compliments, against the mental development of four hours a day of study of something for which you were born? When I see that girls who are required by their parents to go through with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for which God designed them, would do for them. I should think that to a real scientist in music there would be something mortifying in this rush of all women into music; as there would be to me if I saw every girl learning the constellations, and then thinking she was an astronomer!"
"There is this great danger in student life. Now, we rest all upon what Socrates said, or what Copernicus taught; how can we dispute authority which has come down to us, all established, for ages? We must at least question it; we cannot accept anything as granted, beyond the first mathematical formulae. Question everything else."
"An English village could never be mistaken for an American one: the outline against the sky differs; a thatched cottage makes a very wavy line on the blue above."
"Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God."
"There is a God, and he is good, I say to myself. I try to increase my trust in this, my only article of creed."
"Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow."
"A great department store, easily reached, open at all hours, is more like a good museum of art than any of the museums we have yet established."
"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn."
"Recorded history starts with a patriarchal revolution. Let it continue with the matriarchal counterrevolution that is the only hope for the survival of the human race."
"Woman's reproductive organs are far older than man's and far more highly evolved. Even in the lowest mammals, as well as in woman, the ovaries, uterus, vagina, etc., are similar, indicating that the female reproductive system was one of the first things perfected by nature. On the other hand, the male reproductive organs, the testicles and the penis, vary as much among species and through the course of evolution as does the shape of the foot — from hoof to paw. Apparently, then, the male penis evolved to suit the vagina, not the vagina to suit the penis."
"Proof that the penis is a much later development than the female vulva is found in the evidence that the male himself was a late mutation from an original female creature. For man is but an imperfect female. Geneticists and physiologists tell us that the Y chromosome that produces males is a deformed and broken X chromosome — the female chromosome. All women have two X chromosomes, while the male has one X derived from his mother and one Y from his father. It seems very logical that this small and twisted Y chromosome is a genetic error — an accident of nature, and that originally there was only one sex — the female."
"Asexual reproduction by females, parthenogenesis, is not only possible but it still occurs here and there in the modern world, pernaps as an atavistic survival of the once only means of reproduction in an all female world."
"The idea of feminine authority is so deeply embedded in the human subconscious that even after all these centuries of father-right the young child instinctively regards the mother as the supreme authority. He looks upon the father as equal with himself, equally subject to the woman's rule. Children have to be taught to love, honor, and respect the father, a task usually assumed by the mother."
"In civilized societies today … clitoris envy, or womb envy, takes subtle forms. Man's constant need to disparage woman, to humble her, to deny her equal rights, and to belittle her achievements — all are expressions of his innate envy and fear."
"… it is not men that most women worry about when they rise to the defense of the status quo. Their apparent endorsement of male supremacy is, rather, a pathetic striving for self-respect, self-justification, and self-pardon. After fifteen hundred years of subjection to men, Western woman finds it almost unbearable to face the fact that she has been hoodwinked and enslaved by her inferiors — that the master is lesser than the slave."
"The fact is that men need women more than women need men; and so, aware of this fact, man has sought to keep woman dependent upon him economically as the only method open to him of making himself necessary to her. Since in the beginning woman would not become his willing slave, he has wrought through the centuries a society in which woman must serve him if she is to survive."
"Men insist that they don't mind women succeeding so long as they retain their "femininity". Yet the qualities that men consider "feminine" timidity, submissiveness, obedience, silliness, and self-debasement — are the very qualities best guaranteed to assure the defeat of even the most gifted aspirant."
"To the "masculists" of both sexes, "femininity" implies all that men have built into the female image in the past few centuries: weakness, imbecility, dependence, masochism, unreliability, and a certain "babydoll" sexuality that is actually only a projection of male dreams. To the "feminist" of both sexes, femininity is synonymous with the eternal female principle, connoting strength, integrity, wisdom, justice, dependability, and a psychic power foreign and therefore dangerous to the plodding masculists of both sexes."
"The misnamed "feminine" woman, so admired by her creator, man — the woman who is acquiescent in her inferiority and who has swallowed man's image of her as his ordained helpmate and no more — is in reality the "masculine" woman. The truly feminine woman "cannot help burning with that inner rage that comes from having to identify with her exploiter's negative image of her," and having to conform to her persecutor's idea of femininity and its man-decreed limitations."
"Man is by nature a pragmatic materialist, a mechanic, a lover of gadgets and gadgetry; and these are the qualities that characterize the "establishment" which regulates modern society: pragmatism, materialism, mechanization, and gadgetry. Woman, on the other hand, is a practical idealist, a humanitarian with a strong sense of noblesse oblige, an altruist rather than a capitalist."
"In the new science of the twenty-first century, not physical force but spiritual force will lead the way. Mental and spiritual gifts will be more in demand than gifts of a physical nature. Extrasensory perception will take precedence over sensory perception. And in this sphere woman will again predominate. She who was revered and worshiped by early man because of her power to see the unseen will once again be the pivot—not as sex but as divine woman—about whom the next civilization will, as of old, revolve."
"Books are the tools of both teacher and pupil. A library is perhaps the most important adjunct of instruction. It is open to all and is used by all. In every department of science throughout the world the keenest intellects are at work, seeking for solutions to the unending series of problems that present themselves in the physical and natural world . 'Light, more light,' said the dying philosopher, and the longing of the world is but the echo of his last faint cry. To do our duty and to give reply to the many demands made upon us requires all the light and all the experience of other minds, wheresoever they may be found."
"He was an excellent disciplinarian, a splendid teacher, and a man looking for the good in everybody, which he invariably found and brought out. Great in his goodness of character and life, and of charming personality, he left a lasting impress on the annals of this institution."
"From the beginning…you (the ALA) have welcomed and supported me. Tonight you have gone one step further—you have adopted me.” She later explained, “It was at that moment, and ever after, that I regarded myself as a librarian."
"As I advanced in my career in librarianship, I have been a woman in a man’s world. However, this issue has not been an important factor in my thinking."
"“In the early days of MARC, there was a small team of people dedicated to one thing—getting the MARC Pilot Project underway. It was a team spirit that I shall never forget…."
"Yes, I noted that there were hardly any or no women in certain high level positions. But as time passed, I, along with others, did attain, and with pride for managing to do so, a series of positions in the ladder."
"It’s an honor. ALA has been one of the closest organizations I’ve been involved with; I’ve worked with people at ALA since day one. ALA has been a great supporter and a big help to me. People were the most rewarding part, all the people I got to know, the support from people around the world. I couldn’t have done it all myself without all that help."
"I believe the Internet is a great technical achievement. However, when it comes to the organization of information so that we can locate, select, and distinguish among bibliographic items for serious research, the Internet has a long way to go."
"In my opinion, libraries and librarians are needed more than ever, and the literature is noting this more often. In the development of MARC, it was clear to me that we needed two talents, i.e., computer expertise and library expertise. Neither talent could have succeeded alone. We need this more than ever today. Librarians must become computer literate so that they can understand the relationship between the technology applied and the discipline of their profession."
"Libraries, as spaces, need to continue to inspire the public to dream big and to think great thoughts. Cities, towns, and academic communities of all shapes and sizes need the free, open public spaces that libraries–and only libraries–provide."
"Librarians need to focus not on individual, physical libraries but on the larger networks–physical and digital–of which their libraries are part."
"To put things in perspective, recall that all the great libraries of antiquity–including the libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum–have disappeared completely. However, the world did not lose the knowledge they contained when they disappeared. Some of what was held in those libraries had been moved to other locations, either to be copied or because it was stolen. Even the fate of the libraries of antiquity shows that preservation relies not on the persistence of specific institutions, but on proper functioning of a system that includes redundancy and the sharing of knowledge across institutions. There is a great deal more progress to be made in this respect during this transition to the digital age, but the importance of doing so is unmistakable."
"The librarian must be the librarian militant before he can be the librarian triumphant."
"The cheapness and quickness of modern methods of communication has been like a growth of wings, so that a thousand things which were thought to belong like trees in one place may travel about like birds."
"Power corrupts people in small as well as big scale, I discovered. People with small powers use little irritants like flea bites, to assert control and punish."
"How does one help change the treadmill into a road, or better still, a meandering path?"
"In Hitler's Germany, Jews were forced to wear identifying stars of David on their sleeves. Black people in the United States wore their identification all the time."
"Those days [in prison] revealed the banal cruelties that jails create and nurture. I saw people punished not only by being locked up but then by being degraded, treated capriciously, their personal dignity undermined, with no real recourse of appeal for fairness and justice."
"...if you dislike something enough to criticize it, what are you going to do about it? It was like a refrain, often uncomfortable, but one that could not be silenced."
"[S]torytelling is a living art, and each teller embellishes, polishes and recreates as she goes along without losing the thematic value."
"I searched for some of the folktales I had heard at home. There was not even one. A sudden feeling of loss rose within me."
"To appreciate the present, one must have a knowledge of the past…to know where we go, we must know from where we came…"
"In this present struggle to fight poverty, hunger and fear, and to bring some semblance of peace and security into the home, the need for serenity and beauty seem to be forgotten. Food alone can't do it. It needs an elevation of spirit that transcends all materialities. This serenity, this beauty, is apparent in the faces of the children in the story hour room. For a while at least, through the power of a story and the beauty of its language, the child escapes to a world of his own. He leaves the room richer than when he entered it."
"This paper should be filled with statistics, but no statistic can show the joy of a child who runs around the room to tell his friends, "She speaks Spanish. She can help you with your books.""
"Puerto Rico is a beautiful island, with a culture enriched by old, old stories gained from many people. Traces of this culture are everywhere. And there are still many more story seeds waiting to be planted."
"Statehood will destroy Puerto Rico's national identity in short order, while the present Commonwealth system will destroy it as surely, though more slowly...I repeat now the words that I wrote to my distinguished friend Don Luis Ferré in a public letter, October 6, 1964: God save the children of Puerto Rico from the day when they have to be protected from discrimination practiced against them by people of alien origin in the schools of their own land."
"Research is always necessary for accuracy in a story. But once you begin the process of writing a story, forget the attitude of the researcher and become the storyteller. Divide your mind into three parts, because with every sentence, every scene, and every chapter, you must be thinking of three things at the same time. One part of you lives with the hero or heroine of the story. Crawl into his mind and stay there, seeing the world through his eyes. The second part of you must be able to look around the corner, past the days, the months, and the years ahead to the final scene. The third part of you must be thinking of your reader, for your story will not happen on paper; it will happen first in the imagination of your reader. What you commit to paper should be geared to making the story live for him. So think of the reader. Likewise, there are three general things to remember about your readers. First, don't tell them anything show them...Second, writing for your reader is like going on a picnic. Both writing and picnics take a bit of planning...Third, remember that your reader is primarily interested in plot."
"When you remember these three basic things about readers in general-that they like suspense, that they want to see the story happen and, most important of all, that they want to feel the story happen-then you are ready to think about the particular reader."
"I would also make the following general suggestions. Don't get enthralled with your own vocabulary. Avoid flashbacks. Remember that children's dreams are often outsized. Don't forget the magnificent sweep of the imagination and dreams of youth; when a boy comes only to a man's shoulders, his dreams are tall. Through all the hardships and heartbreaks, these dreams often become realities. And last of all, when writing for adolescents, remember that they know more, feel more, and understand more than some grown-ups realize."
"In my opinion, the answer to what makes a reluctant reader is the lack of motivation in the home; non-reading parents, lack of verbal communication, working parents too tired to answer questions, lack of books around the house, and too much dependence on television for entertainment. But the reluctant reader must learn to read, and that is left to the school. The school is not without fault in failing him. Too much stress on pedagogical reading material has left no room for reading for pleasure; in fact it has destroyed any incentive for it. Somewhere on the way, the individuality of the child has been lost in the effort to make of him just "teaching material." Classes that are too large have made matters worse. Lucky is the child from such a group that finds the public library and discovers its picture book or reading hours."
"There is a mistaken idea that the reluctant reader is mainly a product of poverty in disadvantaged areas. Nothing can be further from the truth. These children share the universality of childhood-that is theirs regardless of their status in life. They have their hopes, dreams, and little joys. They need a little more individual care-a feeling, perhaps of love-to fill the vacuum of so many hours alone. They respond quickly and naturally to attention because they are sensitive children."
"A bilingual child is often considered a reluctant reader mainly because he is just beginning to learn English as a second language. Here the problem is mainly the lack of understanding on the teacher's part."
"While her biography might very well place her in a direct line to the emphasis on blackness in the Nuyorican soundings of Boricua identity in the post-68 generation of poets and activists, and beyond to more contemporary poetry and novels, we must recognize that she knew Arturo Schomburg, she knew Piri Thomas, and she was very active in the 1960s and 1970s in New York City during the apogee of the Young Lords Party and the Nuyorican poetry movement. Yet she did not choose to explore African diasporan identity per se, nor the blackness intrinsic to Puerto Rican culture, in her writing and public intellectual work of that period. Perhaps, in her view, that went without saying; in many of her unpublished essays and other archival papers, she cites what in today's academic terms would be a radically multiracial and multi-ethnic view of the roots of Puerto Rican literature, including the African diaspora as one of the taproots. Scholarship on Belpré, like the scholarship on Arturo Schomburg, is still evolving, if slowly (Torres-Padilla 2002; Núñez 2009; Jimenez Garcia 2011)."
"Did she, like her contemporary Arturo Schomburg (1874-1938), have intergenerational family ties to the French Caribbean islands? Was she somehow of French descent, like Luisa Capetillo? The absence of such basic information in Belpré's papers is striking since she offers so much information about her adult life. Either Belpré, a gifted storyteller, preferred not to talk too much about her family's history or simply did not know much about it. It is probably not a coincidence that three of the most important stateside Puerto Rican public intellectuals of that period-Belpré, Arturo Schomburg, and Jesús Colón (1901-1974)-as diverse as their worldviews and interests were, were each quiet about or prone to fictionalizing their family histories in Puerto Rico. Intriguing too is that all three of these prominent Boricuas were a darker shade of brown, and therefore must have suffered racialized discrimination not only in the larger U.S. society but also within the Puerto Rican community itself."
"Among other inspirations, including her natural gifts and formal training as a storyteller, Belpré's polyglot familiarity with excellent children's literature and the tutelage she had from her senior women colleagues at the NYPL had the more profound effect on her sensibilities as an author and folklorist."
"In sheer quality, The Tiger and the Rabbit and Other Tales is arguably Belpré's finest work."
"…in talking it over with Negroes, I find that the tale is so old and so well known that it is almost folklore. It has many variations: sometimes it is the woman’s brother, husband, son, lover, preacher, beloved master, or even her father, mother, sister, or daughter who is killed. A Negro sociologist tells me that there are literally hundred of these stories. Anyone could have written it up at any time."
"Manners were something that people who don’t have, but admire, resent not having."
"a ‘modern’ woman who smokes, wears her dresses short, does not believe in religions, churches and the like, and feels that people of the artistic type have a definite chance to help solve the race problem."
"We are completely aware that the condition-if you want to call it that of Anglo women can't help but affect us, since Anglo women teach our children and provide most of the input for all media in this society."
"What is stronger: racism or sexism? I believe racism. Anglo women must analyze their emotions and intellect and think clearly on this. Is the women's movement a move to place just another layer of racist Anglo dominance over minority peoples?"
"The social and economic upheavals which deposed the Díaz regime and produced the 1910 revolution gave Mexican feminists another arena for action. Revolutionary supporters established women's organizations like the Hijas de Cuauhtémoc and newspapers like Vesper which helped the cause and raised women's consciousness about their own status. Juana Belen Gutiérrez de Mendoza was an outstanding feminist and journalist of the period."
"In terms of women's rights, the Mexican revolution of 1910 had enormous impact. During the revolution men and women developed relationships of partnership and mutual regard very seldom seen in most societies. Through their activities as clerks, secretaries, smugglers, telegraphers, journalists, financiers, and soldiers, women had a rare opportunity to develop their potential on a large scale, beside the men, and won their respect and recognition as partners. Perhaps within the Mexican culture this phenomenon was only to be repeated in the U.S. with the Chicano farmworker and civil rights struggles of the twentieth century."
"From Frances Swadesh's research on southwestern cultures we know that mestizas in the southwest enjoyed a very liberalized existence as compared to Mexico and other parts of the United States in the 1850s. Women like pony rider mail carrier Candelaria Mestas and "La Tules" in New Mexico blew the Chicana stereotypes. In the 1880's socialist and labor organizer Lucy Gonzales Parsons was actively organizing women workers in Chicago. Her very presence and activity as a leader in the labor movement for thirty years propelled both the feminist and labor causes."
"The P.L.M. and its publication Regeneración became important vehicles for the espousal of women's rights in the U.S. within the Chicano community."
"The 70s has seen an upsurge in activity and development for Chicanas without parallel. Chicanas have made enormous contributions in the fields of education, journalism, politics and labor. They have certainly added depth and new dimension to feminist philosophy and literature in this country."
"if feminism or a women's liberation movement continues its activities in this country, Chicanas seem ready to make certain it is a multicultural movement, especially in educational institutions and in the political and socio-economic arena."
"Both movements and both decades provided impetus, opportunities and vehicles for women's development, although, unfortunately, in both cases development was selected and often controlled by others-by our men in the Sixties and by Anglo women in power in the Seventies."
"Instead of optimisim, I am inspired by Erma Bombeck, universal humorist, whose words seem singularly directed to us: "If life is a bowl of cherries, what are we doing in the pits?""
"We can choose to repeat ancestral practices or to break with them."
"Whether we are Cuban, Puerto Rican, Bolivian, or Mexican-American we have uncannily similar historical backgrounds, including an American or Caribbean indigenous culture, conquest by Spain, a period of colonialism, mestisaje struggles for independence, nationalism-and for Hispanas in the United States, another colonial experience."
"Hispanas should no longer leave unchallenged the irresponsible expressions of ideologies and rhetoric that both disregard the basic tenet of individual worth and ignore women's continued contribution to culture and to the political, artistic, and intellectual evolution of the Hispanidad. Until we do this, the detractors of womankind will continue to promote bastardized machismo as basic and inevitable in the Hispanic culture. Unless we do this, the majority society, and many of our own people, will continue their fantasized portrayals of Hispanas as objects; passive nonentities, social reactionaries, and nonproductive members of society."
"we must maintain the perspective that our overriding priority must be the redemption of the documented history of the Hispanic woman-a history rendered illegible by the cultural, sociological, economic, and political confrontations between colonizer and native of the New World."
"Our strategies should be aimed at educational institutions-those depositories for young people where racism, extreme chauvinism, and anti-female feeling is the strongest. We need to address ourselves aggressively to educational textbooks in which Hispanas are the invisible minority."
"Media, communication, and group action are urgently needed if we're going to control our lives in the Eighties and beyond."
"Hispanas and Hispanos together must confront the subject of equal rights. No one else is going to come in and resolve the situation for us."
"as long as Hispanos are not prepared to deal with women's equality they will be handicapped in their relationship with Hispanas."
"one of the challenges for Hispanas in the Eighties is to raise the consciousness of the community toward full and equal rights for all persons regardless of sex, to claim rights to personhood, which our Indian and Hispanic cultural heritage has never denied us."
"We cannot hide the facts from men any longer. We will not use the proverbial shawl to protect them from reality. There is a new revolution to face together, a new independence to be fought for, together."
"Chicanas' involvement with the women's movement in the 1890 to 1920 period was limited by the barriers that impeded all women with similar backgrounds: the antilabor, antiminority attitudes of the leadership of the women's movement. They were affected also by the antisocialist and anticommunist attitudes of the movement in the early twentieth century, since many Chicana workers and leaders were ardent socialists."
"The greatest victory for the women's movement was not victory for minority women. The suffrage amendment did not enfranchise Chicanas and black women. Chicanas were affected by the aftermath of the suffrage amendment, when women's movement activities slowed down, because white women achieved their desires, but Chicanas, like other minority women, had to continue to struggle for mere survival. They were affected when middle-class women were given preferential treatment in war industry, but blacks and Chicanas had to continue with unskilled, low-paid agricultural work and other service occupations. Chicanas were affected when white middle-class women went back home in the fifties, but minority women did not, and Chicanas, to boot, continued to suffer repression and deportation for their continued labor and civil rights advocacy. Chicanas have been affected when their community and their own gains in the 1960s have taken a back seat to the women's movement just as the black movement and black suffrage took a back seat to the suffrage movement in the latter part of the last century."
"One of the first Chicanas to come into contact with the suffragist movements in the 1880s was Lucy Gonzalez Parsons, a Chicana socialist labor organizer."
"Jane Addams and others spoke and acted on behalf of women labor leaders like Lucy Parsons, assisting them in rallies, providing bail when they were arrested, and using their tremendous power and influence on behalf of working women."
"Although many social workers like Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, and Sophonisba P. Breckenridge, and socialists like Emma Goldman advocated the rights of immigrants and working women, in most instances during the 1890 to 1910 period their advocacy had little or no effect on the suffragist movement's attitude toward minority or working-class women"
"the promotion of barriers to universal suffrage such as literacy and educational requirements disenfranchised Black women, Chicanas, and poor and immigrant women until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965."
"like Chicanas today, the women found, then, that while few battles were won in civil rights on behalf of their communities, fulfillment and the gains of the women's movement were never their gains. The suffragist movement had been manipulated since the 1870s to benefit those that eventually benefitted from it and noone else."
"Chicana feminist activities in the 1904 to 1920 period were channeled through civil rights activities and labor organization work. Some outstanding women were Jovita Idar, a journalist and civil rights worker from Laredo, Texas; Soledad Peña, orator and educator; María Renteria; and María Villarreal. These women were speakers and participants in a historical civil rights conference, the Primer Congreso Mexicanista. On October 15, 1911 they also founded the Liga Femenil Mexicanista."
"Polling places in the southwestern states were almost always on the Anglo side of the tracks, where Mexicans were allowed for domestic work or other service jobs only."
"Chicana labor leaders and politicians, like Denver's Dolores McGran González, testified before congressional committees, ran for local office, and served as national delegates to the Progressive Party Convention in the late 1930s. Other women who have become models of female-inspired activities of the period are Dolores Hernández, who was killed on October 10, 1933 during a strike of 15,000 farm workers in Visalia, California. Another woman labor union leader made history in 1936 when she led pecan sheller strikers in San Antonio in a successful strike effort. Emma Tenayuca Brooks, then a 17-year-old labor organizer and orator, became a beacon of hope to beleagured workers throughout the United States. For her efforts, she has had to live 40 years in obscurity and anonymity. In civil rights and educational reform, a strong women's advocate, Mariá L. Hernández of Lytle, Texas, worked tirelessly throughout the 1930s demonstrating, speaking, and protesting the educational status of Mexican-Americans in the United States."
"Some of the women who led the movement in its early days were Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, Alicia Escalante with the Welfare Rights Organization, and Gracia Molina de Pick and Anna Nieto-Gómez with feminist activities. Women politicians like Virginia Muzquiz of Crystal City, Texas, Mariana Hernández, and Grace Davies put Chicanas in the political forum. Like these women, there have been hundreds of others who, in the late 1960s and 1970s, have proved that Chicanas have come of age politically in this country."
"Minorty women could fill volumes with examples of put-downs, put-ons, and out-and-out racism shown to them by the leadership of the [women's] movement."
"The Chicana is "together" but her progress is not commensurate with her her goals as a woman. The two great barriers to her achievement are: 1) the opportunism in the women's movement that has forced lower priorities to be set on public policy and governmental programming for minority populations and the poor, and 2) the conservatism of Chicano males."
"It is always easier to battle strangers than one's family."
"We leaders of our state must break down the prejudice which exists in Mississippi against women in the service. It is an honour for a young woman to serve her nation in this day of strife."
"The next four years will see the accomplishment of many of the dreams and programs of Governor Bailey, and it is but natural that I want to be a part of that administration. Tom Bailey worked hard for Mississippi, and I shall endeavor to give my best to the state he loved so well."
"Mrs. Bailey was a woman of unusual personal charm and outstanding ability."
"As Supreme Court clerk, she was concerned that the public had an accurate and wholesome understanding of and appreciation for the court and its function in the promotion of the common well being through equal and fair justice for all"
"Representative Bell’s wisdom and guidance leading JFAC has had a profound and lasting impact on the fiscal responsibility of the state of Idaho. Her prudence extends far past her work in the legislature, making her an esteemed leader in Jerome and beyond."
"Representative Maxine Bell dedicated her life to serving her community and the people of Idaho."
"Her remarkable 30-year tenure in the Idaho legislature brought about great progress for the Magic Valley and strengthened our state. I’m pleased to see the Senate approve the naming of the Representative Maxine Bell Post Office in Jerome, where her legacy will inspire generations of Idahoans."
"I cannot think of a more deserving person for this honor."
"Maxine epitomizes service as indicated by the many years that she represented our community in the Idaho State Legislature. We are fortunate to have such a wonderful person residing in our community. I am blessed to call her a friend and mentor. Thank you Maxine!"
"Her life has been dedicated to improving the lives of Idahoans through the power of education. Her life has been, and continues to be, a life of service."
"Your flaming torch aloft we bear, With burning heart an oath we swear To keep the faith, to fight it through, To crush the foe or sleep with you In Flanders' fields."
"It is true that some physicians are vain, self-seeking, of the prima donna type, and there be others of the medieval category of die Heilärzte welche heilen nicht, Heilärtze welche krank Machen."
"My heart to you is given: Oh, do give yours to me; We'll lock them up together, And throw away the key."
"True beauty is in the mind; and the expression of the features depends more upon the moral nature than most people are aware of."