134 quotes found
":"My research, which required days of travel and hundreds of interviews, produced two definite conclusions:"
":# Most people did use toilet paper."
":# Most people did not appreciate being asked about it."
":That was when I started looking for other employment.""
"I am not Deep Throat, and the only thing I can say is that I wouldn't be ashamed to be, because I think whoever [it was] helped the country, no question about it."
"I would have done better. I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?"
"I'm the guy they used to call "Deep Throat"."
"I guess people used to think Deep Throat was a criminal, but now they think he's a hero."
"Follow the money."
"He knows everything there is to know in the FBI. He has access to absolutely everything."
"Everybody is to know that he is a goddamn traitor and just watch him damned carefully."
"And I said we have it on very good authority that they're from Felt...I said, "Dammit... you ought to give him a lie detector test.""
"[Felt] has to go, of course... this guy ain't gonna be the big hero now."
"Aware of his own weaknesses, he readily conceded his flaws. He was, incongruously, an incurable gossip, careful to label rumor for what it was, but fascinated by it... He could be rowdy, drink too much, overreach. He was not good at concealing his feelings, hardly ideal for a man in his position."
"The identity of Deep Throat is modern journalism's greatest unsolved mystery. It has been said that he may be the most famous anonymous person in U.S. history. But, regardless of his notoriety, American society today owes a considerable debt to the government official who decided, at great personal risk, to help Woodward and Bernstein as they pursued the hidden truths of Watergate."
"Deep Throat lived in solitary dread, under the constant threat of being summarily fired or even indicted, with no colleagues in whom he could confide. He was justifiably suspicious that phones had been wiretapped, rooms bugged, and papers rifled. He was completely isolated, having placed his career and his institution in jeopardy. Eventually, Deep Throat would even warn Woodward and Bernstein that he had reason to believe "everyone's life is in danger"—meaning Woodward's, Bernstein's, and, presumably, his own."
"I believe that Mark Felt is one of America's greatest secret heroes. Deep in his psyche, it is clear to me, he still has qualms about his actions, but he also knows that historic events compelled him to behave as he did: standing up to an executive branch intent on obstructing his agency's pursuit of the truth. Felt, having long harbored the ambivalent emotions of pride and self-reproach, has lived for more than 30 years in a prison of his own making, a prison built upon his strong moral principles and his unwavering loyalty to country and cause. But now, buoyed by his family's revelations and support, he need feel imprisoned no more."
"The family believes that my grandfather, Mark Felt Sr., is a great American hero who went well above and beyond the call of duty at much risk to himself to save his country from a horrible injustice. We all sincerely hope the country will see him this way as well."
"W. Mark Felt was 'Deep Throat' and helped us immeasurably in our Watergate coverage."
"I've always thought it was Mark Felt. I've told people that privately for a number of years. But I have not mentioned it publicly because I think Deep Throat is a dishonorable man."
"William Mark Felt was a traitor to Nixon and America! What he did caused 53,000 American soldiers to die for nothing in Vietnam!"
"This disclosure is a godsend to the mainstream media— just when the Dan Rather and Newsweek scandals are building momentum against anonymous sources, along comes the shining knight of anonymity— "Deep Throat" to the rescue."
"What would you think the odds were that this town could keep that secret for this long?"
"I always suspected it, but I never asked. First of all, I didn't want to be rejected, and I knew he wouldn't tell me. And I knew that if somebody else blabbed, I would get blamed."
"I am really shocked. I always thought that he was the consummate professional, very upright, everybody's vision of the F.B.I. guy."
"When any president has to worry whether the deputy director of the FBI is sneaking around in dark corridors peddling information in the middle of the night, he's in trouble. There were times when I should have blown the whistle, so I understand his feelings. But I cannot approve of his methods."
"I thought Mark Felt was probably the one, which made sense because what he told Woodward was mainly the stuff the F.B.I. would have had. What he didn't tell Woodward was really anything critical about us. It wasn't inside the White House stuff, it was inside the F.B.I. stuff."
"I haven't been among those consumed by this question. But I thought it might be somebody who felt deeply disturbed by the attempt to corrupt both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A."
"If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth."
"My early book learning came to me as naturally as the seasons in … the little town in which I grew up. … Quite early I began to find a special charm in an unpeopled world … of lava rock and sagebrush desert. … I was often more purely happy at such times than I think I have ever been since."
""Hello, ship," Jake Holman said under his breath. The ship was asleep and did not hear him."
"Jake Holman knew he was a strange bird and he was used to going aboard new ships. By the time they realized they were in a struggle Jake Holman would already have made for himself the place he wanted on their ship and they could never dislodge him. Or wish to."
"Tomorrow we begin our summer cruising to show the flag on Tungting lake and the Hunan rivers," he said. "At home in America, when today reaches them, it will be Flag Day. They will gather to do honor and hear speeches. For us who wear the uniform, every day is Flag Day. We pay our honor in act and feeling and we have little need of words. But on this one day it will not hurt us to grasp briefly in words the meaning of our flag. That is what I want to talk about this morning. "Our flag is the symbol of America. I want you to grasp what America really is," Lt. Collins said, nodding for emphasis. "It is more than marks on a map. It is more than buildings and land. America is a living structure of human lives, of all the American lives that ever were and ever will be. We in San Pablo are collectively only a tiny, momentary bit of that structure. How can we, standing here, grasp the whole of America?" He made a grasping motion. "Think now of a great cable," he said, and made a circle with his arms. "The cable has no natural limiting length. It can be spun out forever. We can unlay it into ropes, and the ropes, into strands, and the strands into yarns, and none of them have any natural ending. But now let us pull a yarn apart into single fibers —" he made plucking motions with his fingers " — and each man of us can find himself. Each fiber is a tiny, flat, yellowish thing, a foot or a yard long by nature. One American life from birth to death is like a single fiber. Each one is spun into the yarn of a family and the strand of a home town and the rope of a home state. The states are spun into the great, unending, unbreakable cable that is America." His voice deepened on the last words. He paused, to let them think about it. ... "No man, not even President Coolidge, can experience the whole of America directly," Lt. Collins resumed. "We can only feel it when the strain comes on, the terrible strain of hauling our history into a stormy future. Then the cable springs taut and vibrant. It thins and groans as the water squeezes out and all the fibers press each to each in iron hardness. Even then, we know only the fibers that press against us. But there is another way to know America." He paused for a deep breath. The ranks were very quiet. "We can know America through our flag which is its symbol," he said quietly. "In our flag the barriers of time and space vanish. All America that ever was and ever will be lives every moment in our flag. Wherever in the world two or three of us stand together under our flag, all America is there. When we stand proudly and salute our flag, that is what we know wordlessly in the passing moment. ... "Understand that our flag is not the cloth but the pattern of form and color manifested in the cloth," Lt. Collins was saying. "It could have been any pattern once, but our fathers chose that one. History has made it sacred. The honor paid it in uncounted acts of individual reverence has made it live. Every morning in American schoolrooms children present their hearts to our flag. Every morning and evening we render it our military salutes. And so the pattern lives and it can manifest itself in any number of bits of perishable cloth, but the pattern is indestructible."
"Civilians are only morally bound to salute our flag. We are legally bound. All Americans are morally bound to die for our flag, if called upon. Only we are legally bound. Only we live our lives in a day to day readiness for that sacrifice. We have sworn our oaths and cut our ties. We have given up wealth and home life, except as San Pablo is our home. It marks us. It sets us apart. We are uncomfortable reminders, in time of peace. Those of you who served in the last war know what I mean."
"It is said there will be no more war. We must pretend to believe that. But when war comes, it is we who will take the first shock and buy time with our lives. It is we who keep the faith. We are not honored for it. We are called mercenaries on the outposts of empire. … We serve the flag. The trade we follow is the give and take of death. It is for that purpose the American people maintain us. Any one of us who believes he has a job like any other, for which he draws a money wage, is a thief of the food he eats and a trespasser in the bunk in which he lies down to sleep!"
"He had a light in his gaunt face and his voice and manner were strangely solemn. The were all a bit afraid of him. … "We're mixing our lives together, Maily, and we'll never be able to unmix them again, and we'll never want to." His voice was strong but tender, and he was smiling down at here. "I take you for what you are, and all that you are, and mix you with all of me, and I don't hold back nothing. Nothing! When you're cold, and hungry, and afraid, so am I. When you're happy, so am I. I'm going to stay with you all that I can, take the very best care of you that I can, and love you every minute until I die." He took a deep, slow breath. "Now you say it" "I will always love you and honor you and serve you, Frenchy, and stay as near to you as I can, and do everything for you, and live for you, and I won't have any life except our life together…" Tears welled out of her eyes but she smiled steadily up without blinking. "I will just love you, Frenchy, all of me there is just loving you forever.""
"Croskley:Jake For Gods' sake..."
"Holman:" Get her out of Here...if they catch her you know what they are going to do her.." [To:Sherley Eckart] Dont Worry I'll be along...Holman shoots about 8 soldiers trying to invade the mission. He is only a few feet from catching up with the others when he is struck by a bullet."
"Holman: "I was home. What happened. What the hell happened?" {Second bullet kills him."
"I don’t really have an ideal reader in mind at all, whether one with or without faith. When I write it is to try to figure out something for my own purposes. It is self-indulgent really. It is much more the blank page that I write for, in some way. I have this feeling, should a problem present itself, that I should try to resolve it."
"Cynicism induces a state of helplessness…It disables resistance to all these ills and reduces those who can see and name them into passive collaborators.” It is used as “a kind of cover for what might otherwise seem naive”."
"I love loneliness. I consider my history with loneliness to be among my great blessings…I hasten to add that it is definitely not for everyone. It should be approached with caution."
"…People are complex — that’s the whole center of interest. I don’t make my characters complex. I have a feeling that I know a character, and one of the aspects of that is knowing that they are complex. I never have the feeling of putting a character together from a selection of qualities."
"To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know anything so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is foreshadowing -- the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries."
"This document explained my aunt Molly’s departure to my whole satisfaction. Even now I always imagine her leaning from the low side of some small boat, dropping her net through the spumy billows of the upper air. Her net would sweep the turning world unremarked as a wind in the grass, and when she began to pull it in, perhaps in a pell-mell ascension of formal gentlemen and thin pigs and old women and odd socks that would astonish this lower world, she would gather the net, so easily, until the very burden itself lay all in a heap just under the surface. One last pull of measureless power and ease would spill her catch into the boat, gasping and amazed, gleaming rainbows in the rarer light."
"Such a net, such a harvesting, would put an end to all anomaly. If it swept the whole floor of heaven, it must, finally, sweep the black floor of Fingerbone, too. From there, we must imagine, would arise a great army of paleolithic and neolithic frequenters of the lake-berry gatherers and hunters and strayed children from those and all subsequent eons, down to the earliest present, to the faith-healing lady in the long, white robe who rowed a quarter of a mile out and tried to walk back in again just at sunrise, to the farmer who bet five dollars one spring that the ice was still strong enough for him to gallop his horse across. Add to them the swimmers, the boaters and canoers, and in such a crowd my mother would hardly seem remarkable. There would be a general reclaiming of fallen buttons and misplaced spectacles, of neighbors and kin, till time and error and accident were undone, and the world became comprehensible and whole. Sylvie said that in fact Molly had gone to work as a bookkeeper in a missionary hospital. It was perhaps only from watching gulls fly like sparks up the face of clouds that dragged rain the length of the lake that I imagined such an enterprise might succeed. Or it was from watching gnats sail out of the grass, or from watching some discarded leaf gleaming at the top of the wind. Ascension seemed at such times a natural law. If one added to it a law of completion--that everything must finally be made comprehensible--then some general rescue of the sort I imagined my aunt to have undertaken would be inevitable. For why do our thoughts turn to some gesture of a hand, the fall of a sleeve, some corner of a room on a particular anonymous afternoon, even when we are asleep, and even when we are so old that our thoughts have abandoned other business? What are all these fragments for, if not to be knit up finally?"
"Once, Lucille and I walked beside the train to the shore. There had been a freezing rain that glazed the snow with a crust of ice, and we found that, when the sun went down, the crust was thick enough for us to walk on. So we followed the train at a distance of twenty feet or so, falling now and then, because the glazed snow swelled and sank in dunes, and the tops of bushes and fence posts rose out of it in places where we did not expect them to be. But by crawling up, and sliding down, and steadying ourselves against the roofs of sheds and rabbit hutches, we managed to stay just abreast of the window of a young woman with a small head and a small hat and a brightly painted face. She wore pearl-gray gloves that reached almost to her elbows, and hooped bracelets that fell down her arms when she reached up to push a loose wisp of hair underneath her hat. The woman looked at the window very often, clearly absorbed by what she saw, which was not but merely seemed to be Lucille and me scrambling to stay beside her, too breathless to shout. When we came to the shore, where the land fell down and the bridge began to rise, we stopped and watched her window sail slowly away, along the abstract arc of the bridge."
"A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension."
"I can imagine Jesus befriending my grandfather, too, frying up some breakfast for him, talking things over with him, and in fact the old man did report several experiences of just that kind."
"Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it."
"I was trying to remember what birds did before there were telephone wires. It would have been much harder for them to roost in the sunlight, which is a thing they clearly enjoy doing."
"It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity. And this is truer of women than of men. So they get themselves drawn into situations that are harmful to them. I have seen this happen many, many times. I have always had trouble finding a way to caution against it. Since it is, in a word, Christlike."
"He could knock me down the stairs and I would have worked out the theology for forgiving him before I reached the bottom. But if he harmed you in the slightest way, I'm afraid theology would fail me."
"Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable – which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live."
"I meant to leave you a reasonably candid testament to my better self, and it seems to me now that what you must see here is just an old man struggling with the difficulty of understanding what it is he's struggling with."
"It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health."
"Experience had taught them that truth had sharp edges and hard corners, and could be seriously at odds with kindness."
"Many people find it hard to go to church if they've been away for a while. I've seen it very often. And I'd say to them, It's because it means something to you. As it should be! So, you see, there's no reason at all to be disappointed. I used to say, The Sabbath is faithful. In a week she'll be here again."
"That is why it is called a Spirit," he said. "The word in Hebrew also means wind. 'The Spirit of God brooded on the face of the deep.' It is a sort of enveloping atmosphere."
"As a matter of courtesy they treated one another's deceptions like truth, which was a different thing from deceiving or being deceived. In fact, it was a great part of the fabric of mutual understanding that made their family close."
"Her family was slower to forgive a failure of discretion than they were to forgive most things actually prohibited in Scripture."
"She said, "Meaninglessness would come as a terrible blow to most people. It would be full of significance for them. So it wouldn't be meaningless. That's where I always end up. Once you ask if there is meaning, the only answer is yes. You can't get away from it.""
"He had a way of anticipating memories he particularly did not want to have. That memory would be as unbearable as things are when there is nothing else to do but live with them."
"But prison was terrible. It reduced him to absolute Jack, no matter what anyone thought of him. His great problem, after all, was other people. Prison was full of them."
"He wanted to assure her that his life was solitary and ascetic, as it was, almost past bearing, relieved by the library, occasional drunkenness, and lately by lunch with the Baptists. But he knew how this would sound, either pathetic or, better, like lying."
"Why were there an infinite number of ways to feel awkward? He believed this was a theological question having to do with man's place in the universe. But when he felt the true force of the question, he was always in the middle of an embarrassing emergency of some kind that paralyzed reflection."
"I fear that, eventually, we are all going to become collateral damage in the war on drugs, or terrorism, or whatever war is in vogue at the moment."
"I am not gay. I never have been gay."
"The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy. I'm going to speak out for the citizens of my state who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy."
"Thank you all very much for coming out today."
"Matt, you won't believe this but I don't use the Internet. I don't have a computer at my desk. I have never used the Internet. It's just not what I do. I email with my Blackberry. No, I did not know that and I had no reason to know that."
"The American family will fear less, our national security will be more assured, and we won‘t let the Venezuelas or Nigerias or the Saudi Arabias or the Irans jerk us around by the gas nozzle the way they are doing it now."
"We went to the urinals, where we both unzipped. The restroom became, uh, busy -- too busy to do anything. So we zipped up and then followed each other to the second restroom in Union Station, where we began the same process. And had a -- I also performed fellatio for a very, very short amount of time, as that restroom became busy as well. At that point, we both zipped up and left and went on our separate ways... I've always been interested in politics, and probably if you -- if you showed me pictures of the hundred senators, I could probably name, you know, 75 or 80 of them... There's no doubt in my mind that that's who it was."
"On social issues, and this is where you get the charges of hypocrisy, Craig has pledged his opposition to gay marriage and civil unions, he voted against allowing gays and lesbians in the military, he voted against abortion rights, and he voted guilty in the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton."
"At 1200 hours I was working a plain-clothes detail involving lewd conduct in the main men's public restroom of the Northstar Crossing of the Linburgh terminal. From my seated position, I could observe the shoes and ankles of a person seated to the right of me. An unidentified person entered to the left of me. From my seated position, I was able to see his shoes and ankles. At 1213 hours, I could see an older, white male with grey hair standing outside my stall. He was standing about three feet away and had a roller bag with him. The male was later identified by driver's license as Larry Edwin Craig. I could see Craig look through the crack in the door from his position. Craig would look down at his hands, fidget with his fingers, and then look through the crack into my stall again. Craig would repeat this cycle for about two minutes. I was able to see Craig's blue eyes as he looked into my stall. At 1215 hours, the male in the stall to the left of me flushed the toilet and exited the stall. Craig entered the stall and placed his roller bag against the front of the stall door. My experiences show that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall. From my position I could observe the shoes and ankles of Craig seated to the left of me. He was wearing dress pants with black dress shoes. At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times, then moved his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig, as he moved his right foot so that it touched side of my left foot, which was within my stall area. At 1217 hours, I saw Craig swipe his hand under the stall divider for a few seconds. The swipe went in the direction from the front-door side of the stall back towards the back wall. Craig swiped his hand again for a few seconds in the same motion to where I could see more of his fingers. Craig then swiped his hand in the same motion a third time for a few seconds. I could see that it was Craig's left hand, due to the position of his thumb. I could also see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger, as his hand was on my side of the stall divider. At about 1219 hours, I held my police identification in my right hand down by the floor so that Craig could see it. With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit. Craig responded, "No." I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. Craig handed me a business card that identified himself as a United States Senator, as he stated, "What do you think about that?" I responded by setting his business card down on the table and again asking him for his driver's license. In a recorded, post-Miranda interview, Craig stated the following: He is a commuter. He went into the bathroom. He was standing outside the stalls for one to two minutes waiting for the stall. He has a wide stance when he goes to the bathroom, and that is why it may have touched mine."
"A lot of my work has to do with not allowing my characters to have an ego in a way that the stomach doesn't have an ego when it's wanting to throw up. It just does it."
"The film moves at what I consider to be the speed of art — which is slow. Cremaster 2 does what I think sculpture does: It moves slowly and requires that one move around it to understand it, and to visit it repeatedly."
"Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the State."
"It is inconceivable that a secret arm of the government has to comply with all the overt orders of the government."
"In his day, Jim was recognized as the dominant counterintelligence figure in the non-communist world."
"The future is too good to waste on lies. And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting."
"In the U.S. Army, you are cut down for being honest."
"But if you are a conceited brown-nosing shit-bag, you will be allowed to do what ever you want, and you will be handed your higher rank."
"The system is wrong. I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of 'U.S. soldier' is just the lie of fools."
"The U.S. Army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at. It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools, and bullies. The few good sergeants are getting out as soon as they can, and they are telling us privates to do the same."
"I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live. We don't even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armored trucks."
"We make fun of them in front of their faces, and laugh at them for not understanding we are insulting them."
"I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting."
"There are a few more boxes coming to you guys. Feel free to open them, and use them."
"Obey your conscience! Dear Bowe, In matters of life and death, and especially at war, it is never safe to ignore one's conscience. Ethics demands obedience to our conscience. It is best to also have a systematic oral defense of what our conscience demands. Stand with like minded men when possible. Dad."
"Bowe Bergdahl has been accused of many, many things, but what you cannot accuse him of is his lack of resistance, his willingness to serve his country with honor in captivity, to do what he had to do to maintain his dignity and return."
"We get Bergdahl who was a traitor, and they get five of the greatest killers that they’ve wanted for eight years."
"Solutions require thinking through a series of interrelated steps or stages, analyzing a number of rules at each point, and always keeping in mind conclusions reached at earlier points."
"My purpose in this paper is to highlight some of the central ideas contained in Heider's theory, to present them in a systematic way, and to show their relevance to developments in several central fields of contemporary social psychology."
"Attribution theory concerns the process by which an individual interprets events "as being caused by particular parts of the relatively stable environment" (Heider, p. 297). Consideration of attribution theory is relevant for a symposium on motivation in several respects. The theory describes processes that operate as if the individual were motivated to attain a cognitive mastery of the causal structure of his environment."
"Am I to take my enjoyment of a movie as a basis for an attribution to the movie (that it is intrinsically enjoyable) or for an attribution to myself (that I have a specific kind of desire relevant to movies)? The inference as to where to locate the dispositional properties responsible for the effect is made by interpreting the raw data (the enjoyment) in the context of subsidiary information from experiment-like variations of conditions."
"[Kelley argued that OS's judgment of an inverse relation between inducement magnitude and attitude inference] is probably associated with assumptions (unchecked in Bern’s work, as far as I know) that there is a distribution of opinion toward the task, and only the more favorable subjects complied in the $1 case and almost all, favorable or not, complied in the $20 case."
"The last decade has seen a great deal of research on the perception of causation and the consequences of such perception. Conducted primarily within social psychology, the focus has been the perceived causes of other persons' behavior. A parallel analysis has been made of the perceived causes of one's own behavior, and the liveliest recent topic has concerned differences between other-perception and self-perception. The study of perceived causation is identified by the term "attribution theory," attribution referring to the perception inference of cause. As we will see, there is not one but many attribution "theories" and the term refers to several different kinds of problem. The common ideas are that people interpret behavior in terms of its causes and that these interpretations play an important role in determining reactions to the behavior."
"A person is known by the behavior he displays consistently. An experiment by Himmelfarb (1972) makes the important point that consistency in other persons' characterizations of an actor carries more weight if they are based on observations in dissimilar rather than similar situations. The other side of the coin is that a person's inconsistent behavior is attributed not to him but to circumstances."
"SALIENCE The notion here is that an effect is attributed to the cause that is most salient in the perceptual field at the time the effect is observed."
"PRIMACY The general notion here is that a person scans and interprets a sequence of information until he attains an attribution from it and then disregards later information or assimilates it to his earlier impression."
"Attributional research shows that attributions affect our feelings about past events and our expectations about future ones, our attitudes toward other persons and our reactions to their behavior, and our conceptions of ourselves and our efforts to improve our fortunes."
"Harold Kelley’s long-term relationship with John Thibaut, from 1953 until Thibaut’s demise in 1986, is considered an exemplary model of scientific collaboration. It began with their being invited to write a major chapter on group problem-solving and process for the Handbook of Social Psychology (1954). That chapter, updated in 1968, not only became a major resource in that field, but it led them to a separate volume, The Social Psychology of Groups (1959), which became one of the most influential works in social psychology. Although Kelley was ordinarily modest in referring to his work, he aptly described the result as “a stable focus on phenomena at the group level…hitting upon a comprehensive and systematic theory, the elements of which others might regard as mundane, but the combinatorial nature of which brings order to numerous interpersonal and intergroup phenomena.” A second volume, Interpersonal Relations: A Theory of Interdependence, elaborating and extending the original analysis, was published in 1978."
"Kelley’s (1967) paper on attribution theory in social psychology is generally considered the first systematic and general treatment of lay causal explanations. Kelley’s self-ascribed goal in the paper was “to highlight some of the central ideas contained in Heider’s theory” (Kelley, 1967, p. 192). Specifically, the two central ideas on which Kelley focused were:"
"America is a maritime nation: its security, resilience, and economic prosperity are fundamentally linked to the world’s oceans. Our naval forces serve to deter and defeat adversaries, strengthen alliances, deny enemies sanctuary, and project global influence. The amphibious and expeditionary components of our naval force allow us to operate with assurance in the world’s littoral areas. The Marine Corps and the Navy are prepared to arrive swiftly from the sea and project influence and power when needed. Operating from the sea, we impose significantly less political burden on our partners and allies, while providing options to our nation’s leaders. We remain committed to the mission of assuring access for our nation’s forces and its partners. Forward deployed naval forces enable our nation to rapidly respond to crises throughout the world. The ability to engage with partnered nations, through highly trained and self-sustaining forces, maximizes America’s effectiveness as a military power."
"The irony was that if Dad was bipolar—or had any of a dozen disorders that might explain his behavior—the same paranoia that was a symptom of the illness would prevent its ever being diagnosed and treated. No one would ever know."
"The seed of curiosity had been planted; it needed nothing more than time and boredom to grow."
"The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand."
"I began to study trigonometry. There was solace in its strange formulas and equations. I was drawn to the Pythagorean theorem and its promise of a universal—the ability to predict the nature of any three points containing a right angle, anywhere, always. What I knew of physics I had learned in the junkyard, where the physical world often seemed unstable, capricious. But here was a principal through which the dimensions of life could be defined, captured. Perhaps reality was not wholly volatile. Perhaps it could be explained, predicted. Perhaps it could be made to make sense."
"I don’t know how long I sat there reading about it, but at some point I’d read enough. I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. I suppose I was in shock, but whether it was the shock of learning about something horrific, or the shock of learning about my own ignorance, I’m not sure."
"Suspended between fear of the past and fear of the future, I recorded the dream in my journal. Then, without any explanation, as if the connection between the two were obvious, I wrote, I don’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to get a decent education as a child."
"By the end of it, I had finally begun to grasp something that should have been immediately apparent: that someone had opposed the great march toward equality; someone had been the person from whom freedom had to be wrested."
"I had discerned the ways in which we had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant. I had begun to understand that we had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward."
"To admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a frailty, but in this frailty there is a strength: the conviction to live in your own mind, and not in someone else’s."
"My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs."
"Curiosity is a luxury reserved for the financially secure."
"I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money."
"We had been bruised and gashed and concussed, had our legs set on fire and our heads cut open. We had lived in a state of alert, a kind of constant terror, our brains flooding with cortisol because we knew that any of those things might happen at any moment. Because Dad always put faith before safety. Because he believed himself right, and he kept on believing himself right—after the first car crash, after the second, after the bin, the fire, the pallet. And it was us who paid."
"I decided to experiment with normality."
"By the end of the semester the world felt big, and it was hard to imagine returning to the mountain, to a kitchen, or even to a piano in the room next to the kitchen. This caused a kind of crisis in me. My love of music, and my desire to study it, had been compatible with my idea of what a woman is. My love of history and politics and world affairs was not. And yet they called to me."
"I searched my mind and discovered a new conviction there: I would never be a plural wife. A voice declared this with unyielding finality; the declaration made me tremble. What if God commanded it? I asked. You wouldn’t do it, the voice answered. And I knew it was true."
"You were my child. I should have protected you. I lived a lifetime in the moment I read those lines, a life that was not the one I had actually lived. I became a different person, who remembered a different childhood. I didn’t understand the magic of those words then, and I don’t understand it now. I know only this: that when my mother told me she had not been the mother to me that she wished she’d been, she became that mother for the first time."
"When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?"
"Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me."
"The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you."
"That’s all that was left of the life I’d had here: a puzzle whose rules I would never understand, because they were not rules at all but a kind of cage meant to enclose me. I could stay, and search for what had been home, or I could go, now, before the walls shifted and the way out was shut."
"The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education."
"(what are you reading next?) “Educated,” by Tara Westover. This one came from Barack. I actually just finished it, and it is as phenomenal as he — and everyone else — says it is. It’s an engrossing read, a fresh perspective on the power of an education, and it’s also a testament to the way grit and resilience can shape our lives. Also, since I’ve just finished a memoir of my own, I love to see how people choose to tell their own story — the small moments that tell larger truths, the character development, the courage it takes to tell a story fully. Tara’s upbringing was so different from my own, but learning about her world gave me insight into lives and experiences that weren’t a part of my own journey. To me, it’s an example of the extraordinary power of storytelling."
"When practicing science, we understand that we must alter our paradigms to fit new evidence, but ideology makes us alter new evidence to fit our paradigms. Many argue that we should allow free speech and consider alternative viewpoints because 'we might be wrong.' Actually, we should consider alternative viewpoints because we are certainly wrong and the only way to be less wrong is to have our views challenged. Ideological thinking stifles this open-mindedness that would help eliminate errors in our thinking."
"American Samoans owe permanent allegiance to the United States They are therefore ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States."
"If you can just convey it to someone in a genuine way, with a scenario or explain why it is what it is, that’s the most helpful thing. But you also have to give some kind of creative freedom to the people who are doing the voices and doing those roles – because if they got the job and they know the characters well they’re gonna do well. So a lot of that is just having a good cast and then facilitating it, let them be creative and then if something has to be tweaked, just be very helpful with how it needs to be tweaked."
"The necessity of having a good education is part of what we are going to do to in Idaho advance the ball for everybody. Everybody having a good education is in everybody's best interest."
"Lyrically, Doug Martsch let his Charlie Brown pessimism run rampant, yet he offsets his downbeat quips with genuinely comforting reassurances that we all feel overwhelmed and off-balance sometimes, finding solace in shared misery."
"The August sun beat down, baking, broiling, burning."