808 quotes found
"How fleeting the sorrows of youth, how slight the foundations on which the young build towers of despair"
"There is no language that love does not speak"
"The world needs divine power in every human being the recognition of which is the secret to all success and happiness"
"Oh you who read some song I have sung What know you of the soul from whence it sprung"
"It is impossible to pursue a successful literary career and follow the advice of all one's 'best friends'. I feel compelled to follow the light which my own intellect & judgement cast upon my way, rather than any one of the many conflicting rays which other minds would lend me."
"Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone. For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer; Sigh, it is lost on the air. The echoes bound to a joyful sound, But shrink from voicing care."
"Rejoice, and men will seek you; Grieve, and they turn and go. They want full measure of all your pleasure, But they do not need your woe. Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them all. There are none to decline your nectared wine, But alone you must drink life's gall."
"There is room in the halls of pleasure For a long and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow aisles of pain."
"Here, on this side of the grave, Here, should we labor and love."
"So many gods, so many creeds; So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind Is all the sad world needs."
"You never can tell when you do an act Just what the result will be; But with every deed you are sowing a seed, Though the harvest you may not see. Each kindly act is an acorn dropped In God's productive soil; You may not know, yet the tree shall grow And shelter the brows that toil.You never can tell what your thoughts will do In bringing you hate or love; For thoughts are things, and their airy wings Are swifter than carrier doves. They follow the law of the universe — Each thing must create its kind; And they speed o'er the track to bring you back Whatever went out from your mind."
"I'm no reformer; for I see more light Than darkness in the world; mine eyes are quick To catch the first dim radiance of the dawn, And slow to note the cloud that threatens storm."
"I find a rapture linked with each despair, Well worth the price of anguish. I detect More good than evil in humanity. Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes, And men grow better as the world grows old."
"No question is ever settled Until it is settled right."
"Between the finite and the infinite The missing link of Love has left a void. Supply the link, and earth with Heaven will join In one continued chain of endless life."
"Hell is wherever Love is not, and Heaven Is Love's location. No dogmatic creed, No austere faith based on ignoble fear Can lead thee into realms of joy and peace. Unless the humblest creatures on the earth Are bettered by thy loving sympathy Think not to find a Paradise beyond."
"There is no sudden entrance into Heaven. Slow is the ascent by the path of Love."
"Body and mind, and spirit, all combine To make the Creature, human and divine.Of this great trinity no part deny. Affirm, affirm, the Great Eternal I."
"Affirm the body, beautiful and whole, The earth-expression of immortal soul.Affirm the mind, the messenger of the hour, To speed between thee and the source of power.Affirm the spirit, the Eternal I — Of this great trinity no part deny."
"Each mental wave we send out from the mind, Or base, or kind, Completes its circuit, then with added force Seeks its own source."
"You may choose your word like a connoisseur, And polish it up with art, But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays, Is the word that comes from the heart.You may work on your word a thousand weeks, But it will not glow like one That all unsought, leaps forth white hot, When the fountains of feeling run."
"Look to the Great Eternal Cause And not to any man, for light. Look in; and learn the wrong, and right, From your own soul's unwritten laws. And when you question, or demur, Let Love be your Interpreter."
"If fallacies come knocking at my door, I'd rather feed, and shelter full a score, Than hide behind the black portcullis, doubt, And run the risk of barring one Truth out.And if pretension for a time deceive, And prove me one too ready to believe, Far less my shame, than if by stubborn act, I brand as lie, some great colossal Fact."
"Not to the curious or impatient soul That in the start, demands the end be shown, And at each step, stops waiting for a sign; But to the tireless toiler toward the goal, Shall the great miracles of God be known And life revealed, immortal and divine."
"Breathe "God," in any tongue — it means the same; LOVE ABSOLUTE: Think, feel, absorb the thought; Shut out all else; until a subtle flame (A spark from God's creative centre caught) Shall permeate your being, and shall glow, Increasing in its splendour, till, YOU KNOW."
"Give, and thou shalt receive. Give thoughts of cheer, Of courage and success, to friend and stranger. And from a thousand sources, far and near, Strength will be sent thee in thy hour of danger."
"Give of thy love, nor wait to know the worth Of what thou lovest; and ask no returning. And wheresoe'er thy pathway leads on earth, There thou shalt find the lamp of love-light burning."
"Divine the Powers that on this trio wait. Supreme their conquest, over Time and Fate. Love, Work, and Faith — these three alone are great."
"Who climbs the mountain does not always climb. The winding road slants downward many a time; Yet each descent is higher than the last."
"Who would attain to summits still and fair, Must nerve himself through valleys of despair."
"All love that has not friendship for its base, Is like a mansion built upon the sand."
"To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men."
"There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, Can circumvent or hinder or control The firm resolve of a determined soul. Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great; All things give way before it soon or late. What obstacle can stay the mighty force Of the sea seeking river in its course, Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait?"
"Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down — they are truly down."
"As you know, very recently the secretary of state proclaimed his loyalty to a man guilty of what has always been considered as the most abominable of all crimes — of being a traitor to the people who gave him a position of great trust. The secretary of state, in attempting to justify his continued devotion to the man who sold out the Christian world to the atheistic world, referred to Christ's Sermon on the Mount as a justification and reason therefore, and the reaction of the American people to this would have made the heart of Abraham Lincoln happy. When this pompous diplomat in ugly pants, with a phony British accent, proclaimed to the American people that Christ on the Mount endorsed communism, high treason, and betrayal of a sacred trust, the blasphemy was so great that it awakened the dormant indignation of the American people. He has lighted the spark which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of twisted warped thinkers are swept from the national ugly so ugly that we may have a new birth of national honesty and decency in government."
"Any man who has been given the honor of being promoted to general and who says, "I will protect another general who protects Communists," is not fit to wear that uniform, general."
"Good evening. Mr. Edward R. Murrow, Educational Director of the Columbia Broadcasting System, devoted his program to an attack on the work of the United States Senate Investigating Committee, and on me personally as its chairman, and over the past four years he has made repeated attacks upon me and those fighting Communists... Now, ordinarily--I would not take time out from the important work at hand to answer Murrow. However, in this case, I feel justified in doing so because Murrow is a symbol, a leader and the cleverest of the jackal pack which is always found at the throat of anyone who dares to expose individual Communists and traitors."
"I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department."
"The Western Right, on the other hand, did struggle to condemn Soviet crimes, but sometimes using methods that harmed their own cause. Surely the man who did the greatest damage to anti-communism was the American Senator Joe McCarthy. Recent documents showing that some of his accusations were correct do not change the impact of his overzealous pursuit of communists in American public life: ultimately, his public "trials" of communist sympathizers would tarnish the cause of anti-communism with the brush of chauvinism and intolerance. In the end, his actions served the cause of neutral historical inquiry no better than those of his opponents."
"When the wind is right, a faint odor of kerosene is exhaled from Senator McCarthy."
"Democracy has so disappeared in the United States that there are some subjects that cannot even be discussed. The essence of the democratic process is free discussion. There was a time, when men were not allowed to talk of universal suffrage, education for women, or freedom for Negro slaves. Today communism is the dirty word and socialism is suspect. ... In this state, and in our time, occurred one of the worst blows to the democratic process which our nation has suffered. Senator McCarthy succeeded in making America afraid to discuss socialism."
"Nothing would probably please him more than to get the publicity that would be generated by a public repudiation by the President."
"I will not get in the gutter with that guy."
"The junior senator from Wisconsin, by his reckless charges, has so preyed upon the fears and hatreds and prejudices of the American people that he has started a prairie fire which neither he nor anyone else may be able to control."
"When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled. It has no apparatus to deal with the boor, the liar, the lout, and the antidemocrat in general."
"Radicalism or anti-radicalism should have had nothing to do with the sly, miserable methods of McCarthy, Nixon and colleagues, as they flailed at Communists, near-Communists, and nowhere-near Communists. Lives were being ruined and few hands were raised in help. Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?"
"Sad is a fake word for me to be using, I am still angry that their reason for disagreeing with McCarthy was too often his crude methods. . . . Many of the anti-Communists were, of course, honest men. But none of them . . . has stepped forward to admit a mistake. It is not necessary in this country; they too know that we are a people who do not remember much."
"In fact, most of what people ordinarily mean when they talk about the 'red scare', the House Un-American Activities Committee; anti-Communist probes into Hollywood, labor unions, and America's schools and universities; the Rosenberg trial; blacklisting in the media and schoolteachers fired for disloyalty, had nothing to do with McCarthy and he had nothing to do with them (although when asked, he generally approved of them, as most other Americans did). McCarthy's own committee in the Senate, the , which he chaired for less than two years, had a specific duty to investigate communism in the federal government and among government employees. It had done so before he became chairman, and it did so after he left, under Senator John McClellan and Bobby Kennedy. The men and women McCarthy targeted, rightly or wrongly, as Communists or Communist sympathizers all shared that single characteristic: they were federal employees and public servants, and therefore, McCarthy and his supporters argued, they ought be held accountable to a higher standard than other American citizens. That fact tends to get lost when historians dwell exclusively on the stories of harassment, professional disgrace, and other indignities suffered as a result of McCarthy's and other anti-Communist investigations."
"The hardest thing I ever did was keep my temper at that time."
"Hoover knew that Joe wasn't the best guy in the world to be doing this job. We all did ... But his attitude was, "Thank God somebody's doing it." They were fighting the same enemy, you know."
"It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Good night, and good luck."
"We cannot speak unequivocally for the long future. But we can have faith. And our faith is strong that long after Senator Eastland and his present subcommittee are gone, long after segregation has lost its final battle in the South, long after all that was known as McCarthyism is a dim, unwelcome memory, long after the last Congressional committee has learned that it cannot tamper successfully with a free press, The New York Times will be speaking for the men who make it, and only for the men who make it, and speaking, without fear or favor, the truth as it sees it."
"The mingling of object and image in collage, of given fact and conscious artifice, corresponds to the illusion-producing processes of contemporary civilization. In advertisements, news stories, films, and political campaigns, lumps of unassailable data are implanted in preconceived formats in order to make the entire fabrication credible. Documents waved at hearings by Joseph McCarthy to substantiate his fictive accusations were a version of collage, as is the corpse of Lenin, inserted by Stalin into the Moscow mausoleum to authenticate his own contrived ideology. Twentieth-century fictions are rarely made up of the whole cloth, perhaps because the public has been trained to have faith in "information." Collage is the primary formula of the aesthetics of mystification developed in our time."
"Not only in Britain but also in the USA the communists were as distant as ever from power and influence. But not every anti-communist was willing to do things on the quiet. Joe McCarthy, the rough-tongued Senator for Wisconsin, made his case inside and outside the Senate and avowed that communism was sucking the lifeblood of American public life. He dug up evidence – and sometimes invented it – that Moscow had secret collaborators everywhere. He appeared live on television brandishing his lists of communists and their supporters. Those whom he identified as subversives were required to ‘name names’ of communist friends or face professional ruin. McCarthy concentrated his fire on filmmaking and other sectors of the media. Often his accusations were ill founded but he succeeded in creating an atmosphere of suspicion which pervaded American public life. The playwright Arthur Miller refused to submit to the Senator for Wisconsin. Instead he drafted The Crucible, a play about the witch-hunt craze in seventeenth-century New England, which was an obvious allegory of hysteria and persecution. McCarthy’s own activities came under scrutiny after he was accused of seeking illegal favours for his protégés. The Senate held a debate on him and by a large majority ruled that he had abused his power. McCarthy died in ignominy in 1957. Yet his impact was enormous and permanent. No longer did the left-wing American press give gentle treatment to Marxism as had been the case before the Second World War. Words like communism and socialism – and eventually even liberalism – became widely pejorative. Mainstream political discourse in the USA underwent a drastic constriction. Sympathy for communism, where it survived outside the Communist Party of the USA, was usually confined to individual writers or students' political groups; it impinged little on popular opinion."
"This is the first time in my experience, and I was ten years in the Senate, that I ever heard of a Senator trying to discredit his own Government before the world. ... Your telegram is not only not true and an insolent approach to a situation that should have been worked out between man and man but it shows conclusively that you are not even fit to have a hand in the operation of the Government of the United States."
"This is more than a matter of history. Trump has been poking the military in the eye in a way that is reminiscent of McCarthy, pressuring it to rout demonstrators, peaceful and otherwise, from the streets of America."
"Trump, like McCarthy, could push back against the onslaught when it was coming from the press, protesters or political foes. But as the Wisconsin senator's downfall makes clear, the armed forces are too big to bully."
"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. … Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
"With preparations for war came fears of domestic subversion. The link had been made many times before in US history: the Red Scare after World War I or the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II were just recent examples. The public witch hunt against Communists and other Left-wingers in the 1940s and 1950s had equally damaging effects. Charges of disloyalty, most of which were entirely unfounded, drove many knowledgeable and gifted experts away from government service. Joseph McCarthy, the demagogic and hyperbolic Wisconsin senator who through his speeches on the Senate floor came to symbolize anti-Communist paranoia, did more damage to US interests than any of Stalin's covert operations. In February 1950 McCarthy claimed that he had evidence of 205—later corrected to 57—Communists working in the State Department, and denounced the president as a traitor who "sold out the Christian world to the atheistic world." The series of hearings and investigations, which accusations such as McCarthy’s gave rise to, destroyed people's lives and careers. Even for those who were cleared, such as the famous central Asia scholar Owen Lattimore, some of the accusations stuck and made it difficult to find employment. It was, as Lattimore said in his book title from 1950, Ordeal by Slander. For many of the lesser known who were targeted— workers, actors, teachers, lawyers—it was a Kafkaesque world, where their words were twisted and used against them during public hearings by people who had no knowledge of the victims or their activities. Behind all of it was the political purpose of harming the Administration, though even some Democrats were caught up in the frenzy and the president himself straddled the issue instead of publicly confronting McCarthy. McCarthyism, as it was soon called, reduced the US standing in the world and greatly helped Soviet propaganda, especially in western Europe."
"One naturally wonders if the problem of translation could conceivably be treated as a problem in cryptography. When I look at an article in Russian, I say: 'This is really written in English, but it has been coded in some strange symbols. I will now proceed to decode.'"
"Is science really gaining in its assault on the totality of the unsolved? As science learns one answer, it is characteristically true that it also learns several new questions. It is as though science were working in a great forest of ignorance, making an ever larger circular clearing within which, not to insist on the pun, things are clear... But as that circle becomes larger and larger, the circumference of contact with ignorance also gets longer and longer. Science learns more and more. But there is an ultimate sense in which it does not gain; for the volume of the appreciated but not understood keeps getting larger. We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance."
"Science has led to a multitude of results that affect men's lives. Some of these results are embodied in mere conveniences of a relatively trivial sort. Many of them, based on science and developed through technology, are essential to the machinery of modern life. Many other results, especially those associated with the biological and medical sciences, are of unquestioned benefit and comfort. Certain aspects of science have profoundly influenced men's ideas and even their ideals. Still other aspects of science are thoroughly awesome."
"The significant problems of living organisms are seldom those in which one can rigidly maintain constant all but two variables. Living things are more likely to present situations in which a half-dozen, or even several dozen quantities are all varying simultaneously, and in subtly interconnected ways. Often they present situations in which the essentially important quantities are either non-quantitative, or have at any rate eluded identification or measurement up to the moment. Thus biological and medical problems often involve the consideration of a most complexly organized whole."
"Is a virus a living organism? What is a gene, and how does the original genetic constitution of a living organism express itself in the developed characteristics of the adult? Do complex protein molecules "know how" to reduplicate their pattern, and is this an essential clue to the problem of reproduction of living creatures? All these are certainly complex problems, but they are not problems of disorganized complexity, to which statistical methods hold the key. They are all problems which involve dealing simultaneously with a sizable number of factors which are interrelated into an organic whole. They are all, in the language here proposed, problems of organized complexity."
"Science is not gadgetry."
"In a perfect world an idea could be born, nourished, developed and made known to everyone, criticized and perfected, and put to good use without the crude fact of financial support ever entering in to the process. Seldom, if ever, in the practical world in which we live does this occur."
"Science attempts to analyze how things and people and animals behave; it has no concern whether this behavior is good or bad, is purposeful or not. But religion is precisely the quest for such answers: whether an act is right or wrong, good or bad, and why."
"I think that God has revealed Himself to many at many times and in many places. Indeed, He continuously reveals Himself to man today : every new discovery of science is a further "revelation" of the order which God has built into His universe."
"Life is not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."
"I think if I have one message, one thing before I die that most of the world would know, it would be that the event does not determine how to respond to the event. That is a purely personal matter. The way in which we respond will direct and influence the event more than the event itself."
"Why Family Therapy?...because it deals with family pain."
"A growing body of clinical observation has pointed to the conclusion that the family therapy must be oriented to the family as a whole."
"I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen, heard, understood and touched by them. The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understand and touch another person. When this is done, I feel contact has been made."
"I have often thought had there been somebody like me around, something might have been able to be done. I also think I don't see how I could have done what I've done in the world had I been married. And when I decided-because I've been on the verge of marriage many times-I said no, because if I wanted to roam the globe like I did, it wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to me, it wouldn't be fair to the people. At the point, I really feel it was a kind of destiny because I've been able to get to places. There are some people in the world who have other jobs to do."
"To all my friends, colleagues and family: I send you love. Please support me in my passage to a new life. I have no other way to thank you than this. You have all played a significant part in my development of loving. As a result, my life has been rich and full, so I leave feeling very grateful."
"We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth."
"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures."
"I hold that we cannot be said to be aware of our minds save under responsibility."
"Literature is the orchestration of platitudes."
"I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island."
"Many plays — certainly mine — are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them."
"Love is an energy which exists of itself. It is its own value."
"Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday."
"Love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it gives birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed through a long servitude, through its own self-hatred, through mockery, through great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties."
"I am not interested in the ephemeral — such subjects as the adulteries of dentists. I am interested in those things that repeat and repeat and repeat in the lives of the millions."
"The most valuable thing I inherited was a temperament that does not revolt against Necessity and that is constantly renewed in Hope."
"Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes!) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy."
"Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
"Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world."
"Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other."
"People are meant to go through life two by two. 'Tain't natural to be lonesome."
"A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way."
"Wherever you come near the human race there's layers and layers of nonsense."
"That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those... of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know — that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness."
"I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back — up the hill — to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by Grover's Corners...Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking...and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. ...Do human beings ever realize life while they live it? — Every, every minute? ...I'm ready to go back...I should have listened to you. That's all human beings are! Just blind people."
"My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate — that's my philosophy."
"I hate this play and every word in it."
"I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for — whether it's a field, or a home, or a country."
"Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder."
"Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners — your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards — who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute."
"Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it. Then you'll have the miser who's no liar; and the drunkard who's the benefactor of the whole city."
"The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself, "Oh, now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home." And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure."
"Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow."
"The difference between a little money and no money at all is enormous...and the difference between a little money and an enormous amount of money is very slight."
"Ninety-nine per cent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion."
"The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way."
"I think myself as a fabulist, not a critic. I realize that every writer is necessarily a critic — that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. But, as I have just suggested, I believe that the practice of writing consists in more and more relegating all that schematic operation to the subconscious. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg — nine-tenths of him is underwater."
"The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape."
"Winning children (who appear so guileless) are children who have discovered how effective charm and modesty and a delicately calculated spontaneity are in winning what they want."
"On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being; the words are rising to their lips in immediate spontaneity … The theater is supremely fitted to say: "Behold! These things are.""
"Many great writers have been extraordinarily awkward in daily exchange, but the greatest give the impression that their style was nursed by the closest attention to colloquial speech."
"A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it."
"The theatre is supremely fitted to say: "Behold! These things are." Yet most dramatists employ it to say: "This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.""
"I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts."
"One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with persons more or less in the arts. He lives among them, eats among them, quarrels with them, marries them."
"It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves."
"Those who are silent, self-effacing and attentive become the recipients of confidences."
"Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous."
"A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference and a longer view and finds them incongruous. It dampens enthusiasm; it mocks hope; it pardons shortcomings; it consoles failure. It recommends moderation."
"We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind."
"Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day."
"The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children."
"When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery … He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift…. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole."
"Imagination draws on memory. Memory and imagination combined can stage a Servants' Ball or even write a book, if that's what they want to do."
"My idea of a dream man was Thornton Wilder"
"(What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?) When I was in college I witnessed a tragic death, and my father sent me Thornton Wilder’s “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” — a book about a Franciscan friar in Peru who sees a rope bridge collapse, killing five people, and then tries to learn about their lives. Wilder was so great at making sense of life and death, and that book healed me. It’s a shame that we only tend to remember Wilder for the most sentimental parts of his most sentimental play."
"Anita, I have just come the comforting conclusion that I'll have to paint acres and acres of water color landscapes before I will look for even a passably fair one. After about ten attempts — I certainly have to laugh at myself — It's like feeling around in the dark — thought I knew what I was going to try to do but I find I don't — and guess I'll only find out by slaving away at it. I feel — like a wreck — Have been working like mad all day — and you know how deliciously disgusted with every thing one can be — when the sun begins to go down — and one has been working ones head off all day. It gives me the sensation I used to have when I was a youngster and was going away from home on the train — It is a very special sort of sick feeling."
"Today I walked into the sunset — to mail some letters —.. .But some way or other I didn't seem to like the redness much so after I mailed the letters I walked home — and kept walking - The Eastern sky was all grey blue — bunches of clouds — different kinds of clouds — sticking around everywhere and the whole thing — lit up — first in one place — then in another with flashes of lightning — sometimes just sheet lightning — and some times sheet lightning with a sharp bright zigzag flashing across it -. I walked out past the last house — past the last locust tree — and sat on the fence for a long time — looking — just looking at — the lightning — you see there was nothing but sky and flat prairie land — land that seems more like the ocean than anything else I know — There was a wonderful moon. Well I just sat there and had a great time by myself — Not even many night noises — just the wind —.. .I wondered what you were doing - It is absurd the way I love this country — Then when I came back — it was funny — roads just shoot across blocks anywhere — all the houses looked alike — and I almost got lost — I had to laugh at myself — I couldn't tell which house was home - I am loving the plains more than ever it seems — and the SKY — Anita you have never seen SKY — it is wonderful —"
"Last night I couldn't sleep till after four in the morning – I had been out to the canyon all afternoon – till late at night – wonderful color – I wish I could tell you how big – and with the night the colors deeper and darker – cattle on the pastures in the bottom looked line little pinheads. I can understand Pa Dow painting his pretty colored canyons – it must have been a great temptation – no wonder he fell. Then the moon rose right up out of the ground after we got out on the plains again – battered a little where he bumped his head but enormous – There was no wind – it was just big and still – so very big and still – long legged jack rabbits hopping across in front of the light as we passed – A great place to see the night time because there is nothing else. – then I came home – not sleepy so I made a pattern of some flowers I had picked – They were like waterlilies – white ones – with the quality of smoothness gone."
"Anita – I am so glad I'm out here – I can't tell you how much I like it. I like the plains – and I like the work [her painting] – everything is so ridiculously new – and there is something about it that just makes you glad you're living here – You understand – there is nothing here – so maybe there is something wrong with me that I am liking it so much."
"Your letter became before I was up this morning – Yes nice to get. I recognize two of the drawings you speak of – Number one is the first of the dozen or more you speak of – number 2 came next The last – It didn't quite satisfy me so I tried again – the last one was so much worse than the one you like that I thought I had just about worn the idea out so quit.. .You ask me what I did with the rest of myself when I made number 2 -.. .I sat up almost all night one night this week and made the most infernally ugly little shape you ever saw – I wanted to break it when I got through – but didn't then next afternoon when I had time to look at it, it amused me so that I didn't – really its laughable – it's so ugly – and still some way it's quite beautiful – I don't know – I may break it up – or I may try to cast it just for fun – I have another idea that I'm in an awful stew to model – I am going to get a lot of patience so I can make all the little do-dangles I want to and won't have to break one up so I can make another – I want to make a big one.."
"Walked way out in the plains in the moonlight – there is no wind – so still – And so light – I wish you could see it – with miss Hibbits – she was born in Ireland –.. .The plains start right across the roads from this house – there is just nothing out there – she says she has often ridden till ten or eleven o'clock at night – alone – nothing to be afraid of – because there is nothing out there – Its great – I am not even having the smallest wish for N.Y. ..."
"The plains are very wonderful now – like green gold and yellow gold and red gold – in patches – and the distance blue and pink and lavender strips and spots – May sounds like a Dow Canyon but really its wonderful – specially in the evening – I usually go alone – Yesterday rode home on a hay wagon – no it was clover with a funny old man – His mules and wagon blocked my path so we started talking.. .We had a great time riding toward the sunset. He was little and dried up and weather beaten – but he likes living.."
"As I opened the door — I heard cattle — many — in the pens over by the track — lowing — I wonder if you ever heard a whole lot of cattle lowing — it sounds different here — too — just ground and sky — and the lowing cattle — you hardly see — either them or the pens — the pens are of weather beaten boards — take on the color of the ground it seems — I like it and I don't like it — its like music — I made up a tune this morning — Well — I heard the cattle — as I opened the door — and I liked it and I didn't liked it — then I read your letter as I walked to breakfast — a great letter — Anita -"
"I have been thinking of what you say about form.. .I feel that a real living form is the natural result of the individual’s effort to create the living thing out of the adventure of his spirit into the unknown.. ..and from that experience comes the desire to make the unknown known. By unknown I mean the thing that means so much to the person that he want to put it down - clarify something he feels but does not clearly understand.. .Making the unknown known.. ..if you stop to think of form as form you are lost."
"I thought you could write something about me that men can't – What I want written – I do not know – I have no definite idea of what it should be. – but a woman who has lived many things and who sees lines and colors as an expression of living – might say something that a man can't – I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore – Men have done all they can do about it. Does that mean anything to you – or doesn't it?"
"School and things that painters have taught me even keep me from painting as I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to be at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted as that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but myself.. .I found that I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn't say in any other way things that I had no words for."
"I had wanted to talk with you about lots of things.. .I am anxious to get to work for the fall – it is always my best time I had one particular painting – that tree in Lawrence's front yard as you see it when you lie under it on the table – with stars – it looks as tho it is standing on its head – I wanted you to see it.."
"I am on the train going back to Stieglitz – and in a hurry to get there – I have had four months west and it seems to be all that I needed – It has been like the wind and the sun – there doesn't seem to have been a crack of the waking day or night that wasn't full – I haven't gained an ounce in weight but I feel so alive that I am apt to crack at any moment..."
"I have frozen in the mountains in rain and in hail – and slept out under the stars – and cooked and burned on the desert so that riding through Kansas on the train when everyone is wilting about me seems nothing at all for heat – my nose has peeled and all my bones have been sore from riding – I drove with friends through Arizona – Utah – Colorado – New Mexico till the thought of a wheel under me makes me want to hold my head."
"I got a new Ford and learned to drive it – I even painted – and I laughed a great deal – I went every place that I had time for – and I am ready to go back East as long as I have to go sometime – If it were not for the Stieglitz call I would probably never go – but that is strong – so I am on the way ... I hope a little of it stays with me till I see you – It is my old way of life – you wouldn't like it – it would seem impossible to you as it does to Stieglitz, probably – but it is mine – and I like it – I would just go dead if I couldn't have it.."
"I know I cannot paint a flower. I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time."
"Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my effort to create an equivalent with paint color for the world – life as I see it."
"The large 'White Flower' [Georgia painted in 1929] with the golden heart is something I have to say about White – quite different from what White has been meaning to me. Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know that the flower is painted large to convey to you my experience of the flower – and what is my experience of the flower if it is not color."
"Artists and religionists are never far apart, they go to the sources of revelation for what they choose to experience and what they report is the degree of their experiences. Intellect wishes to arrange — intuition wishes to accept."
"A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower - the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower — lean forward to smell it — maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking — or give it to someone to please them. Still — in a way — nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven't time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.. .So I said to myself — I'll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it — I will make even busy New-Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.. .Well — I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower — and I don't."
"So, probably.. ..when I started painting the pelvis bones I was most interested in the holes in the bones — what I saw through them - particularly the blue from holding them up in the sun against the sky as one is apt to do when one seems to have more sky than earth in one's world.. ..they were most beautiful against the Blue — that Blue that will always be there as it is now after all man's destruction is finished."
"Equal Rights and Responsibilities is a basic idea that would have very important psychological effects on women and men from the time they are born. It could very much change the girl child's idea of her place in the world.. .It seems to me very important to the idea of true democracy – to my country – and to the world eventually – that all men and women stand equal under the sky – I wish that you could be with us in this fight.."
"Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. Since I cannot sing, I paint."
"It seems odd to think of you at Lake George tonight – I can smell the outdoors – and hear it – and see the stars – So often before I went to bed at night I would walk out toward the barn and look at the sky in the open space. There was no light little house – there were no people – there was only the night – I will never go back again – maybe to stand just for a moment where I put the little bit that was left of Alfred [Stieglitz] after he was cremated – but I think not even for that. I put him where he would hear the lake. – That is finished."
"My spring has been much better than every travelling springs of the last two years — I have been working — or trying to work my garden into a kind of permanent shape.. .At the moment I have three rose bushes so full of red and yellow roses that they look on fire — they are really astonishing — You would really laugh to see them — two are very tall — the other smaller — It is a rose that is the reddest red on top and yellow underneath — then sometimes a few spots that are deep butter yellow — and an odd iris — dirty lavender petals reaching up — a pale lavender mixed with yellow that greys it and yellow petals mixed with a little lavender drooping down — very handsome — There are lots of ordinary colors too — many kinds. Well — that's my life —"
"..About my work Howard – I always have two opinions – one is my way of seeing it for myself – and for myself I am never satisfied – never really – I almost always fail – always I think – now next time I can do it – Maybe that is part of what keeps one working – I can also look at myself – by that I mean my work from the point of view of the looking public – and that is the way I look at it when I think of showing. I have always first had a show for myself – and made up my mind – then after that it doesn't matter to me very much what anyone else say – good or bad."
"Dear Anita [ w:Anita Pollitzer ], don't forget w:Mary Cassatt [as one of her inspirations] — and I am not sure that your new paragraph will hold water [(Anita had sent her a chapter of the biography she was writing about Georgia] — We [artists] probably all derive from something — with some it is more obvious than with others — so much so that we can not escape a language of line that has been growing in meaning since the beginning of lines."
"Dear Anita, I read your manuscript some time ago and it has lain on my table — ..You have written your dream picture of me — and I am not that way at all. We are such different kinds of people that it reads as if we spoke different languages and didn't understand one another at all. You write of the legends others have made up about me — but when I read your manuscript, it seems as much a myth as all the others. I really believe that to call this my biography when it has so little to do with me is impossible — and I cannot have my name exploited to further it."
"I do not like the idea of happiness — it is too momentary — I would say that I was always busy and interested in something — interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness."
"The meaning of a word — to me — is not as exact as the meaning of a colour. Colours and shapes make a more definite statement than words. I write this [1974] because such odd things have been done about me with words. I have often been told what to paint … I make this effort because no one else can know how my paintings happen."
"I don't really know where I got my artists idea. The scraps of what I remember do not explain to me where it came from. I only know that by this time [her eight grade's year] it was definitely settled in my mind."
"On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer.."
"Those perilous climbings [with her sister Claudia, in the Palo Duro Canyon, 1916] were frightening, but it was wonderful to me and not like anything I had known before. The fright of the day was still with me in the night and I would often dream that the foot of my bed rose straight up into the air — then just as it was to fall I would wake up. Many drawings came from days like that, and later some oil paintings."
"Bement [her art teacher] told me things to read. He told me of exhibitions to go and see [c. 1917].. ..the two books that he told me to get were Jeromy Eddy 'Cubists and Post-impressionism' and Kandinsky 'On the Spiritual of Art'... It was some time before I really begun to use the ideas. I didn't start at until I was down in Carolina — alone — thinking things out for myself."
"Later I had two green ones [alligator pears] — not so perfect. I painted them several times [c. 1920] when the men [American modernist artists, a.o. Marsden Hartley ] didn't think much of what I was doing. They were all discussing Paul Cézanne, with long involved remarks about the 'plastic quality' of his form and colour. I was an outsider. My colour and form were not acceptable. It had nothing to do with Cézanne or anything else. I didn't understand what they were talking about why one colour was better than another.. .Years later when I finally got to Cézanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire in the south of France, I remember sitting there thinking, 'How could they attach all those analytical remarks to anything he did with that mountain?' All those entire words piled on top of that poor little mountain seemed too much."
"The clean clear colours [of a Shanty farm] were in my head. But one day as I looked at the brown burned wood of the Shanty, I thought 'I can paint one of those dismal-coloured paintings like the men. I think just for fun I will try — all low-toned and dreary with the tree besides the door.' In my next show [c. 1923], 'The Shanty' went up. The men seemed to approve of it. They seemed to think that maybe I was beginning to paint.. ..that was my only low-toned dismal-coloured painting."
"I painted 'the Shelton with Sunspots' [New York], in 1926. I went out one morning to look at it before I started to work and there was the optical illusion of a bite out of one side of the tower made by the sun, with sunspots against the building and against the sky. I made that painting beginning at the upper left and went off at the lower right without going back."
"I find that I have painted my life, things happening in my life — without knowing. After painting the Shell and shingle [c, 1926] many times, I did a misty landscape of the mountain across the lake, and the mountain became the shape of the shingle — the mountain I saw out my window, the shingle on the table in my room. I did not notice that they were alike for a long time after they were painted."
"After I had been in Canada painting the wide white barns along the Saint Lawrence river, I thought how different the life of the Canadian farmer was from life in Cebolla. So I painted [in 1945] the Cebolla church which is so typical of that difficult life. I have always thought it one of my very good paintings, though its message is not as pleasant as many of the others."
"There are people who have made me see shapes — and others I thought of a great deal, even people I have loved, who make me see nothing. I have painted portraits that to me are almost photographic. I remember hesitating to show the paintings, they looked so real to me. But they have passed into the world as abstractions - no one seeing what they are."
"I don't remember where I picked up the head — or the hollyhock. Flowers were planted among the vegetables in the garden between the house and the hills and I probably picked the hollyhock one day as I walked past. My paintings sometimes grow by pieces from what is around.. .I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it."
"It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colours put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for."
"The unexplainable thing in nature that makes me feel the world is big fat beyond my understanding — to understand maybe by trying to put it into form. To find the feeling of infinity on the horizon line or just over the next hill."
"I hate flowers — I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move!"
"In comparing a natural black iris to the O'Keeffe painting titled 'Black Iris', there is no denying the edge of realism, but there is also no denying the lack of detail. Her paint brush blatantly neglected to add the feathery golden pollen of an iris's stigma as well as the wrinkled texture of the iris's velvet-like petals. Instead, she created softness in the petals that resembles human flesh, and tinted it in pale, pinkish tones rather than the bluish, black hues of a black iris."
"Though she decided early that she had little aptitude for singing, Georgia played both the and the piano with considerable skill. Music was a source of great pleasure and sustenance to her throughout her life, and her later decision to concentrate exclusively on art was a difficult one for her to make."
"And that - that's death riding high in the sky. All these things have death in them.. ('Ever since the middle Twenties', I said') ..Exactly, ever since I realized O'Keeffe couldn't stay with me."
"(Women you respect most?) Georgia O'Keeffe, Martha Graham. For reasons plain to all-among them, common to both, an inviolate independence of spirit in pursuing their arts, the wholeness of their gifts of the imagination."
"Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America."
"I strongly disagree with the President's characterization today of NAFTA as a "success", and with his call on Congress to pass CAFTA this year. These comments are out of touch with American businesses and workers who have been forced to compete on an uneven playing field for years under bad deals like NAFTA."
"I voted against NAFTA, GATT, and Permanent Most Favored Nation status for China, in great part because I felt they were bad deals for Wisconsin businesses and Wisconsin workers. At the time I voted against those agreements, I thought they would result in lost jobs for my state. But, Mr. President, even as an opponent of those trade agreements, I had no idea just how bad things would be."
"Americans want to defeat terrorism and they want the basic character of this country to survive and prosper. They want both security and liberty, and unless we give them both, and we can if we try, we have failed."
"The president and others say that if we leave, it will just be chaos in Iraq. Well, right now when you come to Iraq, you can't even drive from the airport to the Green Zone."
"Opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling is bad public policy that has no place in the budget process,. The Budget Committee needs to leave drilling in the Arctic Refuge behind and focus on crafting this year’s budget package."
"This conduct is right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors."
"We, as a Congress, have to stand up to a president who acts like the Bill of Rights and the Constitution were repealed on September 11."
"For so many who had been driven from their office buildings, these five weeks were only the prelude to spending months cloistered in cramped and inadequate office space while they advised senators on some of the toughest calls they would ever have to make ... As the gap widened between perceptions of fear or danger in Washington and in much of the rest of the country, I believe it had a significant influence on why representatives reacted to terrorism concerns in a way that was fundamentally different from most of their constituents."
"In 2001, I first voted against the PATRIOT Act because much of it was simply an FBI wish list that included provisions allowing our government to go on fishing expeditions that collect information on virtually anyone. Today’s report indicates that the government could be using FISA in an indiscriminate way that does not balance our legitimate concerns of national security with the necessity to preserve our fundamental civil rights. This is deeply troubling. I hope today’s news will renew a serious conversation about how to protect the country while ensuring that the rights of law-abiding Americans are not violated."
"Something is happening in this country tonight. I don’t understand it completely. I don’t think anybody does."
"I would urge you to be as restrained as you can be as the next steps occur. I don’t know exactly what they’re going to be, this could be one of the most challenging times in the history of our country."
"The lesson from Charlottesville is not how dangerous the neo-Nazis are. It is the unmasking of the Republican party leadership. In the wake of last weekend’s horror and tragedy, let us finally, finally rip off the veneer that Trump’s affinity for white supremacy is distinct from the Republican agenda of voter suppression, renewed mass incarceration and the expulsion of immigrants."
"Anything short of radical change to the Republican party’s war on voters of color is merely feigned outrage. Even if the white supremacists are condemned, even if the entire Republican party rises up in self-professed outrage at white supremacists, if voter suppression and other such racist policies survive, the white supremacists are winning. And America is losing."
"I don’t want there to be a catastrophe, I hope there never is another one, there probably will be, but it is really terrible that we need, we seem to rely on very bad things happening in order to come together. We’ve got to do better than that."
"Senator Russ Feingold is an embarrassment to the US Senate, which makes him an authentic hero of the Republic. The Wisconsin senator gets up and says out loud what half of the country is thinking and talks about every day."
"I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight."
"That’s what I like about you, senator, you’re kicking it old-school."
"When I talk of the purpose of life, I am thinking not only of human life, but of all life on Earth and of the life which must exist upon other planets throughout the universe. It is only of life on Earth, however, that one can speak with any certainty. It seems to me that all life on Earth, the sum total of life upon the Earth, has purpose. If the means were available, we could trace our ancestry — yours and mine — back to the first blob of life-like material that came into being on the planet. The same thing could be done for the spider that spun his web in the grass, and of the grass in which the web was spun, the bird sitting in the tree and the tree in which he sits, the toad waiting for the fly beneath the bush, and for the fly and bush. We are all genetic brothers. The chain of life, tracing back to that primordial day of life's beginning, is unbroken..."
"I have tried at times to place humans in perspective against the vastness of universal time and space. I have been concerned with where we, as a race, may be going and what may be our purpose in the universal scheme — if we have a purpose. In general, I believe we do, and perhaps an important one."
"There is mystery here, but a soft, sure mystery that is understood and only remains a mystery because I want it so. The mystery of the nighthawk against a darkening sky, the puzzle of the firefly along the lilac hedge."
"They are worse than the disinherited. They are not the has-beens, they are the never-weres."
"“You do not belong to any bona fide religion that prohibits killing?” “I presume I could classify myself as a Christian,” said Sutton. “I believe there is a Commandment about killing.” The robot shook his head. “It doesn’t count.” “It is clear and specific,” Sutton argued. “It says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’” “It is all of that,” the robot told him. “But it has been discredited. You humans discredited it yourselves. You never obeyed it. You either obey a law or you forfeit it. You can’t forget it with one breath and invoke it with the next.”"
"The chain of life runs smoothly from one generation to the next and none of the links stand out except here and there a link one sees by accident."
"As he looked, Sutton felt the cold hand of loneliness reach down with icy fingers to take him in its grip. For here was sheer, mad loneliness such as he had never dreamed. Here was the very negation of life and motion, here was the stark, bald beginning when there was no life, nor even thought of life. Here anything that knew or thought or moved was an alien thing, a disease, a cancer on the face of nothingness."
"I have not long to live. I have lasted more than a man’s average allotted span, and while I still am hale and hearty, I know full well the hand of time, while it may miss a man at one reaping, will get him at the next."
"I’m just a propagandist and a propagandist doesn’t have to know what he is talking about, just so he talks about it most convincingly."
"“It’s a wonder to me,” said Adams sourly, “that you don’t simply melt down in the white heat of your brilliance.”"
"It would be three-dimensional chess with a million billion squares and a million pieces, and with the rules changing ever move."
"And death was a soft thing, soft and black, cool and sweet and gracious. He slipped into it as a swimmer slips into the surf and it closed over him and held him and he felt the pulse and beat of it and knew the vastness and sureness of it."
"Sutton sensed resurrection and he fought against it, for death was so comfortable. Like a soft, warm bed. And resurrection was a strident, insistent, maddening alarm clock that shrilled across the predawn chill of a dreadful, frowzy room. Dreadful with its life and its bare reality and its sharp, sickening reminder that one must get up and walk into reality again."
"Dreams, she said. Broken dreams are bad enough. But the dream that has no hope...the dream that is doomed long before it’s broken, that’s the worst of all."
"And here and there a human who saw the rightness of the proposition that Man could not, by mere self-assertion, be a special being; understanding that it was to his greater glory to take his place among the other things of life, as a simple thing of life, as a form of life that could lead and teach and be a friend rather than a thing that conquered and ruled and stood as one apart."
"Before Man goes to the stars he should learn how to live on Earth."
"“Propaganda,” Trevor said. “Let’s call it psychology. You say a thing so often and so well that after a time everyone believes it. Even, finally, yourself.”"
"“It wouldn’t be the truth,” said Sutton. “That,” said Trevor, “doesn’t have a thing to do with it.”"
"Memory and dust, he thought, link us to the past."
"These are the stories the Dogs tell, when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north."
"Most authorities in economics and sociology regard such an organization as a city an impossible structure, not only from the economic standpoint, but from the sociological and psychological as well. No creature of the highly nervous structure necessary to develop a culture, they point out, would be able to survive within such restricted limits. The result, if it were tried, these authorities say, would lead to mass neuroticism which in a short period of time would destroy the very culture which had built the city."
"These people must be helped to find themselves in this new world, but they must not know that they’re being helped. To let them know would destroy confidence and dignity, and human dignity is the keystone of any civilization."
"“You sound like a rugged individualist,” said Webster. “You say that like you think it’s funny,” yapped the mayor. “I do think it’s funny,” said Webster. “Funny, and tragic, that anyone should think that way today.” “The world would be a lot better off with some rugged individualism,” snapped the mayor. “Look at the men who have gone places—” “Meaning yourself?” asked Weber. “You might take me, for example,” Carter agreed. “I worked hard. I took advantage of opportunity. I had some foresight. I did—” “You mean you licked the correct boots and stepped in the proper faces,” said Webster. “You’re the shining example of the kind of people the world doesn’t want today. You positively smell musty, your ideas are so old. You’re the last of the politicians, Carter, just as I was the last of the Chamber of Commerce secretaries. Only you don’t know it yet. I did. I got out. Even when it cost me something, I got out, because I had to save my self-respect. Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven’t got mob psychology any more. You can’t have mob psychology when people don’t give a damn what happens to a thing that’s dead already—a political system that broke down under its own weight.”"
"To cover up actual lack of knowledge, the tale develops an explanation which amounts to divine intervention. It is an easy and, to the primitive mind, a plausible and satisfactory way to explain something of which nothing at all is known."
"Bit by bit, as the legend unfolds, the reader gets a more accurate picture of the human race. By degrees, one gains the conviction that here is a race which can be little more than pure fantasy. It is not the kind of race which could rise from humble beginnings to the eminence of culture with which it is gifted in these tales. Its equipment is too poor. So far it lack of stability has become apparent. Its preoccupation with a mechanical civilization rather than with a culture based on some of the sounder, more worthwhile concepts of life indicates a lack of basic character. And now, in this tale, we learn of the limited communications which it possessed, a situation which certainly is not conducive to advancement. Man’s inability to understand and appreciate the thought and the viewpoint of another man would be a stumbling block which no amount of mechanical ability could overcome."
"Man was engaged in a mad scramble for power and knowledge, but nowhere is there any hint of what he meant to do with it once he had attained it."
"Individualists would have little use for a device which would make them understand one another, for they would not care whether they understood one another."
"One world and then another, running like a chain. One world treading on the heels of another world that plodded just ahead. One world’s tomorrow, another world’s today. And yesterday is tomorrow, and tomorrow is the past. Except, there wasn’t any past. No past, that was, except the figment of remembrance that flitted like a night-winged thing in the shadow of one’s mind. No past that one could reach. No pictures painted on the wall of time. No film that one could run backwards and see what-once-had-been... One road was open, but another road was closed. Not closed, of course, for it had never been. For there wasn’t any past, there never had been any, there wasn’t room for one. Where there should have been a past there was another world."
"“There isn’t any room,” said Joshua. “You travel back along the line of time and you don’t find the past, but another world, another bracket of consciousness. The earth would be the same, you see, or almost the same. Same trees, same rivers, same hills, but it wouldn’t be the world we know. Because it has lived a different life, it has developed differently. The second back of us is not the second back of us at all, but another second, a totally separate sector of time. We live in the same second all the time. We move along within the bracket of that second, that tiny bit of time that has been allotted to our particular world.”"
"We thought all the time that we were passing through time when we really weren’t, when we never have. We’ve just been moving along with time. We said, there’s another second gone, there’s another minute and another hour and another day, when, as a matter of fact the second or the minute or the hour was never gone. It was the same one all the time. It had just moved along and we had moved with it."
"The past, he said. The past is too much with me. And the past has made me useless. I have too much to remember—so much to remember that it becomes more important than the things there are to do. I’m living in the past and that is no way to live."
"What is a bow and arrow? It is the beginning of the end. It is the winding path that grows to the roaring road of war. It is a plaything and a weapon and a triumph in human engineering. It is the first faint stirring of an atom bomb. It is a symbol of a way of life."
"There was no time, Hezekiah had said. No such thing as time in the terms of normal human thought. Time was bracketed and each of its brackets contained a single phase of a universe so vastly beyond human comprehension that it brought a man up short against the impossibility of envisioning it. And time itself? Time was a never-ending medium that stretched into the future and the past — except there was no future and no past, but an infinite number of brackets, extending either way, each bracket enclosing its single phase of the Universe. Back on Man's original Earth, there had been speculation on travelling in time, of going back into yesterday or forward into tomorrow. And now he knew that you could not do it, that the same instant of time remained forever within each bracket, that Man's Earth had ridden the same bubble of the single instant from the time of its genesis and that it would die and come to nothing within that self-same instant. You could travel in time, of course, but there would be no yesterday and no tomorrow. But if you held a certain time sense you could break from one bracket to another, and when you did you would not find yesterday or tomorrow, but another world."
"There was a world of mutants, men and women who were more than normal men and women, persons who had certain human talents and certain human understandings which the normal men and women of the world had never known, or having known, could not utilize in their entirety, unable to use intelligently all the mighty powers which lay dormant in their brains."
"The people finally know. They've been told about the mutants. And they hated the mutants. Of course, they hated them. They hated them because the existence of the mutants makes them second-class humans, because they are Neanderthalers suddenly invaded by a bow and arrow people."
"Whatever doubt might rise, he knew that he was right. But the rightness was an intellectual rightness and the doubt emotional."
"The party was beginning to get noisy—not boisterous, but noisy. It was beginning to acquire that stale air of futility to which, in the end, all parties must fall victim."
"You sometimes get a thrill at knowing where you are. You’re often filled with wonder, but more often you are puzzled. You are reminded, again and yet again, of how insignificant you are. And there are times when you forget that you are human. You’re just a blob of life—brother to everything that ever existed or ever will exist."
"What do you mean by faith? Is faith enough for Man? Should he be satisfied with faith alone? Is there no way of finding out the truth? Is the attitude of faith, of believing in something for which there can be no more than philosophic proof, the true mark of a Christian?"
"They sat for a moment, regarding one another; neither understanding. As if we were two aliens, thought Blaine. With viewpoints that did not come within a million miles of coinciding, and yet they both were men."
"He knew that there was death—that there must be death if there were evolution, that death was one of the mechanisms that biologically spelled progress and advancement for evolutionary species."
"This was the past and it was the dead past; there were only corpses in it—and perhaps not even corpses, but the shadows of those corpses. For the dead trees and the fence posts and the bridges and the buildings on the hill all would classify as shadows. There was no life here; the life was up ahead. Life must occupy but a single point in time, and as time moved forward, life moved with it. And so was gone, thought Blaine, any dream that Man might have ever held of visiting the past and living in the action and the thought and the viewpoint of men who’d long been dust. For the living past did not exist, nor did the human past except in the records of the past. The present was the only valid point for life—life kept moving on, keeping pace with the present, and once it had passed, all traces of it or its existences were carefully erased."
"There were certain basic things, perhaps—the very earth, itself—which existed through every point in time, holding a sort of limited eternity to provide a solid matrix. And the dead—the dead and fabricated—stayed in the past as ghosts. The fence posts and the wire strung on them, the dead trees, the farm buildings, and the bridge were shadows of the present persisting in the past. Persisting, perhaps, reluctantly, because since they had no life they could not move along. They were bound in time and stretched through time and they were long, long shadows. He was, he realized with a shock, the only living thing existing in this moment on this earth. He and nothing else."
"Where would one find an answer? For the belief—the will to believe—was engrained deeply in the human fiber. Not entirely, either, in the matrix of the present situation, but in the blood and bone of Man clear back to the caves. There was in the soul of Man a certain deadly fascination with all things macabre. The situation as it stood had been grasped willingly, almost eagerly, by men for whom the world had become a rather tame and vapid place with no terror in it beyond the brute force terror of atomic weapons and the dread uncertainty of unstable men in power."
"For this, he realized, was the future. It was a place without a single feature of the space-time matrix that he knew. It was a place where nothing yet had happened—an utter emptiness. There was neither light nor dark; there was nothing here but emptiness. There had never been anything in this place, nor was anything ever intended to occupy this place—until this very moment when he and his machine had been thrust upon it, intruders who had overstepped their time."
"The red thought rose up inside Blaine’s brain: Why not kill him now? For the killing would come easy. He was an easy man to hate. Not on principle alone, but personally, clear down to his guts."
"In those villages, he wondered, how much ability and genius might be lying barren, ability and genius that the world could use but would never know because of the intolerance and hate which was held against the very people who were least qualified as the targets of it. And the pity of it was that such hate and such intolerance would never have been born, could never have existed, had it not been for men like Finn—the bigots and the egomaniacs; the harsh, stern Puritans; the little men who felt the need of power to lift them from their smallness."
"They were the misfits of the world, the outcasts, for they deviated from the norm of humanity as established through all of history. Yet it was this very deviation which made them the hope of all mankind. Ordinary human beings—the kind of human beings who had brought the race this far—were not enough today. The ordinary humans had pushed the culture forward as far as they could push it. It had served its purpose; it had brought the ordinary human as far as he could go. Now the race evolved. Now new abilities had awoke and grown—exactly as the creatures of the Earth had evolved and specialized and then evolved again from that first moment when the first feeble spark of life had come into being in the seething chemical bath of a new and madcap planet. Twisted brains, the normal people called them; magic people, dwellers of the darkness—and could anyone say no to this? For each people set its standards for each generation and these standards and these norms were not set by any universal rule, by no all-encompassing yardstick, but by what amounted to majority agreement, with the choice arrived at through all the prejudice and bias, all the faulty thinking and the unstable logic to which all intelligence is prone."
"It was not his fight. Not personally his fight. No more his fight than any one of them. But he had made it his. Because of Stone, because of Rand and Harriet, because of priest who’d hounded him across half the continent, he had tried to make a fight of it. And perhaps, as well, because of something undefinable, unknown to himself, unsuspected in himself—some crazy idealism, some deep-rooted sense of justice, some basic aversion to bullies and bigots and reformers."
"It was authority that turned men suspicious and stern-faced. Authority and responsibility which made them not themselves, but a sort of corporate body that tried to think as a corporate body rather than as a person."
"They’d lived all their life on Earth; they knew nothing but the Earth. They had never really touched an alien concept, and that was all this concept was. It was not really as slimy as it seemed. It was only alien. There were a lot of alien things that could make one’s hair stand up on end while in their proper alien context they were fairly ordinary."
"“Anita,” he asked, “are there really werewolves?” “Yes,” she told him. “Your werewolves are down there.” And that was right, he thought. The darkness of the mind, the bleakness of the thought, the shallowness of purpose. These were the werewolves of the world."
"It was a hopeless thing, he thought, this obsession of his to present the people of the Earth as good and reasonable. For in many ways they were neither good nor reasonable; perhaps because they had not as yet entirely grown up. They were smart and quick and at times compassionate and even understanding, but they failed lamentably in many other ways. But if they had the chance, Enoch told himself, if they ever got a break, if they only could be told what was out in space, then they'd get a grip upon themselves and they would measure up and then, in the course of time, would be admitted into the great cofraternity of the people of the stars."
"There was so much knowledge in the galaxy and he knew so little of it, understood so little of the little that he knew. There were men on Earth who could make sense of it. Men who would give anything short of their very lives to know the little that he knew, and could put it all to use. Out among the stars lay a massive body of knowledge, some of it an extension of what mankind knew, some of it concerning matters which Man had not yet suspected, and used in ways and for purposes that Man had not as yet imagined. And never might imagine, if left on his own."
"The impulse patterns which carried creatures star to star were almost instantaneous, no matter what the distance. He stood and thought about it and it still was hard, he admitted to himself, for a person to believe."
"His mind went back to that strange business of the spiritual force and the even stranger machine which had been built eons ago, by means of which the galactic people were able to establish contact with the force. There was a name for that machine, but there was no word in the English language which closely approximated it. "Talisman" was the closest, but Talisman was too crude a word. Although that had been the word that Ulysses had used when, some years ago, they had talked of it."
"The Talisman could be operated only by certain beings with certain types of minds and something else besides (could it be, he wondered, with certain kinds of souls?). "Sensitives" was the word he had used in his mental translation of the term for these kinds of people, but once again, he could not be sure if the word came close to fitting. The Talisman was placed in the custody of the most capable, or the most efficient, or the most devoted (whichever it might be) of the galactic sensitives, who carried it from star to star in a sort of eternal progression. And on each planet the people came to make personal and individual contact with the spiritual force through the intervention and the agency of the Talisman and its custodian. He found that he was shivering at the thought of it — the pure ecstasy of reaching out and touching the spirituality that flooded through the galaxy and, undoubtedly, through the universe. The assurance would be there, he thought, the assurance that life had a special place in the great scheme of existence, that one, no matter how small, how feeble, how insignificant, still did count for something in the vast sweep of space and time."
"He had dabbled in a thing which he had not understood. And had, furthermore, committed that greater sin of thinking that he did understand. And the fact of the matter was that he had just barely understood enough to make the concept work, but had not understood enough to be aware of its consequences."
"The Hazer would be arriving at about the same time as Ulysses and the three of them could spend a pleasant evening. It was not too often that two good friends ever visited here at once. He stood a bit aghast at thinking of the Hazer as a friend, for more than likely the being itself was one he had never met. But that made little difference, for a Hazer, any Hazer, would turn out to be a friend."
"Could it be, he wondered, that the goldenness was the Hazers' life force and that they wore it like a cloak, as a sort of over-all disguise? Did they wear that life force on the outside of them while all other creatures wore it on the inside?"
"He had acted on an impulse, with no thought at all. The girl had asked protection and here she had protection, here nothing in the world ever could get at her. But she was a human being and no human being, other than himself, should have ever crossed the threshold. But it was done and there was no way to change it. Once across the threshold, there was no way to change it."
"She looked quickly up. And then her eyes once more went back to the flashing thing she was holding in her hands. He saw that it was the pyramid of spheres and now all the spheres were spinning slowly, in alternating clockwise and counterclockwise motions, and that as they spun they shone and glittered, each in its own particular color, as if there might be, deep inside each one of them, a source of soft, warm light. Enoch caught his breath at the beauty and the wonder of it — the old, hard wonder of what this thing might be and what it might be meant to do. He had examined it a hundred times or more and had puzzled at it and there had been nothing he could find that was of significance. So far as he could see, it was only something that was meant to be looked at, although there had been that persistent feeling that it had a purpose and that, perhaps, somehow, it was meant to operate. And now it was in operation. He had tried a hundred times to get it figured out and Lucy had picked it up just once and had got it figured out. He noticed the rapture with which she was regarding it. Was it possible, he wondered, that she knew its purpose?"
"Hank Fisher would tell how he'd tried to break into the house and couldn't and there'd be others who would try to break into the house and there'd be hell to pay. Enoch sweated, thinking of it. All the years of keeping out of people's way, all the years of being unobtrusive would be for nothing then. This strange house upon a lonely ridge would become a mystery for the world, and a challenge and a target for all the crackpots of the world."
"The alien stood in shadow and he looked, Enoch thought, more than ever like the cruel clown. His lithe, flowing body had the look of smoked, tanned buckskin. The patchwork color of his hide seemed to shine with a faint luminescence and the sharp, hard angles of his face, the smooth baldness of his head, the flat, pointed ears pasted tight against the skull lent him a vicious fearsomeness. If one did not know him for the gentle character that he was, Enoch told himself, he would be enough to scare a man out of seven years of growth."
"The Talisman has been missing for several years or so. And no one knows about it — except Galactic Central and the — what would you call it? — the hierarchy, I suppose, the organization of mystics who takes care of the spiritual setup. And yet, even with no one knowing, the galaxy is beginning to show wear. It's coming apart at the seams. In time to come, it may fall apart. As if the Talisman represented a force that all unknowingly held the races of the galaxy together, exerting its influence even when it remained unseen."
"It's not the machine itself that does the trick. The machine merely acts as an intermediary between the sensitive and the spiritual force. It is an extension of the sensitive. It magnifies the capability of the sensitive and acts as a link of some sort. It enables the sensitive to perform his function."
"If there could only be more time, he thought. But, of course, there never was. There was not the time right now and there would never be. No matter how many centuries he might be able to devote, there'd always be so much more knowledge than he'd gathered at the moment that the little he had gathered would always seem a pittance."
"That had not been the first time nor had it been the last, but all the years of killing boiled down in essence to that single moment — not the time that came after, but that long and terrible instant when he had watched the lines of men purposefully striding up the slope to kill him. It had been in that moment that he had realized the insanity of war, the futile gesture that in time became all but meaningless, the unreasoning rage that must be nursed long beyond the memory of the incident that had caused the rage, the sheer illogic that one man, by death or misery, might prove a right or uphold a principle. Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries."
"There was a comfort in the thought, a strange sort of personal comfort in being able to believe that some intelligence might have solved the riddle of that mysterious equation of the universe. And how, perhaps, that mysterious equation might tie in with the spiritual force that was idealistic brother to time and space and all those other elemental factors that held the universe together."
"Ulysses, he thought, had not told him all the truth about the Talisman. He had told him that it had disappeared and that the galaxy was without it, but he had not told him that for many years its power and glory had been dimmed by the failure of its custodian to provide linkage between the people and the force. And all that time the corrosion occasioned by that failure had eaten away at the bonds of the galactic cofraternity."
"How strange it is, he thought, how so many senseless things shape our destiny. For the rifle range had been a senseless thing, as senseless as a billiard table or a game of cards — designed for one thing only, to please the keeper of the station. And yet the hours he'd spent there had shaped toward this hour and end, to this single instant on this restricted slope of ground."
"There is a certain rapport, a sensitivity — I don't know how to say it — that forms a bridge between this strange machine and the cosmic spiritual force. It is not the machine, itself, you understand, that reaches out and taps the spiritual force. It is the living creature's mind, aided by the mechanism, that brings the force to us."
"A machine, a mechanism, no more than a tool — technological brother to the hoe, the wrench, the hammer — and yet as far a cry from these as the human brain was from that first amino acid which had come into being on this planet when the Earth was very young. One was tempted, Enoch thought, to say that this was as far as a tool could go, that it was the ultimate in the ingenuity possessed by any brain. But that would be a dangerous way of thinking, for perhaps there was no limit, there might, quite likely, be no such condition as the ultimate; there might be no time when any creature or any group of creatures could stop at any certain point and say, this is as far as we can go, there is no use of trying to go farther. For each new development produced, as side effects, so many other possibilities, so many other roads to travel, that with each step one took down any given road there were more paths to follow. There'd never be an end, he thought — no end to anything."
"She always had been in touch with something outside of human ken. She had something in her no other human had. You sensed it, but you could not name it, for there was no name for this thing she had. And she had fumbled with it, trying to use it, not knowing how to use it, charming off the warts and healing poor hurt butterflies and only God knew what other acts that she performed unseen."
"The river rolled below him and the river did not care. Nothing mattered to the river. It would take the tusk of mastodon, the skull of sabertooth, the rib cage of a man, the dead and sunken tree, the thrown rock or rifle and would swallow each of them and cover them in mud or sand and roll gurgling over them, hiding them from sight. A million years ago there had been no river here and in a million years to come there might be no river — but in a million years from now there would be, if not Man, at least a caring thing. And that was the secret of the universe, Enoch told himself — a thing that went on caring."
"What strange circumstances, or what odd combination of many circumstances, must occur, I wondered, to make it possible for a man to step from one world to another."
"For even if the life of my own Earth and this other Earth on which I stood had started out identically (and they might well have started out identically) there still would be, along the way, millions of little deviations, no one of which, perhaps, by itself, would be significant, but the cumulative effects of all these deviations eventually would result in a life and culture that would bear no resemblance to any other Earth."
"Even if the barrier now should disappear and the Flowers withdraw their attention from our Earth, we still would have been shaken from the comfortable little rut which assumed that life as we know it was the only kind of life and that our road of knowledge was the only one that was broad and straight and paved. There had been ogres in the past, by finally the ogres had been banished. The trolls and ghouls and imps and all the others of the tribe had been pushed out of our lives, for they could survive only on the misty shores of ignorance and in the land of superstition. Now, I thought, we’d know an ignorance again (but a different kind of ignorance) and superstition, too, for superstition fed upon the lack of knowledge. With this hint of another world—even if its denizens should decide not to flaunt themselves, even if we should find a way to stop them—the trolls and ghouls and goblins would be back with us again. There’d be chimney corner gossip of this other place and a frantic, desperate search to rationalize the implied horror of its vast and unknown reaches, and out of this very search would rise a horror greater than any the other world could hold. We’d be afraid, as we had been before, of the darkness that lay beyond the little circle of our campfire."
"“They’re just ordinary people,” Nancy said. “You can’t expect too much of them.”"
"They would fail. We would always fail. We weren’t built to do anything but fail. We had the wrong kind of motives and we couldn’t change them. We had a built-in short-sightedness and an inherent selfishness and a self-concern that made it impossible to step out of the little human rut we traveled."
"We feel much sorrow for you, the elm tree had said. But what kind of sorrow—a real and sincere sorrow, or the superficial and pedantic sorrow of the immortal for a frail and flickering creature that was about to die?"
"One thing more, son. Do you believe in God?" Slowly Frost put the spoon back into the bowl. He asked: "You really want an answer?" "I want an answer," said the man. "I want an honest one." "The answer," said Frost, "is that I don't know. Not, certainly, in the kind of God that you are thinking of. Not the old white-whiskered, woodcut gentleman. But a supreme being — yes, I would believe in a God of that sort. Because it seems to me there must be some sort of force or power or will throughout the universe. The universe is too orderly for it to be otherwise. When you measure all this orderliness, from the mechanism of the atom at one end of the scale, out to the precision of the operation of the universe at the other end, it seems unbelievable that there is not a supervisory force of some kind, a benevolent ruling force to maintain that sort of order."
"The robots are not technologically minded. They were not built to be. They were built to bolster human vanity and pride, to meet a strange longing that seems to be built into the human ego—the need to have other humans (or a reasonable facsimile of other humans) to minister to our wants and needs, human slaves to be dominated, human beings over which a man or woman (or a child) can assert authority, thus building up a false feeling of superiority."
"He sat in the chair, unmoving, looking at the room and wondering again at the quiet satisfaction that he always found within it, and at times more than satisfaction, as if the room, with its book-lined loftiness and vastness, carried a special benediction. The thoughts of many men, he told himself, resided in the space—all the great thinkers of the world held secure between the bindings of the volumes on the shelves, selected and placed there long ago by his grandfather so that in the days to come the essence of the human race, the heritage of recorded thought, would always be at hand."
"—Look, said Jason, it is an old idea. There was never any proof. There was only faith. I have a soul, one would tell himself. He believed it because he had been told by others. Told authoritatively. Without any question. He was told so often and he told himself so often that there was no question in his mind that he had a soul. But there was never any evidence. There was never any proof."
"It seems to be a social axiom that as misery and privation increase for the many, the few rise ever higher in luxury and comfort, feeding on the misery. Not aware, perhaps, that they feed upon the misery, not with any wish of feeding on it—but they do."
"Could it be possible, Hezekiah asked himself, that there was no room for both the faith and truth, that they were mutually exclusive qualities that could not coexist? He shuddered as he thought of it, for if this should be the case, they had spent their centuries of devotion to but little purpose, pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp. Must faith be exactly that, the willingness and ability to believe in the face of a lack of evidence? If one could find the evidence, would then the faith be dead? If that were the situation, then which one did they want? Had it been, he wondered, that men had tried what they even now were trying and had realized that there was no such thing as truth, but only faith, and being unable to accept the faith without its evidence, had dropped the faith as well?"
"He doubted very much that at any time man could have been said to have truly owned the earth. Rather, they had taken it, wresting it from the other creatures that had as much right of ownership as they, but without the intelligence or the ingenuity or power to assert their rights. Man had been pushy, arrogant interloper rather than the owner. He had taken over by the force of mind, which could be as detestable as the force of muscle, making his own rules, setting his own goals, establishing his own values in utter disregard of all other living things."
"And how much did he and the others lost when they had turned their backs on magic? Belief, of course, and there might be some value in belief, although there was, as well, delusion and did a man want to pay for the value of belief in the coinage of delusion?"
"The situation outlined is immaterial to us. We could help humanity, but there is no reason that we should. Humanity is a transient factor and is none of our concern."
"I have become a student of the sky and know all the clouds there are and have firmly fixed in mind the various hues of blue that the sky can show—the washed-out, almost invisible blue of a hot, summer noon; the soft robin’s egg, sometimes almost greenish blue of a late springtime evening, the darker, almost violet blue of fall. I have become a connoisseur of the coloring that the leaves take on in autumn and I know all the voices and the moods of the woods and river valley. I have, in a measure, entered into communion with nature, and in this wise have followed in the footsteps of Red Cloud and his people, although I am sure that their understanding and their emotions are more fine-tuned than mine are. I have seen, however, the roll of seasons, the birth and death of leaves, the glitter of the stars on more nights than I can number and from all this as from nothing else I have gained a sense of a purpose and an orderliness which it does not seem to me can have stemmed from accident alone. It seems to me, thinking of it, that there must be some universal plan which set in motion the orbiting of the electrons about the nucleus and the slower, more majestic orbit of the galaxies about one another to the very edge of space. There is a plan, it seems to me, that reaches out from the electron to the rim of the universe and what this plan may be or how it came about is beyond my feeble intellect. But if we are looking for something on which to pin our faith—and, indeed, our hope—the plan might well be it. I think we have thought too small and have been too afraid..."
"Now it seemed that this had been a self-sustained illusion he had nourished carefully to bolster a sense of his own importance."
"These kind never change. The machine does something to a man. It brutalizes him. It serves as a buffer between himself and his environment and he is the worst for it. It arouses an opportunistic instinct and makes possible a greed that makes a man inhuman."
"For the old do not really mind; in a strange way they become sufficient to themselves. They need so very little and they care so very little. They climb the mountain no one else can see and as they climb the old, once-valued things they’ve carried all their lives tend to drop away and as they climb the higher the knapsack that they carry becomes emptier, but perhaps no less in weight than it had ever been, and the few things that are left in it, they find, with some amusement, or those few indispensable belongings which they’ve gathered in a long lifetime of effort and of seeking. They wonder greatly, if they think of it at all, how it was left to age to winnow out the chaff they’ve carried all the years, thinking that it was valuable when it was only chaff. When they reach the mountain top, they find that they can see farther than they’ve ever seen before and with greater clarity and, if by this time they’re not past all caring, may bemoan that they must approach the end of their lives before they can see with this marvelous clarity, which does little for them now, but might, in earlier years, have been of incalculable value."
"“I bore you, Mr. Carson?” “Not at all,” I told him. And it was the truth. He was not boring me. He fascinated me. It seemed impossible that he could, in conscience, believe this flowery rubbish."
"The sun was setting, throwing a fog-like dusk across the stream and trees, and there was a coolness in the air. It was time, I knew, to be getting back to camp. But I did not want to move. For I had the feeling that this was a place, once seen, that could not be seen again. If I left and then came back, it would not be the same; no matter how many times I might return to this particular spot the place and feeling would never be the same, something would be lost or something would be added, and there never would exist again, through all eternity, all the integrated factors that made it what it was in this magic moment."
"Someone must have known, but I never did. I have often wondered. It was the only way, you see, that a war could still be fought. No human could go to fight that kind of war. So man’s servants and companions, the machines, carried on the war. I don’t know why they kept on fighting. I have often asked myself. They’d destroyed all there’d ever been to fight for and there was not use of keeping on."
"You do not understand what happens in war—a sort of sublime madness, an unholy hatred that is twisted into an unreasoning sense of righteousness…"
"Like so many other fairy tales, I thought it was a horror story."
"“I find it a most intriguing and amusing thing that it might be possible to package the experiences, not only of one's self, but of other people. Think of the hoard we might then lay up against our later, lonely years when all old friends are gone and the opportunity for new experiences have withered. All we need to do then is to reach up to a shelf and take down a package that we have bottled or preserved or whatever the phrase might be, say from a hundred years ago, and uncorking it, enjoy the same experience again, as sharp and fresh as the first time it had happened”... “I have tried to imagine,” said our host, “the various ingredients one might wish to compound in such a package. Beside the bare experience itself, the context of it, one might say, he should want to capture and hold all the subsidiary factors which might serve as a background for it — the sound, the feel of wind and sun, the cloud floating in the sky, the color and the scent. For such a packaging, to give the desired results, must be as perfect as one can make it. It must have all those elements which would be valuable in invoking the total recall of some event that had taken place many years before.”"
"“As an auxiliary to all of this,” he said, “I have found myself speculating upon a world in which no one ever grew up. I admit, of course, that it is a rather acrobatic feat of thinking, not entirely consistent, to leap from the one idea to the other. In a world where one was able to package his experiences, he merely would be able to relive at some future time the experiences of the past. But in a world of the eternally young he'd have no need of such packaging. Each new day would bring the same freshness and the everlasting wonder inherent in the world of children. There would be no realization of death and no fear born of the knowledge of the future. Life would be eternal and there'd be no thought of change. One would exist in an everlasting matrix and while there would be little variation from one day to the next, one would not be aware of this and there'd be no boredom...”"
"Time is still the great mystery to us. It is no more than a concept; we don't know if it even exists..."
"Space is an illusion, and time as well. There is no such factor as either time or space. We have been blinded by our own cleverness, blinded by false perceptions of those qualities that we term eternity and infinity. There is another factor that explains it all, and once this universal factor is recognized, everything grows simple. There is no longer any mystery, no longer any wonder, no longer any doubt; for the simplicity of it all lies before us..."
"We came into a homeless frontier, a place where we were not welcome, where nothing that lived was welcome, where thought and logic were abhorrent and we were frightened, but we went into this place because the universe lay before us, and if we were to know ourselves, we must know the universe..."
"If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology."
"My reluctance to use alien invasion is due to the feeling that we are not likely to be invaded and taken over. It would seem to me that by the time a race has achieved deep space capability it would have matured to a point where it would have no thought of dominating another intelligent species. Further than this, there should be no economic necessity of its doing so. By the time it was able to go into deep space, it must have arrived at an energy source which would not be based on planetary natural resources."
"“McKay tells me that you went home sick,” she said. “Personally, I hope you don’t survive.”"
"There have been moments when I also wasn’t able to attach as much importance to football as it seemed to me I should."
"Beyond his own sure knowledge, he had not a shred of proof."
"He sat and watched them come and he thought of going in to get a rifle, but he didn’t stir from his seat upon the steps. The rifle would do no good, he told himself. It would be a senseless thing to get it; more than that, a senseless attitude. The least that man could do, he thought, was to meet these creatures of another world with clean and empty hands."
"Once again the universe was spread far out before him and it was a different and in some ways a better universe, a more diagrammatic universe, and in time, he knew, if there were such a thing as time, he'd gain some completer understanding and acceptance of it. He probed and sensed and learned and there was no such thing as time, but a great foreverness. He thought with pity of those others locked inside the ship, safe behind its insulating walls, never knowing all the glories of the innards of a star or the vast panoramic sweep of vision and of knowing far above the flat galactic plane. Yet he really did not know what he saw or probed; he merely sensed and felt it and became a part of it, and it became a part of him — he seemed unable to reduce it to a formal outline of fact or of dimension or of content. It still remained a knowledge and a power so overwhelming that it was nebulous. There was no fear and no wonder, for in this place, it seemed, there was neither fear nor wonder. And he finally knew that it was a place apart, a world in which the normal space-time knowledge and emotion had no place at all and a normal space-time being could have no tools or measuring stick by which he might reduce it to a frame of reference. There was no time, no space, no fear, no wonder — and no actual knowledge, either."
"Perhaps all that had happened had been no more than the working out of human destiny. If the human race could not attain directly the paranormal power he held, this instinct of the mind, then they would gain it indirectly through the agency of one of their creations. Perhaps this, after all, unknown to Man himself, had been the prime purpose of the robots. He turned and walked slowly down the length of village street, his back turned to the ship and the roaring of the captain, walked contentedly into this new world he'd found, into this world that he would make — not for himself, nor for robotic glory, but for a better Mankind and a happier. Less than an hour before he'd congratulated himself on escaping all the traps of Earth, all the snares of Man. Not knowing that the greatest trap of all, the final and the fatal trap, lay on this present planet. But that was wrong, he told himself. The trap had not been on this world at all, nor any other world. It had been inside himself. He walked serenely down the wagon-rutted track in the soft, golden afternoon of a matchless autumn day, with the dog trotting at his heels. Somewhere, just down the street, the sick baby lay crying in its crib."
"Accident, he wondered, or a way of hiding? Trapped or planned? He had no way of knowing and further speculation was ridiculous, based as it necessarily must be upon earlier assumptions that were entirely without support."
"First there was space—endless, limitless space, so far from everything, so brutal, so frigid, so uncaring that it numbed the mind, not so much from fear or loneliness as from the realization that in this eternity of space the thing that was himself was dwarfed to an insignificance no yardstick could measure."
"The old and the young, he thought. The old, who do not care; the young, who do not think."
"In the east the moon was rising, a full moon that lighted the landscape so that he could see every little clump of bushes, every grove of trees. And as he stood there, he realized with a sudden start that the moon was full again, that it was always full, it rose with the setting of the sun and set just before the sun came up, and it was always a great pumpkin of a moon, an eternal harvest moon shining on an eternal autumn world. The realization that this was so all at once seemed shocking. How was it that he had never noticed this before? Certainly he had been here long enough, had watched the moon often enough to have noticed it. He had been here long enough — and how long had that been, a few weeks, a few months, a year? He found he did not know. He tried to figure back and there was no way to figure back. There were no temporal landmarks. Nothing ever happened to mark one day from the next. Time flowed so smoothly and so uneventfully that it might as well stand still."
"A wrongness persisted, a sense of aberration, some factor not quite right, the feeling of a corner. But Boone could not pin it down; there seemed no way to reach it."
"We're very close to immortal, you know. The time mechanism keeps it that way." "No, I hadn't known," said Boone. "Inside the time bubble we do not age. We age only when we are outside of it."
"They changed," said Enid, "from corporeal beings, from biological beings, to incorporeal beings, immaterial, pure intelligences. They now are ranged in huge communities on crystal lattices..."
"What your friend told you of his seeing of the time wall is true, Henry said in Boone's mind. I know he saw it, although imperfectly. Your friend is most unusual. So far as I know, no other human actually can see it; although there are ways of detecting time. I tried to show him a sniffler. There are a number of snifflers, trying to sniff out the bubble. They know there's something strange, but don't know what it is."
"We have time travel," she said, "and none of us, I am sure, really understands it. We stole it from the Infinites. To steal time travel was the one way we could fight back, the one way we could flee. The human race had far space travel before the Infinites showed up. I think it was our far travel that aroused the interest of the Infinites in us. I've often wondered if some of the very primitive principles of time might not have made our many-times-faster-than-light travel possible. Time is somehow tied into space, but I have never known quite how."
"He stirred again, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, and he was not alone. Across the fire from him sat, or seemed to sit, a man wrapped in some all-enveloping covering that might have been a cloak, wearing on his head a conical hat that dropped down so far it hid his face. Beside him sat the wolf — the wolf, for Boone was certain that it was the same wolf with which he'd found himself sitting nose to nose when he had wakened the night before. The wolf was smiling at him, and he had never known that a wolf could smile. He stared at the hat. Who are you? What is this about? He spoke in his mind, talking to himself, not really to the hat. He had not spoken aloud for fear of startling the wolf. The Hat replied. It is about the brotherhood of life. Who I am is of no consequence. I am only here to act as an interpreter. An interpreter for whom? For the wolf and you. But the wolf does not talk. No, he does not talk. But he thinks. He is greatly pleased and puzzled. Puzzled I can understand. But pleased? He feels a sameness with you. He senses something in you that reminds him of himself. He puzzles what you are. In time to come, said Boone, he will be one with us. He will become a dog. If he knew that, said The Hat, it would not impress him. He thinks now to be one with you. An equal. A dog is not your equal..."
"Perversity, she thought. Could that have been what happened to the human race — a willing perversity that set at naught all human values which had been so hardly won and structured in the light of reason for a span of more than a million years? Could the human race, quite out of hand and with no sufficient reason, have turned its back upon everything that had built humanity? Or was it, perhaps, no more than second childhood, a shifting of the burden off one's shoulders and going back to the selfishness of the child who romped and frolicked without thought of consequence or liability?"
"It is a net," said Horseface, "useful for the fishing of the universe." Enid crinkled up her face, staring at what he called a net. It was a flimsy thing and it had no shape. "Certainly," she said, "you would not go fishing the universe in so slight a thing as this." "Time means nothing to it," said Horseface, "nor does space. It is independent of both time and space except as it makes use of them."
"Boone gulped and swallowed. He spoke to The Hat. "You said the Highway to Eternity?" That is not what I said. I said the Highway of Eternity. "Small difference," Boone told him. Not so small as you might think."
"This is the core of the galaxy," Horseface said. "This is the very center of everything there is. A huge black hole eating up the galaxy. The end of everything."
"Much of what we see in the universe," said Hugo, "starts out as imaginary. Often you must imagine something before you can come to terms with it."
"An untold time ago, there was a well-founded perception that the human race would end and that something else must take its place. Why must something else take its place? I cannot tell you that. There is no solid rationale for it, but the belief seemed to be that there must be a dominant race upon this planet. Before men were the dinosaurs and before the dinosaurs there were the trilobites..."
"Without consciousness and intelligence, the universe would lack meaning."
"I never heard a bad word about him but only universal approval and approbation... [I have tried to] imitate his easy and uncluttered style. I think I have succeeded to an extent and that it has immeasurably improved my writing. He is the third of three people, then, who formed my writing career. John Campbell and Fred Pohl did it by precept, and Cliff Simak by example."
"Without Simak, science fiction would have been without its most humane element, its most humane spokesman for the wisdom of the ordinary person and the value of life lived close to the land."
"Since the earliest thirties, to read science fiction is to read Simak. A reader who does not like Simak stories does not like science fiction at all."
"Absolute authority will be delegated. Full responsibility will be assumed. Those who succeed will receive advancement and satisfaction of desire. Those who fail will die."
"This, obviously, is a fallacious argument. That same negative evidence can used to "prove" that molemen from beneath the surface of the earth have perpetrated these murders. The fact that the molemen have left no evidence behind proves how good they are at remaining hidden. That no sewer or road building projects have ever cut across their tunnels proves that politicians and engineers and other professionals are in league with the molemen. Just as obviously, anyone who denies the molemen exist is either in league with them, or is a fool who cannot see the end coming."
"In reality, a person questioning the existence of the Satanic conspiracy is merely pointing out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. In that case, one can understand why the emperor's tailors get upset and suggest the person doing the pointing is a tool of the devil. Then the question comes down to one of whether the crowd will believe the evidence they have before them, or if they will buy into the tailors' fantasies."
"J. D. Salinger has suggested that authors should be known for their work, not themselves, and in this I concur. It’s not that I want to be a hermit, but I do want to maintain some privacy for myself and my sanity."
"Most of the writers I know come from a variety of backgrounds: history, journalism, engineering, physics. The common element here is not what you study, but the fact that you learn how to study, to do research, and to synthesize new ideas out of old. The soul of science fiction, and perhaps even all fiction, is to look at a situation and ask, “what would happen if….” Change some variables and see how that makes people react to the situation. So, getting yourself a good grounding in any field of study will supply you with a great background wealth of material to use to build your stories. Then you really just need to start writing and keep writing. Writing is a skills-based endeavor and there is no easy way to become successful at it. Writers write."
"“You won’t get away with it. Heimdall has to have seen what you did, and what you have been doing. He knows you have been masquerading as me. He will expose you.” “Ha!” I stood and looked down upon him. “Heimdall spends every hour of every day watching the programming on over five hundred television stations. Even a god cannot escape transformation into a drooling idiot when subjected to that much television.”"
"Disease does not recognize congressional districts or party affiliation."
"If we get public education right, everything else will follow. But if we get it wrong, not much else will matter."
"We did our job. We took out a murderous dictator in Saddam Hussein and have given the freely elected government of Iraq all the time and money we can afford. It is time to direct our efforts away from Iraq and back after Osama bin Laden and his followers. The Iraqi government must take responsibility for the security of its own people."
"I was born to be an explorer. There never was any decision to make. I coudn't be anything else and be happy,the desire to see new places, to discover new facts- the curiosity of life always has been a resistless driving force to me."
"I wanted to go everywhere. I would have started on a day’s notice for the North Pole or the South, to the jungle or the desert. It made not the slightest difference to me."
"How many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government? They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
"I believe that we probably have lost the culture war. That doesn't mean the war is not going to continue, and that it isn't going to be fought on other fronts. But in terms of society in general, we have lost. This is why, even when we win in politics, our victories fail to translate into the kind of policies we believe are important.Therefore, what seems to me a legitimate strategy for us to follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture. I would point out to you that the word "holy" means "set apart," and that it is not against our tradition to be, in fact, "set apart." You can look in the Old Testament, you can look at Christian history. You will see that there were times when those who had our beliefs were definitely in the minority and it was a band of hardy monks who preserved the culture while the surrounding society disintegrated.What I mean by separation is, for example, what the homeschoolers have done. Faced with public school systems that no longer educate but instead "condition" students with the attitudes demanded by Political Correctness, they have seceded. They have separated themselves from public schools and have created new institutions, new schools, in their homes."
"Our ground today is not so much the national or the regional ground as it is the understanding of this single earth. The earth has been round for some time now, but not in man’s relation to man, nor in the understanding of the arts of each as a part of that roundness. As usual we have occupied ourselves too much with the outer, the objective, at the expense of the inner world wherein tie true roundness lies.. .America more than any other country is placed geographically to lead in this understanding., and if from past methods of behaviour she has constantly looked towards Europe, today she must assume her position, Janus-faced, toward Asia, for in not too long a time the waves of the Orient shall wash heavily upon her shores. All this is deeply related with her growth in the arts, particularly upon the Pacific slopes. Of this I am aware. Naturally my work will reflect such a condition and so it is not surprising to me when an Oriental responds to a painting of mine as well as an American or an European.."
"Every artist's problem today is: What will we do with the human?"
"An artist must find his expression closely linked to his individual experience or else follow in the old grooves resulting in lifeless forms."
"Reality must be expressed by a physical symbol."
"We all feel a separateness; we wish that a drop of water would soften our ego; the world needs a common conscience: agreement.. ..we must concentrate outside ourselves."
"England collapses, turns Chinese with English and American thoughts. Thousands of Chinese characters are turning and twisting; every door is a shop. The rickshaws jostle the vendors, their backs hung with incredible loads. The narrow streets are alive in a way that Broadway isn't alive. Here all is human, even the beasts of burden. The human energy spills itself in multiple forms, writhes, sweats and strains every muscle towards the day’s bowl of rice. The din is terrific."
"I am accused often of too much experimentation.. ..but what else should I do when all other factors of man are in the same condition. I thrust forward into space as science and the rest do."
"My first lesson in relativity: ..we had a still life set-up to paint. Suddenly I saw that the pitcher was so big [his hands outside the shape of a pitcher, then close in] and the glass was so big. From that time on everything was all right. [Tobey is remembering his Saturday morning painting class]"
"I have many ideas for lights. I will paint only lights at night. [on the twinkling city-lights]"
"White lines in movement symbolize a unifying idea which flows through the compartmented units of life bringing the consciousness of a larger relativity."
"At a time when experimentation expresses itself in all forms of life, search becomes the only valid expression of the spirit."
"The Cubists used the figure, but they broke it up.. .But there was escape, too, even in those days, for there was Whistler living in the grey mists with a faded orange moon. The nocturne transformed itself into dreamy rooms with Chopin's music creating a mood that softened the hard core of self.[quote from conversation with Seitz]"
"We have tried to fit man into abstraction, but he does not fit."
"There has been 32 isms since the advent of Cubism, yet after all there are essentially the same two old strings, the Romantic and the Classical. We've just be confused by the storm. Science and psychology have played a great part to say nothing of sex."
"Now it seems to me that we are in a universalising period.. .If we are to have world peace, we should have an understanding of all the idioms of beauty because the members of humanity who have created these idioms of beauty are going to be a part of us. And I would say that we are in a period when we are discovering and becoming acquainted with these idioms for the first time."
"On the third floor of Manning's Coffee Shop in the Farmer's Market in Seattle confronting the Sound, the windows are opaque with fog. Sitting here in the long deserted room, I feel suspended enveloped by a white silence. Two floors below, the farmers are bending over their long rows of fruit and vegetables; washing and arranging their produce under intense lights shaded by circular green shades. Above, where I sit, the world seems obliterated from all save memory; abstracted without the feeling of being divorced from one’s roots. My eye keeps focusing upon the opaque windows [an equivalent of the picture plane]. Suddenly the vision is disturbed by the shape of a gull floating silently across the width of the window, a line of movement drawn across the picture surface. Then space again. In opposing lines to the gull's flight, the Sound moves northward through the Inland Passage.. .It is true that trains run daily out of Seattle to points East and South, but my mind takes but little cognizance of this fact. To me Seattle seems pocketed. There is only one way out: Alaska, toward the North! Swerving to the South, there is the Orient, although in San Francisco I feel the Orient rolling in with its tides. My imagination, it would seem, has its own geography."
"I have just had my first lesson in Chinese brush from my friend and artist Teng Kwei. The tree is no more solid in the earth, breaking into lesser solids in the earth, breaking into lesser solids bathed in chiaroscuro. There is pressure and release. Each movement, like tracks in the snow, is recorded and often loved for itself. The Great Dragon is breathing sky, thunder and shadow; wisdom and spirit vitalized. All is in motion now.. .One step backward into the past and the tree in front of my studio in Seattle is all rhythm, lifting, springing upward."
"Two men dressed in white jeans with white caps on their heads.. ..climbing over a large sign of white letters. Of course, the words spell something, but that is unimportant. What is important is their white, and the white of the letters."
"It is Fall. The leaves are being raked under the great elms darkening in the evening light. Slowly they become weighted with darkness. Across the river they are burning the grass on the Minnesota bluffs. Myriads of colored streamers reflect in the river blow.."
"We look at the mountain to see the painting, then we look at the painting to see the mountain."
"The root of all religions, from the Baha'i point of view, is based on the theory that man will gradually come to understand the unity of the world and the oneness of mankind. It teaches that all the prophets are one – that science and religion are the two great powers which must be balanced if man is to become mature. I feel my work has been influenced by these beliefs. I've tried to decentralize and interpenetrate so that all parts of a painting are of related value."
"I have sought a unified world in my work and use a movable vortex to achieve it."
"Migrating from continent to continent like a restless bird in search of propitious seasons, casting his glance across all cultures, Mark Tobey was one of the few 20th century artists who was truly cosmopolitan and in fact trans-avant-garde. Besides being a pioneer of American abstraction, he was a scholar of oriental calligraphy and Renaissance tempera."
"Bahá'í [religion] provided Tobey with aesthetic as well as social and religious principles. He has often stated that there can be no break between nature, art, science, religion, and personal life.. .Few religions.. ..have given the concept of oneness such pointed emphasis, and few modern artists have dealt with it as explicitly as has Tobey."
"In 1953, 'Life Magazine' featured the three painters and titled it Mystic Painters of the Northwest: 'Painters of our misty light, shimmering lines and symbolic forms.. ..They embody a mystical feeling toward life and the universe." The three painters took the title lightly but they were entitled to be called Mystics: [Mark] Tobey the more intellectual, Graves the poet and Anderson the extrovert. All studied Buddhism in depth and Tobey and Graves traveled the Orient.'"
"Fantasy is my favorite genre for reading and writing. We have more options than anyone else, and the best props and special effects. That means if you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you're at it? Go ahead. Nothing's off limits. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It's easy to get distracted by the glittering props available to you and forget what you're supposed to be doing: telling a good story. Don’t get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That’s a story. Handled properly, it’s more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be."
"I remember sitting down once, [at] three in the morning and probably the only person awake in Stevens Point [...] *imitates typing with his fingers* And I stop, and I think: "This is crap! I've spent years of my life writing crap. This will never be published - it isn't good... I've wasted years of my life!" *shrugs and types on* You do it because you like the process. I mean... you write because you like to write."
"I was heavily influenced by my first attempt at a novel. I started a fantasy novel back in high school, and.... well... it really sucked. It was a plotless, clichéd mess. When I sat down to write this book, I wanted to make something much, much better. I wanted to write something that was pretty much the opposite of that first novel. Also, I read Cyrano De Bergerac, right before I started writing the book. Cyrano's character reminded me of some important things, namely, what it really means to be a tragic hero. You don't need a lot of the cliché fantasy trappings to have that cool character. I also read Giacomo Casanova's memoirs soon after starting this project. That opened my eyes to how interesting an autobiography could be, provided the person telling it has a way with words and has lived a sufficiently adventurous life...."
"Anyway, I was listening to Beagle answer a question on the panel, he said something along the lines of, "I'd never want to write The Last Unicorn again. It was excruciatingly hard, because I was writing a faerie tale while at the same time writing a spoof of a faerie tale." I just sat there thunderstruck. I realized that's exactly what I had been doing for over a decade with my story. I was writing heroic fantasy, while at the same time I was satirizing heroic fantasy. While telling his story, Kvothe makes it clear that he's not the storybook hero legends make him out to be. But at the same time, the reader sees that he's a hero nonetheless. He's just a hero of a different sort."
"I’m just very careful with my words when I write. Obsessively careful. I’m the sort of person who worries about the difference between “slim” and “slender.”"
"My book is different. In case you hadn't noticed, the story I'm telling is a little different. It's a little shy on the Aristotelian unities. It doesn't follow the classic Hollywood three-act structure. It's not like a five-act Shakespearean play. It's not like a Harlequin romance. So what *is* the structure then? Fuck if I know. That's part of what's taking me so long to figure out. As far as I can tell, my story is part autobiography, part hero's journey, part epic fantasy, part travelogue, part faerie tale, part coming of age story, part romance, part mystery, part metafictional-nested-story-frame-tale-something-or-other. I am, quite frankly, making this up as I go. If I get it right, I get something like The Name of the Wind. Something that makes all of us happy. But if I fuck it up, I'll end up with a confusing tangled mess of a story. Now I'm not trying to claim that I'm unique in this. That I'm some lone pioneer mapping the uncharted storylands. Other authors do it too. My point is that doing something like this takes more time that writing another shitty, predictable Lord of the Rings knockoff. Sometimes I think it would be nice to write a that sort of book. It would be nice to be able to use those well-established structures like a sort of recipe. A map. A paint-by-numbers kit. It would be so much easier, and quicker. But it wouldn't be a better book. And it's not really the sort of book I want to write."
"I saw Mr. Martin at Worldcon last year. And I almost went up to him and asked, “How have you gone this long without killing someone?” Because however much flak I happen to get from fans, he has to get a thousand times more. In my opinion, he's a saint. If I had to deal with that level of fan dickishness, I would have already lost my shit in some spectacular way. There would be a video of me on youtube, gone all berserk with nerd rage, holding someone up by the neck, shouting "I've got your sequel right here, bitch!""
"There is only one Whedon, and I am his prophet."
"I really don't go in for talking about current events on the blog. The main reason for this is the fact that I am profoundly out of touch with the outside world. I don't have cable and I don't watch the news. On the rare occasion I miss the news and feel the need to absorb some fearmongering bullshit, I just drop a tab of acid and read a Lovecraft story. There's less pretense that way."
"I mean seriously. If the book had a solid pub date, don't you think I'd mention it? Do you think I'd sit here at home, rubbing my hands together and chortling: "Yes! If I withhold this information another week, I'm sure to get another 100 e-mails asking me about the book!" Yup. That's exactly what I'd do. Because obviously I am some sort of alien life form that lives on snarky fanmail and bitchy blog comments. Since I became stranded on your strange world years ago, they have been my only means of sustenance."
"It’s like this: if you have one piece of cake, and you eat it, that’s fine. If you have two pieces of cake, you should probably share some with a friend. But maybe not. Occasionally we could all use two pieces of cake. But if you have a whole cake, and you eat *all* of it, that’s not very cool. It’s not just selfish, it’s kinda sick and unhealthy."
"A tinker’s debt is always paid: Once for any simple trade. Twice for freely given aid. Thrice for any insult made."
"It was one of those perfect autumn days so common in stories and so rare in the real world."
"“I’ll admit, I was disappointed to learn that dragons didn’t exist. That’s a hard lesson for a boy to learn.” Chronicler smiled. “Honestly, I was a little disappointed myself. I went looking for a legend and found a lizard. A fascinating lizard, but a lizard just the same.”"
"So this is the difference between telling a story and being in one, he thought numbly, the fear."
"So you went looking for a myth and found a man."
"My name is Kvothe, pronounced nearly the same as “Quothe.” Names are important as they tell you a great deal about a person. I’ve had more names than anyone has a right to. The Adem call me Maedre. Which, depending on how it’s spoken, can mean “The Flame,” “The Thunder,” or “The Broken Tree.”"
"I have been called Kvothe the Bloodless, Kvothe the Arcane, and Kvothe Kingkiller. I have earned those names. Bought and paid for them. But I was brought up as Kvothe. My father once told me it meant “to know.” I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned. I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep. You may have heard of me."
"Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite."
"It’s hard to be wrongfully accused, but it’s worse when the people looking down on you are clods who have never read a book or traveled more than twenty miles from the place they were born."
"He picked the rock back up. “Do you believe that it floated?” “No!” I sulked, rubbing my temples. “Good. It didn’t. Never fool yourself into perceiving things that don’t exist.”"
"Seven things has Lady Lackless Keeps them underneath her black dress One a ring that’s not for wearing One a sharp word, not for swearing Right beside her husband’s candle There’s a door without a handle In a box, no lids or locks Lackless keeps her husband’s rocks There’s a secret she’s been keeping She’s been dreaming and not sleeping On a road, that’s not for traveling Lackless likes her riddle raveling."
"When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind."
"“You don’t seem the superstitious type.” “I’m not,” Ben said. “I’m careful. There’s a difference.”"
"“How do they feel about demons off in Atur?” he asked. “Scared.” My father tapped his temple. “All that religion makes their brains soft.”"
"“Why do we stop for the greystones?” “Tradition, my boy,” he said grandly, throwing his arms wide. “And superstition. They are one and the same, anyway.”"
"Lord but I dislike poetry. How can anyone remember words that aren’t put to music?"
"Remember this son, if you forget everything else. A poet is a musician who can’t sing. Words have to find a man’s mind before they can touch his heart. And, some men’s minds are woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly, no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens."
"“You’re just getting old.” She gave a dramatic sigh. “Truly, all the more’s the tragedy; the second thing to go is a man’s memory.”"
"My father had a dark glimmer in his eye as he moved behind her. “Old?” He spoke in a low voice as he began to rub her shoulders again. “Woman, I have a mind to prove you wrong.” She smiled a wry smile. “Sir, I have a mind to let you.”"
"My parents danced together, her head on his chest. Both had their eyes closed. They seemed so perfectly content. If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you’re lucky. Even if it only lasts for a minute or a day. The image of them gently swaying to the music is how I picture love in my mind even after all these years."
"But for most practical purposes Tarbean had two pieces: Waterside and Hillside. Waterside is where people are poor. That makes them beggars, thieves, and whores. Hillside is where people are rich. That makes them solicitors, politicians, and courtesans."
"“All stories are true,” Skarpi said. “But this one really happened, if that’s what you mean.” He took another slow drink, then smiled again, his bright eyes dancing. “More or less. You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way. Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.”"
"Nobles’ sons are one of nature’s great destructive forces, like floods or tornadoes. When you’re struck with one of these catastrophes, the only thing an average man can do is grit his teeth and try to minimize the damage."
"Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear."
"The truth was, I needed to impress them. I knew from my previous discussions with Ben that you needed money or brains to get into the University. The more of one you had, the less of the other you needed."
"Plainly said, he was giving me enough rope to hang myself with. Apparently he didn’t realize that once a noose is tied, it will fit one neck as easily as another."
"Any student of mine must be able to defend his ideas against an attack. No matter how you spend your life, your wit will defend you more often than a sword. Keep it sharp!"
"There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man."
"Upon him I will visit famine and a fire. Till all around him desolation rings And all the demons in the outer dark Look on amazed and recognize That vengeance is the business of a man."
"Everyone thinks chemistry and alchemy are so similar, but they’re really not. They’re not even related. They just happen to live in the same house."
"Clean, quick, and easy as lying. We know how it ends practically before it starts. That’s why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack."
"As my father used to say: “There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other to lend.”"
"“Piss on etiquette,” Threpe said petulantly. “Etiquette is a set of rules people use so they can be rude to each other in public.”"
"“Music is a fine thing, but metal lasts.” He struck the table with two huge fingers to emphasize his point.... As I left, I thought about what Kilvin had said. It was the first thing he had said to me that I did not agree with wholeheartedly. Metal rusts, I thought, music lasts forever. Time will eventually prove one of us right."
"“Trouble,” he chuckled. “What does a boy like you know about trouble? I was in trouble afore you were born. I been in trouble you don’t even got words for.”"
"She looked at me. Looked away. “You think too much of me.” I smiled. “Perhaps you think too little of yourself.”"
"Like all boys my age, I was an idiot when it came to women."
"Wilem tapped Simmon’s shoulder. “He’s telling the truth.” Simmon glanced over at him. “Why do you say that?” “He sounds more sincere than that when he lies.”"
"Nothing makes a man feel older than a young woman."
"Mauthen ain’t much for listenen. Nothin’ plugs a man’s ears like money."
"That’s a whole new type of stupid."
"There are few things as nauseating as pure obedience."
"Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man’s will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself."
"Wisdom precludes boldness."
"You see, there’s a fundamental connection between seeming and being. Every Fae child knows this, but you mortals never seem to see. We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be."
"On his first hand he wore rings of stone, Iron, Amber, Wood and Bone. There were rings unseen on his second hand, One was blood in a flowing band, One was air all whisper thin, And the ring of ice had a flaw within. Full faintly shone the ring of flame, And the final ring was without name."
"We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect."
""It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers."
"Oh it seemed sensible. Oh yes. Certainly. But she knew what seeming was worth in the end, didn’t she?"
"But no. There is a difference between the truth and what we wish were true."
"Answers were always important, but they were seldom easy."
"But for half a minute she wished it was a different sort of day, even though she knew that nothing good could come from wanting at the world."
"Cruelty never helped the turning of the world."
"She knew better than anyone, it was worth doing things the proper way."
"It was just as Master Mandrag always said: nine tenths of chemistry was waiting."
"It exasperated her, but she knew better than to force the world to bend to her desire."
"They made a medley without melding or meddling."
"It was better to be gentle and polite. It was the worst sort of selfishness to force yourself upon the world."
"She indulged herself from time to time. It helped remind her she was truly free."
"It was just as Mandrag said: Nine tenths of alchemy was chemistry. And nine tenths of chemistry was waiting."
"But now she knew much more than that. So much of what she’d thought was truth before was merely tricks. No more than clever ways of speaking to the world. They were a bargaining. A plea. A call. A cry. But underneath, there was a secret deep within the hidden heart of things."
""Our faith should be expressed in working toward a better planet for our children and not the selfish, juvenile hope for a better afterlife for ourselves. I don't think anyone is going to Hell, because it only exists in the minds of people who wish ill will on others." {{cite web"
""If God is everything and everywhere, then what purpose does the word serve? If it explains everything, then it explains nothing. But if it describes something important, then it should be observable by everyone, examined, and shared with other people" (Ch 8., pp.213)."
"Information impactedness is a derivative condition that arises mainly because of uncertainty and opportunism, though bounded rationality is involved as well. It exists when true underlying circumstances relevant to the transaction, or related set of transactions, are known to one or more parties but cannot be costlessly discerned by or displayed for others."
"For those who, like myself, are inclined to be eclectic, no comprehensive commitment to one approach rather than another needs to be made. What is involved, rather, is the selection of the approach best suited to deal with the problems at hand.”"
"Because internal organization experiences added bureaucratic costs, the firm is usefully thought as the organization of last resort: try markets, try hybrids (long term contractual relations into which security features have been crafted), and resort to firms when all else fails (compatatively)."
"In recent years economists and historians have increasingly turned their attention to modern economic institutions. Economists such as Edward S. Mason, A. D. H. Kaplan, John Kenneth Galbraith, Oliver E. Williamson, William J. Baumol, Robin L. Marris, Edith T. Penrose, Robert T. Averitt, and R. Joseph Monsen, following the pioneering work of Adolph A. Berle, Jr., and Gardiner C. Means, have studied the operations and actions of modern business enterprise. They have not attempted, however, to examine its historical development, nor has their work yet had a major impact on economic theory. The firm remains essentially a unit of production, and the theory of the firm a theory of production."
"The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2009 to Elinor Ostrom... "for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons" and Oliver E. Williamson... "for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm"."
"Oliver Williamson has argued that markets and hierarchical organizations, such as firms, represent alternative governance structures which differ in their approaches to resolving conflicts of interest. The drawback of markets is that they often entail haggling and disagreement. The drawback of firms is that authority, which mitigates contention, can be abused. Competitive markets work relatively well because buyers and sellers can turn to other trading partners in case of dissent. But when market competition is limited, firms are better suited for conflict resolution than markets. A key prediction of Williamson's theory, which has also been supported empirically, is therefore that the propensity of economic agents to conduct their transactions inside the boundaries of a firm increases along with the relationship-specific features of their assets."
"I was frustrated waiting tables when I knew I could make video... I didn't have any professional experience or a portfolio of work, so I decided to make stuff on my own for free."
"My friends liked it. My family liked it. I thought, 'If they all like it why can't everyone like it?' I knew I could get an audience."
"There are two things in life that keep me motivated, a cup of coffee and a second cup of coffee."
"The Hindu mind represents humanity's oldest and most continuous stream of conscious intelligence on the planet. Hindu sages, seers, saints, yogis and jnanis have maintained an unbroken current of awareness linking humanity with the Divine since the dawn of history, and as carried over from earlier cycles of civilization in previous humanities unknown to our present spiritually limited culture."
"The Hindu mind has a vision of eternity and infinity. It is aware of the vast cycles of creation and destruction that govern the many universes and innumerable creatures within them."
"Hinduism never seemed to be something foreign or alien to me or inappropriate to my circumstances living in the West. It is the very religion of nature and consciousness in the broadest sense, which makes it relevant to everyone."
"The most important insights that have come to me usually occur while walking in nature, particularly hiking in the high mountains. In the wilderness nature can enter into our consciousness and cleanse our minds of human-centered compulsions. I think that liberation is like wandering off into nature, climbing up a high mountain, and not coming back to the lowlands of human society."
"Hinduism is a religion of the Earth. It honors the Earth as the Divine Mother and encourages us to honor her and help her develop her creative potentials. The deities of Hinduism permeate the world of nature. For example, Shiva is the God of the mountains, while Parvati is the mountain Goddess. Shiva dwells in high and steep rocky crags and cliff faces. Parvati rules over mountain streams, waterfalls, and mountain meadows with their many flowers."
"It is not necessary to live in India to be a Hindu. In fact one must live in harmony with the land where one is located to be a true Hindu."
"In this way I can speak of an American Hinduism and call myself an American and a Hindu – an American connected with the land and a Hindu connected with the spirit and soul of that land. Hinduism has helped me discover the forces of nature in which I live, their past and their future, their unique formations and their connections with the greater universe and the cosmic mind."
"I also remember reading Herman Hesse’s Journey to the East. I learned that there were great spiritual and mystical traditions in the East that perhaps still existed. I began my own journey to the East. Meanwhile I also studied European poetry and art. I particularly enjoyed the French symbolist poets like Rimbaud and Mallarme who had a mystic vision. The German mystic poet Rilke, however, was my favorite and best epitomized what I thought real poetry should be. Poetry had a depth and ambiguity that philosophy could not reach. I realized that it was a better vehicle to reflect this mysterious universe in which we live. ...My own poetry became more imagistic, reflecting a symbolist base like that of Rilke or Rimbaud. Images of the dawn and the night, the sun, wind and fire arose in mind like primordial forces, with vague images of ancient Gods. These poems also had eastern affinities that I was gradually discovering."
"I could sense the march of Vedic dawns unfolding a continual evolution of consciousness in the universe. I could feel the Vedic wisdom permeating all of nature, unfolding the secrets of birth and death, the days and nights of the soul. The Veda was present at the core of our being like an inextinguishable flame and carried the spiritual aspiration of our species. It was sad to contemplate how far we had fallen – that culturally we had closed the doors on these ancient dawns and become mired in a dark night of greed and arrogance."
"References to seas and oceans and a vision of the universe as a series of oceans cannot be explained away by supposing that some big river was imagined to be the ocean by the primitive mind. This is not a rational interpretation of what is said but an irrational reduction of it according to the imposition of outside ideas and preconceptions. Yet this has been part of the general and accepted method of Vedic scholarship. Most of what has been done on the Vedas so far remains largely the unquestioned work of nineteenth century Western scholars who were often trapped in the cultural and sometimes imperialistic bias of their times."
"A culture would not likely have developed the myth of the winning of the rivers to flow into the sea if it had never seen the ocean. Moreover, the winning of the Waters and the winning of the Light are presented in the Rig Veda as a single victory; the Waters are those of the Sun world. Why should a culture equate a daily light myth with a yearly water-rain myth? In north India there is a unique climatic condition wherein the rains occur at the summer solstice, the time when the days are longest. Inhabitants of such a land would quite naturally associate the light with the rains. Equating the rains with the year and the Sun would thus suggest north India as the land wherein this myth originated."
"Some Greek astronomers and astrologers knew of the precession, though they did not know exactly what it was or how to calculate it. Hipparchus appears to have discovered it among the Greeks and calculated it at 36" per year, which Ptolemy, the most famous Greek astrologer, adopted. The Hindus, in the Surya Siddhanta calculated the rate as 54", much closer to what is observed today as 50.3" per year.a While modem scholars consider this figure a lucky guess on the part of the Hindus it may reflect a better knowledge of the precession, perhaps arrived at by long term observations and necessary calendar shifts through time. For this reason, it is hard to derive Hindu astrology from the Greeks, as most Western scholars do. The Hindus compute the zodiac differently and the precession more accurately than the Greeks. Yet we are told, based upon the appearance of minor Greek terms in later Hindu astrology, that any accuracy in Hindu astronomy comes from the Greeks. Hindu astronomy has a long history and an extensive literature following different methods than those of the Greeks. As Vedic astrology is Sidereal, we cannot discountenance the astronomical references we find commonly in Vedic literature relative to the precession. Precessional changes are the hallmark of Hindu astronomy, the essence of the system. We cannot ignore them in ancient texts just because they give us dates too early for our conventional view of human history."
"Hindu Sidereal calculations are thus more complicated than Tropical ones. Hindu astronomy is a very specialized system that requires precise astronomical observations and shows an ongoing knowledge of the exact placement of the planets and equinoxes relative to the fixed stars. Such Sidereal measurements show how much the Hindus relied on actual stellar positions. On this basis it is hard to dismiss the positions of early Hindu astronomy as having no basis in observation."
"Hence, examining astronomical references in Vahara Mihira and Vedanga Jyotish, we arrive at the equinoctial positions of about 1280 BC. This is found as the latest reference in later Vedic texts like the Brahmans, with the new Moon in Magha marking the winter solstice. Using the different points of Krittika as marking the vernal equinox and the lunar positions earlier in the month of Magha back to the eighth day of the waning Moon (Ekashtaka), we get a period of 2800-1760 BC. Vedic references show an ongoing adjustment of their solstice-oriented calendar, proving the existence of Vedic culture at this time along with the existence of a sophisticated system of astronomical observation."
"However, if we look at their actual views, Hindu groups have a very different ideology and practices than the political right in other countries. In fact many Hindu causes are more at home in the left in the West than in the right. The whole idea of the 'Hindu right' is a ploy to discredit the Hindu movement as backward and prevent people from really examining it. The truth is that the Hindu movement is a revival of a native spiritual tradition that has nothing to do with the political right-wing of any western country. Its ideas are spiritually evolutionary, not politically regressive."
"The Hindu cause is similar to the cause of native and tribal peoples all over the world, like native American and African groups. Even Hindu concerns about cultural encroachment by western religious and commercial interests mirrors those of other traditional peoples who want to preserve their cultures. Yet while the concerns of native peoples have been taken up by the left worldwide, the same concerns of Hindus are styled right-wing or communal, particularly by the left in India!"
"When native Americans ask for a return of their sacred sites, the left in America supports them. When Hindus ask for a similar return of their sacred sites, the left in India opposes them and brands them as intolerant for their actions! When native peoples in America or Africa protest missionaries for interfering with their culture, they are supported by the left. Yet when Hindus express the same sentiments, they are attacked by the left. Even the Hindu demand for rewriting the history of India to better express the value of their indigenous traditions is the same as what native Africans and Americans are asking for. Yet the left opposes this Hindu effort, while supporting African and American efforts of a similar nature."
"Not surprisingly, the same leftists in India, who have long been allied to communist China, similarly style the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause as right-wing and regressive, though the Dalai Lama is honored by the American left. This should tell the reader about the meaning of right and left as political terms in India. When one looks at the Hindu movement as the assertion of a native tradition with a profound spiritual heritage, the whole perspective on it changes."
"The Hindu movement in India in its most typical form follows a Swadeshi (own-country) movement like the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch. It emphasizes protecting the villages and local economies, building economic independence and self-reliance for the country. It resists corporate interference and challenges multinational interests, whether the bringing of fast food chains to India, western pharmaceuticals or terminator seeds."
"The American Christian right is still sending missionaries to the entire world in order to convert all people to Christianity, the only true religion. It is firmly fixed on one savior, one scripture and a rather literal interpretation of these. Yet when Hindus ask the pope to make a statement that truth can be found outside of any particular church or religion they are called right-wing and backwards, while the pope, who refuses to acknowledge the validity of Hindu, Buddhist or other Indic traditions, is regarded as liberal!"
"The causes taken up by the Hindu movement are more at home in the New Left than in right wing parties of the West. Some of these resemble the concerns of the Green Party. The Hindu movement offers a long-standing tradition of environmental protection, economic simplicity, and protection of religious and cultural diversity. There is little in the so-called Hindu right that is shared by the religious or political right-wing in western countries, which reflect military, corporate and missionary concerns. The Hindu movement has much in common with the New Age movement in the West and its seeking of occult and spiritual knowledge, not with the right wing in the West, which rejects these things. Clearly, the western right would never embrace the Hindu movement as its ally."
"However, the entire right-left division reflects the conditions of western politics and is inaccurate in the Indian context. We must give up such concepts in examining Indic civilization, which in its core is spiritually based, not politically driven. It reflects older and deeper concerns that precede and transcend the West's outer vision. As long as we define ourselves through politics our social order will contain conflict and confusion. Democracy may be the more benign face of a political order, but it still hides the lack of any true spiritual order. We must employ the vision of dharma and subordinate politics to it, which should be a form of Karma Yoga."
"Can we trust transnational internet groups like Wikipedia, which are self-regulating and unaccountable, to determine or censor information for the public, to decide what are the facts in nearly all fields of life and learning?"
"Mosques built over important traditional Hindu temples like Kashi Vishwanath were not monuments to secularism, nationalism, religious pluralism or Bharatiya heritage. They were products of domination by hostile rulers trying to suppress the majority Hindu population."
"Wikipedia has published many questionable statements about Hindu writers, leaders, causes and historical issues. Is not an unbiased forum. Hindus should protest against its anti-Hindu views."
"Social media owners and directors have long allowed or promoted an anti-Hindu and anti-India bias. Are not providing a neutral platform but have their own political agenda. This extends to Wikipedia as well. Time for them to be made accountable."
"Using Marxism to understand India's ancient and vast dharmic civilization is like consulting a frog in a well for explaining the ocean. Those trapped in dialectical materialism cannot understand the unity of Self and universe, humanity and the cosmos."
"What happened India today is probably the only country in the world in which the colonial narrative against it has not been changed.... what happened is that the Marxists perpetuated the negative colonial narrative... so instead of the British being the enemy the Hindus became the enemy...."
"Yoga, Ayurveda, Vedanta and the Vedic view of history should be taught in India's schools as part of the national cultural heritage. If western views of wellbeing, psychology, history and culture can be taught, it is colonialism to exclude the legacy of Bharatiya traditions."
"According Dr. David Frawley eminent teacher and practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine: "No religion, perhaps, lays as much emphasis on environmental ethics as does Hinduism. It believes in ecological responsibility and says like Native Americans that the Earth is our mother. It champions protection of animals, which it considers also have souls, and promotes vegetarianism. It has a strong tradition of non-violence or ahimsa. It believes that God is present in all nature, in all creatures, and in every human being regardless of their faith or lack of it.""
"One occasion where I saw US-based Indian Marxists in action was at the 1996 Annual South Asia Conference in Madison, Wisconsin... I knew that excellent and innovative papers by N.S. Rajaram and Shrikant Talageri had been rejected by the organizers, so I felt entitled to expect presentations of top-notch scholarship dwarfing even that of Rajaram and Talageri. Instead, what the audience got, was a canvassing session for the “Forum of Indian Leftists” without any scholarly papers. The speakers disdained to even mention any of the argumentative contents of the AIT debate, except “David Frawley’s paradox” (the AIT’s puzzling implication pointed out by Frawley, viz. that the Harappan civilization had numerous cities but no literature, while Vedic civilization had a vast literature but no cities), which they simply laughed off without discussion ad rem. ... But Frawley’s paradox is entirely pertinent: what are the chances that a literate culture leaves the biggest conglomerate of archaeological sites behind, but only a handful of short inscriptions as the complete corpus of its literature; while the illiterate conquerors produce a vast and sophisticated literature within a few centuries, but leave no sizable architecture behind? What are the chances that the largest civilization of the world loses its language to a conquering band of nomadic tribesmen? The AIT has the weight of probability against it."
"One final reason for being confident is that because of the work of Ram Swarup, Sita Ram Goel, Koenraad Elst, David Frawley, and Rajiv Malhotra the corpus is now reaching a critical mass. So, that we can think that within few years we will have a library for India and a library of India."
"Here [Witzel] throws a bombshell: “Kazanas is heavily influenced here by Frawley’s most amazing paradox”. (Elsewhere I borrow from Kak or some other “fundamentalist-colleague”.) I was not heavily influenced by Frawley’s paradox. I simply acknowledged (after some research) that Frawley had “first noted” this paradox, namely that the literate Harappans left no literature while the non-literate, archaeologically unattested Aryans left their voluminous productions. With this I suppose [Witzel] tries to draw attention away from the fact that he has no explanation for the Aryanisation of North India. In [Witzel]’s mind Frawley is a fiendish figure of fundamentalist Hindutva, Astrology and the like, and therefore cannot utter any truth; if [Kazanas] is “influenced”, [Kazanas] also cannot utter any truth."
"“David Frawley is one of the most important scholars of Ayurveda and Vedic Science today. I have great respect and admiration for his knowledge and the way he has expounded the ancient wisdom of the Vedas.”"
"“Frawley is an Indian in an American body. The ease with which he enters into the spiritual of the Indian tradition and renders its deeper concepts in terms of modern thought shows an unusual familiarity with this ancient wisdom.”"
"“Certainly America’s most singular “practicing Hindu.””"
"“David Frawley is a formidable scholar of Vedanta and easily the best known Western Acharya of the Vedic wisdom.”"
"I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all."
"Now is now. It can never be a long time ago."
"The Little House books are stories of long ago. The way we live and your schools are much different now, so many changes have made living and learning easier. But the real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong."
"There's no great loss without some small gain."
"Remember me with smiles and laughter, for that is how I will remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, then don't remember me at all."
"If you look at other so-called children’s authors, you’ll see they never wrote directly for children. Though Lewis Carroll dedicated his book to Alice, I feel it was an afterthought once the whole was already committed to paper. Beatrix Potter declared, “I write to please myself!” And I think the same can be said of Milne or Tolkien or Laura Ingalls Wilder."
"I’ve tried to be gender-blind and believe tech is a gender-neutral zone but do think there has been gender-charged reporting. We all see the things that only plague women leaders, like articles that focus on their appearance, like Hillary Clinton sporting a new pantsuit. I think all women are aware of that, but I had hoped in 2015 and 2016 that I would see fewer articles like that. It’s a shame."
"David Karp is just incredibly special. I like to think that I’m good at empathy, but I will say that David Karp is just incredibly empathetic and really in tune with the community of people that he has, that are contributing and creating on Tumblr."
"I think I’ve always thought of culture as DNA. I don’t know a lot about genetics, but I understand some of it and I think that what you really want are the genes that are positive to hyper-express themselves in culture."
"It was the height of the first boom, so it was 1999. It was a good year to be a graduate in computer science."
"I was at Google. And if you looked at Tumblr and Yahoo!, you know when you look at a map and you can see the way that South America and Africa used to fit together, I sort of joked that as we got to know Tumblr we were like we kind of felt like those continents, like our users were older, their users were younger."
"I think that the big piece here is that it really allows us to partner. Yahoo! has always been a very friendly company."
"I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that's how you grow. When there's that moment of 'Wow, I'm not really sure I can do this,' and you push through those moments, that's when you have a breakthrough."
"If you can find something that you're really passionate about, whether you're a man or a woman comes a lot less into play. Passion is a gender-neutralizing force."
"You can be good at technology and like fashion and art. You can be good at technology and be a jock. You can be good at technology and be a mom. You can do it your way, on your terms."
"It's really wonderful to work in an environment with a lot of smart people."
"I’m proud of what we achieved at Yahoo. That said, we had a quickly decaying legacy business. All we really managed to do was offset the declines."
"There are different phases of companies. When you’re in the tens of people, the idea itself either attracts people or it doesn’t. People are there because they think the problem you’re trying to solve is just that important."
"I've heard both the founding stories of Google and Yahoo, and for both those companies, the founders didn't even have to get into a car. They could literally go to the law office, the venture capitalists, the bank... on a bike. It's all that close together."
"I stay right here and fight it out or die in the attempt."
"I will give them one more shot!"
"The social rootedness of science is often associated with the utility of applied science; this is an error and a dangerous error. But precisely the detachment of the theoretical scientist is rooted in the institutions of his society and in the evaluative choices which underlie those institutions. He can focus his whole attention, bringing every relevant clue to bear, on a problem wholly without appetitive or utilitarian implications, he can put his whole heart and mind into the search for understanding for the sake of understanding alone. How can he do this? First, because he himself has been nourished and disciplined by traditions cultivated within his society which have produced this kind of devoted attention to impersonal goals. And secondly, because the society itself, in its deepest foundations, respects those independently self-sustaining traditions of scientist or scholar."
"At the core, eating other creatures doesn't appeal to me. … Finally after seeing Forks Over Knives, I decided it was time to cut out all dairy and eggs as well. Being a decade long vegetarian at the time, the transition was much easier. … I also hope to use my platform to educate and transform people's perceptions on plant based diets, what plant based athletes look like, and can achieve, and to just encourage everyone, no matter what your lifestyle is, to be more mindful of the choices we have when it comes to diet and the impact those choices have on ourselves, our culture, and the environment. … I just encourage everyone, especially parents and kids, to really get educated on the corporate food system currently in place. It's causing an epidemic of sick people. Take the power back, and put the nourishment of your body, mind, and soul back into your own hands. Every little step you make to eliminate animal products in your meals is a one step closer to the big leap we all could benefit from taking."
"The cry that we have entered upon our imperial course in order to benefit the native populations in the lands that we have conquered is an old one. ... I have before me McKinley's proclamation to the Filipinos, and I have placed it side by side with a proclamation of the King of Assyria, written eighteen hundred years before Christ. A man would think that McKinley had plagiarized the idea from Asshurbanipal."
"Each act of aggression, each new expedition of conquest is prefaced by a pronouncement containing a moral justification and an assurance to the victims of the imperial aggression that all is being done for their benefit."
"The basic principle of this government is the will of the people. A system was devised by its founders which seemed to insure the means of ascertaining that will and of enacting it into legislation and supporting it through the administration of the law. This was to be accomplished by electing men to make, and men to execute the laws, who, would represent in the laws so made and executed the will of the people. This was the establishment of a representative government, where every man had equal voice, equal rights, and equal responsibilities. Have we such a government today? Or is this country fast coming to be dominated by forces that threaten the true principle of representative government?"
"Since the birth of the Republic, indeed almost within the last generation, a new and powerful factor has taken its place in our business, financial and political world and is there exercising a tremendous influence. The existence of the corporation, as we have it with us today, was never dreamed of by the fathers… The corporation of today has invaded every department of business, and it’s powerful but invisible hand is felt in almost all activities of life. The effect of this change upon the American people is radical and rapid. The individual is fast disappearing as a business factor and in his stead is this new device, the modern corporation."
"Publicity, discussion, and agitation are necessary to accomplish any work of lasting benefit."
"In the course of every attempt to establish or develop free government a struggle between Special Privilege and Equal Rights is inevitable. [...] Our great industrial organizations [are] in control of politics, government and national resources. They manage conventions, make platforms, dictate legislation. They rule through the very men elected to represent the people. [...] The battle is just on. It is young yet. It will be the longest and hardest ever fought for Democracy. In other lands, the people have lost. Here we shall win. It is a glorious privilege to live in this time, and have a free hand in this fight for government by the people."
"The real cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy."
"There is another plane of thought into which some have entered. It holds up a vision of a society redeemed by true democracy. It believes in a time when monopoly shall be no more, and labor and capital, no longer at war, shall cooperate to the wiping out of involuntary and undeserved poverty in an era of industrial equality and social peace."
"We are slow to realize that democracy is a life; and involves continual struggle. It is only as those of every generation who love democracy resist with all their might the encroachments of its enemies that the ideals of representative government can even be nearly approximated."
"The ill-gotten surplus capital acquired by exploiting the resources and the people of our country begets the imperialism which hunts down and exploits the natural resources and the people of foreign countries, erects huge armaments for the protection of its investments, breeds international strife in the markets of the world, and inevitably leads to war."
"Back of every big army and navy appropriation bill is the organized power of private interest, pressing for more battleships, more armor plate, more powder, more rifles, more machine guns, a large standing army, a bigger navy. Over and over again, we have heard the special interests making their hypocritical appeals on the ground of patriotism, urging that thorough preparation for war is always a sure guarantee of peace. It has but one purpose, and that is to sacrifice human life for private gain."
"I have become more and more impressed with the deep underlying singleness of the issue. It is not the tariff or conservation or the currency. It is not the trusts. The supreme issue, involving all the others, is the encroachment of the powerful few upon the rights of the many."
"Mr. President, I had supposed until recently that it was the duty of senators and representatives in Congress to vote and act according to their convictions on all public matters that came before them for consideration and decision. Quite another doctrine has recently been promulgated by certain newspapers, which unfortunately seems to have found considerable support elsewhere, and that is the doctrine of “standing back of the President” without inquiring whether the President is right or wrong. For myself, I have never subscribed to that doctrine and never shall. I shall support the President in the measures he proposes when I believe them to be right. I shall oppose measures proposed by the President when I believe them to be wrong."
"Wealth has never yet sacrificed itself on the altar of patriotism."
"The mobbing of harmless, helpless Negroes in the capital of this country is the nation's everlasting shame. The responsibility for starting the riots, which ruled Washington for days, rests upon disorderly lawless whites. Peaceable, unoffending colored men and boys were beaten up and murdered by brutes who boast of our white civilization."
"Mere passive citizenship is not enough. Men must be aggressive for what is right if government is to be saved from those who are aggressive for what is wrong."
"I think all men recognize that in time of war the citizen must surrender some rights for the common good which he is entitled to enjoy in time of peace. But, sir, the right to control their own government according to constitutional forms is not one of the rights that the citizens of this country are called upon to surrender in time of war."
"Rather in time of war the citizen must be more alert to the preservation of his right to control his government. He must be most watchful of the encroachment of the military upon the civil power. He must beware of those precedents in support of arbitrary action by administrative officials, which excused on the plea of necessity in wartime, become the fixed rule when the necessity has passed and normal conditions have been restored."
"More than all, the citizen and his representative in Congress in time of war must maintain his right of free speech. More than in times of peace it is necessary that the channels for free public discussion of governmental policies shall be open and unclogged."
"Mr. President, our government, above all others, is founded on the right of the people freely to discuss all matters pertaining to their government, in war not less than in peace, for in this government the people are the rulers in war no less than in peace."
"It is no answer to say that when the war is over the citizen may once more resume his rights and feel some security in his liberty and his person. As I have already tried to point out, now is precisely the time when the country needs the counsel of all its citizens. In time of war even more than in time of peace, whether citizens happen to agree with the ruling administration or not, these precious fundamental personal rights-free speech, free press, and right of assemblage so explicitly and emphatically guaranteed by the Constitution should be maintained inviolable."
"The universal conviction of those who yet believe in the rights of the people is that the first step toward the prevention of war and the establishment of peace, permanent peace, is to give the people who must bear the brunt of war's awful burden more to say about it."
"The setting up of a new, invisible and all powerful government in this country, within the last twenty years, in open violation of fundamental and statutory law, could not have been accomplished under the steady fire of a free and independent press."
"Where public opinion is free and uncontrolled, wealth has a wholesome respect for the law. Except for the subserviency of most of the metropolitan newspapers, the great corporate interests would never have ventured upon the impudent, lawless consolldation of business, for the suppression of competition, the control of production, markets and prices. Except for this monstrous crime, 65 per cent of all the wealth of this country would not now be centralized in the hands of 2 per cent of all the people. And we might today be industrially and commercially a free people, enjoying the blessings of a real democracy."
"To control the American market is to own America. It is better than that. Control of the market prices of this great country enables those in contral to tax the people through extortionate prices for the necessaries of life, to the limit of their earning power, and yet escape all of the responsibilities of ownership."
"When the Morgan and Rockefeller interests harmonized to consummate the great wrong, they well understood that they could not achieve their purpose against a hostile press. Hence they "took over" the newspapers. This does not necessarily mean the ownership of all newspapers. The perfection of the modern combination is little less than a Fine Art. Here again control is better than outright ownership. And control can be achieved through that community of interests, that interdependence of investment and credits which ties the publisher up to the banks, the advertisers, and special interests."
"To befool and mislead the people, to falsify public opinion, is to pervert and destroy a republican form of government. Free government is government by public opinion. Upon the soundness and integrity of public opinion depends the destiny of our democracy."
"La Follette's autobiography is beautiful, - a splendid man."
"Over the course of American history, a handful of U.S. senators have been so consequential that they are remembered better than some presidents. Among them are Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert La Follette, Everett Dirksen and Ted Kennedy. John McCain, who died Saturday, deserves to be the most recent addition to this exclusive company."
"Robert M. La Follette, Sr., of Wisconsin, a ceaseless battler for the underprivileged in an age of special privilege, a courageous independent in an era of conformity, who fought memorably against tremendous odds and stifling inertia for the social and economic reforms which ultimately proved essential to American progress in the twentieth century."
"Amid the rolling hills of Primrose Township in south central Wisconsin still stands the farmstead of Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette, the most radical of America's turn-of-the-century progressives. As Wisconsin's governor and senator, and one of the most successful third-party presidential candidates in history, La Follette preached a militant gospel of opposition to corporate monopoly and the corrupting influence of special-interest money on American politics, along with unblinking support for the freedom struggles of women and minorities at home and dispossessed peoples abroad."
"LaFollette had long been the subject of vitriolic newspaper attacks because of his stand against the big corporations and the system of which they were a part."
"I believed that he represented the honest Americanism which flowed from the pioneers. He was for the farmers, whether Swedes, German, Swiss, Irish, or what; and for the industrial workers, native and foreign-born alike. His record was replete with activity in the interests of both. As District Attorney, as Representative in Congress, and as Governor, he had served intelligently and conscientiously. Speaking at county fairs, chautauquas, and other gatherings all over the state, he showed up the rottenness in his own party, exposed appalling inequalities in the Wisconsin taxing system, and the vital importance of public supervision of railroad rates. And now he won re-election as he had won all previous contests for public office. All the mud-slinging had failed to stop him."
"Since I'm old, instead of taking the booing, I want to tell you, I'm doing the very best I can. I mean, If you're a real fan, you know that I'm not just like my job is not to sign autographs, right? My job is to drive a car and to tell the crew chief what's going on. I don't appreciate the booing... It hurts my feelings. I'm a fucking person; you know what I mean? I'm a person, too. I have feelings. When you boo me, it hurts my feelings. Please just be supportive fans. I'll do everything I can. When I came from over here, my car was over there. I can only do so much. I have to get in the car. So please understand that."
"Justice Antonin Scalia fundamentally changed the way the Supreme Court interpreted both statutes and the Constitution. In both contexts, his focus on text and its original public meaning often translated into more limited criminal prohibitions and broader constitutional protections for defendants. As to statutes, Justice Scalia refocused the court’s attention on the text of the laws Congress enacted. Although he may not have succeeded in getting the court to forswear even looking at legislative history, he did persuade his colleagues to start — and very often end — the analysis with the text. In the criminal context, he limited terms like extortion and property to their common law core and found the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act as unconstitutionally vague as “the phrase ‘fire-engine red, light pink, maroon, navy blue, or colors that otherwise involve shades of red.” When it came to interpreting the Constitution, he likewise put the text first and emphasized that the terms must be understood in light of their original public meaning. He believed that the words should be understood the way the framers used them. This did not mean that constitutional protections were frozen in time."
"If the NFL is going to make us pick between the NFL and a love of country, those of us who love football are going to pick our country over that game, To think that we have men who take to the field and take a knee when we play the national anthem I think is disappointing. Frankly, I think it's disgusting, When you kneel in front of the flag, it's disrespect to the men and women who served — those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, you could have an issue with America, but you don't kneel in front of the flag that represents so many great things"
"If you think research is expensive, try disease."
"I have had the advantage of the opportunity to meet with Mr. Trump on several occasions. And my experience is that he’s very intelligent. He’s thirsty for information. He wants to hear what you have to say. He listens to his advisers. He digests the information very quickly, and he’s got a good memory, because I remember one time I was talking to him about something, and then he pulled some information out of his memory banks that was a great connection that I hadn’t even thought to mention to him. So, I think there is another difference here, too. Different presidents are different as far as their public persona vs. their persona meeting with advisers. For example, George Bush was pretty much the same in person as when he was speaking publicly. I think Donald Trump has a stage persona and he also has a temperament when meeting with his advisers. Now, the positions are the same, but the attitude is a little bit different."
"I think, to many conservatives, many Republicans, it was reassuring, in the sense that this was the first time we have seen a president, a conservative president, really express vocally at a press conference the bias he feels and many of us feel has been given in the coverage toward the Trump administration. And so he’s sort of holding the press’ feet to the fire while he’s taking their questions. And it’s combative. It’s interesting. I think you are going to see a lot more people tuning in to these press conferences. It used to be that conservatives who were in government, like myself, we would get what we felt was unfair coverage, we’d go home, we would grumble, we would complain about it, but we actually wouldn’t say anything to the reporter or to the reporters while they’re asking us additional questions. He’s very confrontational. And I think that’s refreshing. So I think it actually is going to be good. And I think the public is going to take an interest in these press conferences much more so than in past presidencies."
"As the war rages on in Afghanistan and—despite spin to the contrary—in Iraq as well, and the are engaged in parallel, covert, shadow wars that are waged in near total darkness and largely away from effective or meaningful or journalistic scrutiny. The actions and consequences of these wars is seldom discussed in public or investigated by the Congress. The current US strategy can be summed up as follows: We are trying to kill our way to peace. And the killing fields are growing in number."
"Fifteen years ago this week, on April 9, 2003, television networks across the globe cut to a live scene unfolding in ’s . A motley hybrid of what appeared to be ordinary Iraqis and uniformed U.S. troops — who had begun to occupy Baghdad — pulled down a massive statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a brilliant, semi-staged propaganda exercise meant to reinforce the neoconservative promise that ordinary Iraqis would be exuberant over the fall of the regime and welcome the U.S. troops as liberators. It was with this image firmly tattooed on the public consciousness of the war that George W. Bush stepped off a fighter plane onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, ridiculously dressed in a flight suit, and told the world that the American mission was accomplished. There was a massive banner with that message created just for that moment. In reality, this particular war was just beginning and it continues on to this day. It is important to examine what happened in this war and how it happened: the lies, the crimes, the , the destruction — all of it. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the neoconservatives should all hold a special place in the hall of shame for mass killers for what they did to Iraq. But they did it with the support of many in Congress, including some of the most prominent and elite Democrats, including the 2016 nominee for president, Hillary Clinton."
"The main Victims are, as they’ve always been: ordinary Iraqis."
"The U.S. policy on Iraq, not just from Bill Clinton to Bush to Obama and beyond, has been consistent but that it's been consistent for six decades through eleven presidents. That included covert CIA operations, regime change, support for Saddam Hussein and a merciless policy of targeting the Iraqi civilian population."
"The White House is openly plotting to bring down the government of Nicolas Maduro in Caracas. It is being openly promoted as a campaign to steal Venezuelan oil for the benefit of U.S. corporations, and some powerful Democrats are cheering Trump on and joining the conspiracy. Elliott Abrams, one of the premiere butchers of the U.S. dirty wars in Central America in the 1980s, has been named the point man in the effort to bring regime change to Venezuela. Let’s be clear here, Elliott Abrams is an unrepentant war criminal. He played a central role in the mass-slaughter of tens of thousands of people across Central and Latin America in the dirty wars of the 1980s. He was a player in the Iran-Contra scandal. It’s sickening. This administration brought in Abrams because of his immorality and his willingness to support mass murder. It’s the only reason he is there and no one with even a flimsy grasp of morality should be welcoming his appointment as special envoy on Venezuela."
"All across the so-called liberal media, the reporting and analysis on Venezuela the past weeks has been atrocious. And actually, it has been this way for a long time. We should remember that The New York Times actually openly supported the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez. But in the wake of the recent Venezuelan elections, there has been a total uniformity to the characterization of Venezuela’s suffering and chaos as the sole fault of Nicolás Maduro. The elections are being denounced by anchors as though it’s just accepted fact that Maduro is only president because of corruption. Almost never mentioned prominently is the fact that Venezuela has been systematically targeted by the United States and its allies and its puppets in Latin America or the impact the economic sanctions have had on the country or the fact that there was an attempt to kill Nicolás Maduro with a drone packed with explosives. The story is just “Maduro is a corrupt Socialist dictator. He needs to be taken out so that Venezuela can be free.” The central role that the U.S. has played under Bush, under Obama, and now, under Trump in destabilizing Venezuela"
"The Intercept conducted an exhaustive analysis of Biden’s political career with a focus on his positions on dozens of U.S. wars and military campaigns, CIA covert actions, and abuses of power; his views on whistleblowers and leakers; and his shifting stance on the often contentious relationship between the executive and legislative branches over war powers. The picture that emerges is of a man who is dedicated to the U.S. as an empire, who believes that preserving U.S. national interests and “prestige” on the global stage outweigh considerations of morality or even at times the deaths of innocent people. It also reveals a politician who consistently claims to hold bedrock principles but who often strays from those positions in support of a partisan agenda or because he wants a policy adopted regardless of the hypocrisy or contradictions. Nowhere is this dynamic more pronounced than on U.S. wars."
"As Biden is agitating for the United States to be militarily involved in the former Yugoslavia, Haitians in the United States are watching as a brutal junta, death squads, overthrow the democratically elected government of the leftist President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. And Biden gives an interview on Charlie Rose in which he basically says nobody cares about Haiti... the Clinton administration... starts a series of wars and military actions. So Biden supports all of them. He supports the bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. He supports bombing some farm in Afghanistan where maybe Osama bin Laden had been recently. And when the FBI director comes to testify in front of Congress, Joe Biden is one of the senators who starts saying, “Can you clarify for me: What’s the legality of assassination?” Biden seems to get this — the problem with the idea that America can kill whomever it wants, wherever it wants, however it wants. Then the 9/11 attacks happen. And the simplest way to put it is that Joe Biden just supports almost everything that the Bush administration wants in the immediate aftermath. Biden not only votes in favor of the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, he plays a key role in facilitating a war based on lies."
"the person who has been convicted of leaking top-secret documents and secret documents on the drone program, Daniel Hale, who is serving almost four years... in federal prison, one of the revelations that Daniel Hale was convicted of making that was published by The Intercept stated that at a certain period of time, U.S. so-called targeted killing operations in Afghanistan, as many as nine of ten people killed in the strikes were not the intended target... ten of ten were civilians. The one name that everyone knows is the individual who worked for a U.S. aid organization was one of the people killed in this strike... What happened after that is that the Pentagon did its own investigation of itself and exonerated itself of any crimes. This is the bipartisan self-exoneration machine that has long fueled U.S. military operations around the world. Joe Biden was part of the Obama administration, of course, which operated as a global octopus with lethal tentacles that could strike anywhere. Daniel Hale should be freed. He is an American hero for revealing what we now see continuing under Joe Biden."
"Regarding China...you have both the Democrats and Republicans taking an increasingly hostile posture... if you look at the recent comments of Xi Jinping, particularly after his virtual summit with Joe Biden, he has been really hitting the talking point that what is happening is that the United States is taking this neo-Cold War posture. I think he is entirely right. But I sort of see it in the same vein as you. China, the United States and Russia in particular are engaged in a classic capitalist battle for control of natural resources all throughout the world. What I think is happening as a result of NATO expansion, of Biden being a tremendously hawkish figure on Ukraine and basically daring Vladimir Putin to stand up to NATO expansion, is that you run the risk of what is ultimately the elite business class of the world having their battles spilling over into overt military conflict. I think China in particular is very concerned about the aggressive U.S. stance because I think China would be very happy to find a way to just sort of divvy up the world for domination in various regions. The United States is not going to accept that. The U.S. posture is pushing China and Russia into an even closer alliance akin to the relationship during the Cold War."
"Many democrats, liberals, traditional conservatives, and even some leftists continue to tell themselves that the election of Joe Biden was the first step toward restoring U.S. standing in the world after the damage caused by Donald Trump. And in a variety of ways — many stylistic and some substantive — that perspective has merit. But when it comes to national security policy, the U.S. has been on a steady, hypermilitarized arc for decades. Taken broadly, U.S. policy has been largely consistent on “national security” and “counterterrorism” matters from 9/11 to the present.... Biden’s election slogan was “America is back.” The truth is that “America” never left. There will be no major departures from the imperial course under Biden. While the drone wars continue, and the shift back to Cold War posturing in Europe and Asia accelerates, Biden will maintain the hostile stance toward left movements and governments throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. On climate change, Biden will reverse some of Trump’s most extreme stances, while still placing the profits of major corporations and the military industry over the health of the planet. The militarization of the borders and the maltreatment of refugees will remain, and the vast domestic surveillance apparatus will endure. The stark truth is this: The interests of the War Party trump any political disputes between the Democrats and the Republicans."
"A new project created by Jeremy Scahill, award-winning journalist and senior correspondent at The Intercept, examines Biden’s stances on war, militarism and the CIA going back to the early 1970s, when he was first elected as a senator in Delaware. We air a video discussing the project, titled “Empire Politician,” featuring Scahill... The project is called “Empire Politician.” It was created by the award-winning journalist Jeremy Scahill, senior correspondent and editor-at-large at The Intercept, which he helped found. Later in the show, Jeremy will join us, but first we turn to a new video featuring Jeremy Scahill..."
"“Democrats have to engage in theater about human rights and international law and due process, but they ultimately, at the end of the day, are just as aggressive as Republicans,” says investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill of the Intercept. We end today’s show with investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept. His latest article is headlined The War Party: From Bush to Obama, and Trump to Biden, U.S. Militarism Is the Great Unifier."
"I grew up always wanting to be an artist, and it was in high school when I started to really like writing. I was a junior in high school thinking about what I wanted to do with my life and I thought it would be great if I could find a job in which I could both draw and paint ... and write which was this new thing that I loved. And I thought children's picture books would be the perfect job for me. It was a great combination of those skills and that's when I decided that's what I wanted to do."
"I’ve had several teachers who inspired me. Most notable was, perhaps, an English teacher I had during my junior year of high school. All my life I’d been praised and encouraged as an artist. This particular teacher did this, but she also encouraged me as a writer, going so far as to say once, “I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw your name on a book one day.” The power of these words was enormous. I’ll never forget them. Or her."
"The main reason I became vegan was the book "." It basically changed my life. After the 2007 season I had read so much I decided to become a vegan and get rid of all the animal products -- meat and dairy. At first, it was basically just for the health benefits -- I was intrigued by the 2005 season when I cut a lot of that stuff out and got a lot better. It really changed my career, and I thought, "This might be something that helps me take my career to the next level." And it wasn't the main reason, but I like knowing everything I eat was served in a humane way."
"Alexander Gardner who later became the Colonel of Artillery in the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, had travelled extensively in Central Asia from 1819 to 1823 C.E. He saw a lot of slave-catching in Kafiristan, a province of Afghanistan, which was largely inhabited by infields at that time. He found that the area had been reduced to “the lowest state of poverty and wretchedness” as a result of raids by the Muslim king of Kunduz for securing slaves and supplying them to the slave markets in Balkh and Bukhara. He writes: “All this misery was caused by the oppression of the Kunduz chief, who not content with plundering his wretched subjects, made an annual raid into the country south of Oxus, and by chappaos (night attacks) carried off all the inhabitants on whom his troops could lay their hands. These, after the best had been selected by the chief and his courtiers, were publicly sold in the bazaars of Turkestan. The principal providers of this species of merchandise were the Khan of Khiva, the king of Bokhara (the great hero of the Mohammedan faith), and the robber beg of Kunduz. “In the regular slave markets, or in transactions between dealers, it is the custom to pay for slaves in money; the usual medium being either Bokharan gold tillahs (in value about 5 or 51/2 Company rupees each), or in gold bars or gold grain. In Yarkand, or on the Chinese frontier, the medium is the silver khurup with the Chinese stamp, the value of which varies from 150 to 200 rupees each. The price of a male slave varies according to circumstances from 5 to 500 rupees. The price of the females also necessarily varies much, 2 tillahs to 10,000 rupees. Even the double the latter sum has been known to have been given. “However, a vast deal of business is also done by barter, of which we had proof at the holy shrine of Pir-i-Nimcha, where we exchanged two slaves for a few lambs’ skins! Sanctity and slave dealing may be considered somewhat akin in the Turkestan region, and the more holy the person the more extensive are generally his transactions in flesh and blood.” Alexander Gardner subsequently found a Muslim fruit merchant at Multan “who was proved by his own ledger to have exchanged a female slave girl for three ponies and seven long-haired, red-eyed cats, all of which he disposed of, no doubt to advantage, to the English gentlemen at this station.”"
"I shall never be content until the beneficent influence of the University reaches every family of the state."
"The creatures were fun. They gave me a little problem at the beginning when we started to train them! But we finally got to be friends"
"From the time I was a very young kid I didn’t want to do anything but make movies the rest of my life."
"I like some of the sci fi and horror films made today but too many of them rely on digital effects, even when they’re not really called for."
"Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick, is trying to prolong her father's in Afghanistan. You would think that every Democrat would be united in opposing such a policy, right? Well, you would be wrong. It’s not every day that you wake up in your blue state and learn that one of your newly elected Democratic congresspeople is joining with a Cheney to try to prolong the longest war in American history. But that's what happened this week, when Colorado's freshman Democratic Rep. Jason Crow teamed up with Republican Rep. Liz Cheney to advance legislation that would make it more difficult for any president to draw down troop deployments in Afghanistan. I live in the same media market as Crow's district. I can tell you that his 2018 campaign was focused on gun control. It was not a campaign promising voters that he would go to Washington to make common cause with Liz Cheney, and help her efforts to glorify and fortify her daddy's policy of endless war. But that’s exactly what his bill does."
"Please join me in thanking Our Lord for the election of Pope Leo XIV, Successor of St. Peter, as Shepherd of the Church throughout the world.The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse has a particularly strong bond with the Roman Pontiff, especially through its affiliation with the Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major. I urge all pilgrims and friends of the Shrine to pray fervently for Pope Leo XIV that Our Lord, through the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Peter the Apostle and Pope St. Leo the Great, may grant him abundant wisdom, strength and courage to do all that Our Lord asks of him in these tumultuous times. May God bless Pope Leo and grant him many years."
"The synod that will begin tomorrow conceals an agenda that is more political and human than ecclesial and divine. The will is to profoundly change the hierarchical constitution of the Church is clear, with a further consequence a weakening of teaching on morality as well as discipline in the Church."
"Cardinal Burke: “Synodality contradicts the true identity of the Church” (October 8, 2023)"
"our Lord Jesus Christ who alone is our Savior is not at the root and center of synodality."
"The Catholic Church is a church that has one faith, one sacramental system, and one discipline throughout the whole world, and therefore we’ve never thought that each part of the world would define the Church according to particular cultures."
"The idea of a one-world government is fundamentally the same phenomenon that was displayed by the builders of the Tower of Babel who presumed to exercise the power of God on earth to unite heaven with earth, which is simply incorrect. What we truly need is a religious conversion, in other words, a strong teaching and practice of faith in God and obedience to the order with which He has created us."
"This situation leads me to reflect more and more on the message of Our Lady of Fatima, who warns us against the evil—one even more serious than the very serious evils suffered because of the propagation of atheistic Communism—of apostasy from the faith in the Church. Paragraph 675 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that ‘Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers,’ and that ‘the persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.’ In such a situation, the bishops and the cardinals have the duty to proclaim true doctrine. At the same time, they have the duty to lead the faithful to make reparation for offenses against Christ and for the wounds inflicted on His Mystical Body, the Church, when the faith and discipline are not preserved correctly and promoted by her pastors. If the Pope does not perform his duty for the good of all souls, it is not only possible but also necessary to criticize the Pope. This criticism must follow Christ’s teaching about fraternal correction in the Gospel (Mt. 18:15-18). First, the lay person or the pastor must express his criticism privately, which will allow the Pope to correct himself. But if the Pope refuses to correct his seriously defective way of teaching or acting, the criticism must be made public, because the common good in the Church and in the world is at stake. Some have denounced those who have addressed their criticism to the Pope publicly, as though it were a display of rebellion or disobedience, but asking him—with due respect for his office—to correct confusion or error is not an act of disobedience but rather an act of obedience to Christ and therefore to His Vicar on earth."
"(On the Amoris Laetitia) So certainly, without the clarification of these questions, there is a potential of scandal. With regard to the question of heresy, one has to be very attentive to material heresy and to formal heresy. In other words, material heresy: are there actual statements in the text which are materially heretical? Are they contradictory to the Catholic Faith? Formal heresy: did the person—namely the person of the pope who wrote the document—intend to proclaim heretical teachings? And the last thing, I don’t believe myself at all. And I think with regard to the first question, the language and so forth is confusing and it’s difficult to say that these confusing statements are materially heretical. But they need to be clarified, and to refuse to clarify them could lead people into error, into radical thinking with regard to some very serious questions."
"The Remnant Interview of Cardinal Raymond Burke, Corrispondenza Romana (January 13, 2017)"
"Nothing has changed in the Islamic agenda from prior times in which our ancestors in the faith have had to fight to save Christianity. And why? Because they saw that Islam was attacking sacred truths, including the sacred places of our redemption. To say that we worship the same God as stated in Nostra Aetate, which is not a dogmatic document, I think is highly questionable … How can the God that we know, a God fundamentally of love, St. John says `God is love,’ be the same God that commands and demands of Muslims to slaughter infidels and to establish their rule by violence."
"Cardinal Burke emphasized the real importance of the Catechism published in 1912: it is not simply a religious and historical aid to be celebrated, and urged by the public, he stated that the Pius X remains to this day a firm and indispensable point of reference."
"The Cross is a reality in our lives, yet in the midst of suffering we see victory, in the midst of trouble, we experience hope. Our contemplation of the Cross is our contemplation of Christ, victim, priest, and king, the Cross stands at the center of our lives and our calling as Christians is to embrace the Cross, to embrace our reality, and to allow the Crucified One to lead us to new life. As we unite our struggles with the Cross of Christ we do so knowing what the Father did for Jesus, He will do for us, with faith in the Resurrection we find in meaning in the difficulties and suffering that we encounter in life."
"I Think if I wanted to be famous, I would be working hard at doing that -- I am kind of working hard at not doing that."
"I've been told this is R&B, but it could be a few other things. It is certainly pretty neat, Warning: Very Sticky Hook!"
"All you have to do is give me Credit, which has led to my music being used in like, a million YouTube videos and over a thousand movies on IMDb..."
"I started making music because it was a problem that needed solving; it was very hard for filmmakers to get anything done without going through giant rigor morale, or at least it used to be."
"It is always easiest to write for the mood I'm in... and after a few hours, I am almost always IN the mood of the music. Because... that's what music does."
"I say! It is such a lovely brisk day! Aren't the horses lovely? I mean... look at all the horseness they have! They are scoring quite high on the horse-o-meters today! Nothing bovine on this street, Nay! ... ... ... Wait... I was trying to make a joke involving a horse's "neigh" combined with the archaic positive/negative usage of "nay". Then everything went wrong, and I said almost the opposite of the intention. So, without the joke: Picture a street where the only animals are the horsiest of horses... No cows or pigs. Okay, there are two dogs... but one of them is pretty small... and you can see a cat in one of the windows... but MOSTLY horses. If you added up the weights of all the non-horse, non-humans in the picture, they would weigh less than one horse."
"What is meditation for one may be cause for concern in another. - Some Elf"
"Picture a pixellated medieval village... cause that's what this is. It is the kind of music we think they played back in the day. It is not historically. But I'm okay with that, because we also didn't have lich-kings, lich-mages, lich-illithids, lich-warriors, or lich-archers. We did have lichens, though... I like lichens!"
"Welcome to the Holiday Inn, Airport. The presentation will begin shortly. SUCCESS starts with your ATTITUDE! If you are not EARNING, make sure you are LEARNING! AMBITION is the path to success. PERSISTENCE is the vehicle you arrive in. Success is doing the OPPOSITE of what everyone else is DOING! Actually... don't take this last one too literally. If everyone else is using the door, don't try walking through a wall (or whatever the opposite of a "door" is). I mean... there is a reason most people do the same things. Usually because they make sense. Oh, sure... it is okay to QUESTION what people are doing, but just doing the opposite... probably not great. The future of NETWORK MARKETING is UNLIMITED! Oh... Also a bit of hyperbole here. I mean, it literally cannot exceed the gross output of all the world's economies - and will likely top out far before that due to INEFFICIENCIES and REGULATION."
"This piece took almost exactly one year to go from initial idea to produced piece. What was I doing for a whole year!? I mean... it doesn't exactly sound that difficult."
"Is it a real Gregorian Chant? Nope. For one - there are no real words in it. Honestly, I don't want a religious exaltation mucking up my fantasy world. So if you're building a historically accurate "Monk Simulator: Year of Our Lord 882!", just move on. The other reason this isn't real is I never learned how to read that notation. There are insufficient sticks for the rhythms in the notation... I know, there is a real convention that you can learn. I just grabbed a few pieces of the sheet music from the 1200s, and guessed at how to do it. Sounds reasonable enough to me! (says the guy who knows virtually nothing about the art)"
"Background to an evil political action ad. Add your own alarmist voice over - this was engineered to make people uncomfortable, and not interfere with human voice range. "Tell your congressman to vote NO on the Pollute Our Drinking Water and Send All of Our Money to Canada Act.""
"Welcome to the tropical paradise of Port Horizon. Not much to do here but listen to the short wave radios and play guitar. There is also food and drinks with those little umbrellas... Other than that - not much. Except snorkeling. Snorkeling is pretty cool. Oh, there is also Art Night on Tuesday - where you get a volleyball and some paints and make yourself a friend! Beach chess... I forgot about Beach Chess. Don't play white against Todd, though - he plays all-Hedgehog all the time. Come on, Todd - just once, seriously ONCE could you play King's Indian or... you know what? I'd even take the French Defence; Exchange Variation, you boring symmetrical jerk."
"Oh! The horror! This is NOT a fun piece. It WILL make you feel like there is something seriously wrong. Did those veins on my forearm always look like that? I mean, they're doing a weird criss-cross pattern... and they look REALLY blue. I would have noticed that before, surely! I wonder if this has anything to do with the meteor that came down in Mr. Wilson's pond last night?"
"Part one of seven. Sort of an edgy-underwater feel... which isn't common. You can feel the struggle just trying to get the sounds out. Imagine a small rhinoceros at a tea party. The image you have in your head has nothing to do with this piece; But it is quite amusing."
"Part three of seven. Part pipe organ, part broken pipe organ, this isn't just spooky, it is crazy spooky. It also has a musical theme, which not all of this horror moody stuff has. Consider it the jelly filling in your horror doughnut."
"Part four of seven. This is the pizza cutter of this series, round and edgy. It has a little bit of melodic complexity, but mostly it just sits around being creepy."
"Part five of seven. Airy, but not in the "I'm outdoors, and everything is great 'airy'" way. More like the "the alien machine that sustains our life is slowly breaking down and poison is beginning to seep from its core" way. Whatever is happening... it isn't fast, and it isn't good."
"Part seven of seven. A real mind bender. This one is all acoustic, and no artificial synths, so it has an organic feel. Not Certified Organic, just normal organic. So, that means it looks better, requires less fertilizer, has fewer pests and a higher yield."
"Southern trap influenced rap pile of musical forklift platypus... okay, I don't know what these words mean. But if you understood them - we're all good. You know what you're getting, and... that's all I can hope for really. Truth in advertising!"
"Could be the thinking music for a quiz show about the paranormal? "Where does the Sasquatch typically vacation... is it A, The High Mountains... B, Unexplored Cave Systems... C, Graceland... or D, In another dimension - similar to, but not strongly coupled with our own reality. Take your time and answer whenever you're ready.... A, B, C, or D... Would you like to consult the Tarot or do an entrail reading?" I love the flute bits in this piece."
"You know when you watch a vampire movie and then you walk out into the real world, but you're still sort of in the fictional world because it looked like the real world... and that's where you are now. I call this Persistence of Fiction, and it feels awesome! Capture some fiction by playing this track while walking to the bus... er the Vampire Bus! or waiting in line at the Vampire DMV or sorting Vampire Direct Mail Ads or doing some Vampire Macrame."
"You know what's cool? A standpipe in the winter. I imagine this one with a hip mustache and a plaid beret. Enough of the imagery, this is a little downtempo chill piece with lush horn punctuation. Suitable for: walks in the rain, time-lapse videos, sad cooking shows."
"This piece was built almost entirely with arpeggiators. What does that mean for you? Probably nothing. But holy man! Does this sound like it is from 1983! So, pop a tape of "Flashdance" in your VCR... and then spend like 8 minutes rewinding it... because, apparently your cousin couldn't be bothered to do that. Seriously, Sally! You did the same thing when I lent you "Smokey and the Bandit II", and I didn't say anything because you had a hard week, but still managed to make the Jell-o Salad with the grapes for the family reunion... which was nice. Anyway, I'll probably just get you one of those $20 tape rewinders they have at Radio Shack for your birthday. I also enrolled you in the Battery of the Month Club. You're welcome."
"Yeah Boyzzz! BGM Music in the HOUSE!!!! In this case, "BGM Music" means "Background Music... Music". You want royalty-free!? You got it! You want ukulele mastery!? You got that, too! You want a piece that's a GNDN piece!? DONE! It's like a whole new genre of undistinguished music! It is sort of bouncy, and cheery. So... somewhat distinguished. It is really hard to hype this piece, but it is wicked-useful!"
"Stop it! Stop complaining, it is supposed to end like that! This is a loopable piece. Why? You never know how long your voice-overed tour of the cardboard factory is going to take... Or your real estate tour... Or your appendectomy video... Or your video of that one train by your house."
"So this one sounds like what is [sic] sounds like."
"Have you ever heard a 4 bassoon ensemble before? Not likely. While bassoonists may create temporary pair-bonds, they are never found in groups of 3 or more. Much digital trickery was involved in this piece to make them appear as though they were all in the same room at the same time. Tuba players, on the other hand exhibit extreme flocking behaviour, and have even been spotted in mass migrations."
"Co-written with Bryan Teoh while he was on vacation (Thanks Bryan!) this is all the mystery and chill groove you need. So come on you cats and swingers, enjoy yourself a Jet Pilot (served in a pineapple of course) and help unravel the Secret of Tiki Island! Can you save yourself and the island from the Volcano!? No. Of course you can't. It is a freaking VOLCANO. If the pyroclastic flows and lahars don't kill you, the carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide probably will."
"I gotta admit, I've never been to a clambake, only ever fish boils... which are similar, except for clambakes usually involve mollusks and giant sea-bugs, and fish boils involve fish. Also, clambakes are more steaming and fish boils are more boiling. You're more likely to see Green Bay Packers jerseys at fish boils, and more likely to see New England Patriots jerseys at clambakes. This music is west-coast, though... The more I think about it - the less useful this descriptive paragraph becomes."
"What is love? Apparently, it is an odd mix of 1980's synthy love songs and modern trap beats. I don't think there is anything like this out there... which may be a fine thing - or I've just invented a genre. Crooner-Synth Trap-Pop."
"Welcome to the lobby of the FUTURE! Luxurious automatic ashtrays, and modern green vinyl furnishings set off the shag carpeted walls. Enjoy a Rusty Nail from our cheerful bar staff (with a complimentary cheese and fruit plate before 5pm). We feature prime rib dinners every day that ends in a "y"! Remember to tip the bellhops at least 5 cents per bag. Enjoy your stay! This was written 2 years before it was published, because I didn't have a good enough upright bass sample to make it go."
"Part alien cacophony, part organic awfulness, part six of seven. If you set this piece as music you wake up to in the morning, you're going to have a bad, bad day. There will be half remembered monsters from the times of not-asleep, not-awake... whose only jobs are to induce unexpected nausea inside government buildings."
"After some amount of introspection, I can only conclude that this is the afterlife, or some entryway to the afterlife... or a really cool club in the Meatpacking district after-hours."
"The bottom line here is that in actual historical fact, Turks were not like Nazis; Armenians were not like Jews; and attempts to convince Americans that they were are propaganda, not history. The Armenian tragedy was real and terrible, but it was not the only terrible tragedy in Turkey in 1915 and it wasn’t genocide; it was that in the midst of a wider war that brought death and destruction to millions on all sides, nationalist Armenians fought a war to claim a piece of Turkey for a country of their own, and lost."
"We can't let lone nutters get in the way of progress [...] #endwhitepeople [...] I'm not talking about wiping out people who identify as whites, it's about ending white privilege. [...] Show me in the UN OSAPG framework where it says whites are a protected group? genocide is only applicable to protected groups."
"Being jewish is a tangible unbroken form of identity going back 3000 years, whiteness is a construct from 200 ybp."
"I think there is a resurgence of anti-Semitism because at this point in time Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural, and I think we are going to be part of that transformation which must take place. Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies the once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the center of that. It's a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode and Jews will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading role, and without that transformation, Europe will not survive."
"I do feel a joy in my heart, not just the fact of being a bishop, but the way that my ordination has been received by everyone: my friends from bygone days who are here, my colleagues from the Archdiocese of Santa Cruz, the people and clergy here in Cochabamba where I am an unknown quantity; everyone has been wonderfully welcoming and making their greatest effort to help me feel at home in this Church. My family that is here has brought me a real sense of joy."
"I confess that it was personally a source of great joy when the revolution of the Pititas achieved its objective, as now a matter of great concern that the Movement to Socialism will return to power. It's not, as in sport, about my team winning or losing. I sincerely see the MAS as a great threat, not because it represents left against right – for me they are the same – but because it wants to absolutize itself with power against democracy and against the Kingdom of God, and therefore to the detriment of Bolivia and to the detriment of the Church."
"Faith is believing God. Faith in something bigger than we can understand. Faith means that at some point you arrive and you turn yourself over to something that's more than you can know, comprehend and be."
"Our health care policy must honor all human life and dignity from conception to natural death, as well as defend the sincerely-held moral and religious beliefs of those who have any role in the health care system."
"Too many politicians try to be something they're not. There is greatness and flaws in all of us, all in the same package. But I realized I had the ability to screw up but then move on. Being able to recognize a mistake and move on is necessary in politics."
"Capitalism is an old man gone insane. Terrified and desperate, but still able to fight with a vicious strength, as a last chance he runs amok. Now it is in Spain, as it was in Italy, Germany, and Austria. With no thought of consequences, this monster is on his final rampage to rule or ruin, and to ruin all hope of progress the world over is preferable to a confession of having outlived his time. That is the scene as I see it."
"There is an humble looking man hanging around the press headquarters of the conference (Guess who it is?-Ed.) He has a policy of his own-a crudely expressed and inadequate program that he calls "Toward Peace"-Here are a few paragraphs copied from the first page of his pamphet. "Every nation with a navy ought to destroy three cruisers a year instead of building more. Every tariff ought to be abolished. Nations based on the capitalist-system are anti-social-they breed war." Down with them! The delegates are the wise-men, this humble, ragged outsider is just "queer." The queerer they are the wiser they seem to me."
"Inasmuch as the years ahead of us look stormy for financial kings, they may be called upon like the kings of old to appear before the people and explain. I here present a speech that I feel can be used to advantage. The speech was delivered by a well-meaning capitalist before one thousand striking employees, and it worked quite satisfactorily-with only a few setbacks: "Fellow citizens and loyal Americans (brick hits a window), the interests of capital and labor are identical (mob hisses). What's mine is yours. (voice: "Like hell.") We all want to see justice done to labor-but we have different ideas as to how it should be done. (silence). Our books are open to you. We are not making any money now or we might meet your proposal half way (mob begins to feel sorry for him). I haven't been sleeping well lately (mob sheds a tear). Money doesn't bring happiness. (Mob disperses-king retires to his banquet-hall for a champagne supper with selected friends.)""
"Obviously the League of Nations is an attempt to form a trust, to put down international competition. In that sense it is "a step in the right direction" for capitalism. And just as any trust is helpful and sympathetic toward a private individual who is trying to gain his freedom in his own way, just so the League of Nations will help and sympathize with Ireland, or Hungary, or any nation struggling for its own kind of freedom-especially if that freedom happens to be industrial in its nature and not merely political. That is the covenant. It is the last stand of Commercial aristocracy, in collusion with kings, premiers and labor fakirs. But it is not yet plain to American business that we had better form such an alliance. If we do, there must be plenty of reservations. Capitalism of course is already international, so why make a covenant out of it? The next thing you know, people will become international and align themselves boldly against the common enemy. So let us make "reasonable" reservations."
"An imagination is a brain with wings. Guided by a hand that holds a pen or a voice that directs its dream, it has accomplished all the good that the world is heir to. Imagination soars above the wrongs of the world and things that are, to things that ought to be, and nothing can stop it, till its message is heard. Imagination sees an Atlantic cable and does not rest till it is a fact. Imagination sees a Republic and does not rest till the throne falls and the better order takes its place. Imagination sees a world where "common" humanity shares in the right of suffrage, and it comes to pass. Imagination sees a world without poverty, where the producer owns the means of production and distribution, and, as in all ages, the "practical mind" says "it can't be done." But it has been written and the man with the ballot is beginning to see."
"If he has illuminated the dark and serious subject with a suspicion of fun-it is meant to convey the hope he feels for all sinners like himself, that some relief of a slightly humorous nature may be found even in Hell."
"I was in deadly earnest about developing my talent, and carousing had no lure for me. I applied myself assiduously to the work in hand, and as I proceeded I became more and more convinced that graphic art was my road to recognition. Painting interested me no less, but I thought of it as having no influence. If one painted a portrait, or a landscape, or whatever, for a rich man to own in his private gallery, what was the use? On the other hand, a cartoon could be reproduced by simple mechanical processes and easily made accessible to hundreds of thousands. I wanted a large audience. . . The prevailing art of that period embraced a thorough, almost photographic, lens-like observance of detail. Gerome, Messonier, Cabanel, Vibert, and Bougeaureau were in the forefront of the artworld then, because they were accurate, precise draftsmen. (Chapter 1. Sunlight and Shadow in Paris)"
"I was to see more of the class struggle in the near future without knowing what it meant. Indeed, at that time, when I was 20 years old, I knew hardly anything except that I had a knack for drawing pictures and was pretty good at reciting selections from books of poetry. (Chapter 8. I see Chicago Justice at Close Range)"
"Everything I read about the Chicago Anarchists in 1886 and 1887 and nearly everything I heard about them indicated that the accused men were guilty. The news reports of the case in the dailies were quite as biased against the defendants as were the editorials. Few who read the charges that some of them had advocated violence against the police realized that they were driven to that extreme by the wanton clubbing, shooting, and killing of workers by the police in the fight of the big industries against the eight-hour day movement. (Chapter 10. Four Dissenters Silenced by the Rope)"
"If I had no other pleasant memories to recall than those of the beautiful women I have met who were active in progressive or radical affairs, life would still be worth while. I fell in love with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn when as a young girl she aroused uncounted thousands with her clear, ringing voice to the cause of social revolt. When I think of beauty I know that some on my list would not have passed a jury test for what is called feminine beauty today. But as a jury of one I attest that they were beautiful to my eyes, and their loveliness lingers in retrospect. With no attempt at alphabetical arrangement or making a complete list, I think of Margaret Larkin, Ernestine Evans, Rebecca Drucker, Ruth and Hannah Pickering, Jessica Smith, Crystal Eastman, Marguerite Tucker, Inez Milholland, Genevieve Taggard, Mary Marcy, Doris Stevens, Louise Bryant, Edna Porter, Leane Zugsmith. Freda Kirchwey. Sara Bard Field. Lydia Gibson, Martha Gruening. Clara Gruening Stillman. Jane Burr, Caroline Lowe, Jessica Milne, Mary Ware Dennett, Harriot Stanton Blatch. Margaret Sanger. Helen Black, Mary Heaton Vorse, Anna Strunsky, Louise Adams Floyd, Helen Keller. Grace Potter, Edna Kenton. Helen Todd, Anne Valentine, Carrie Giovannitti, Rose Hanna, Lucy Branham, and Sophia Wittenberg Mumford. And these are only a few of the many I have watched as they did their part in the fight to make this a better world to live in-organizing, picketing, speaking to crowds in halls or on street corners, writing, and raising money. (Chapter 40. Overflow Meeting of Memories)"
"With all my self-consciousness about looks (and it maybe a feminine streak that is said to be in every artist), I have long had a dislike for individuals who judge others by surface aspects, whether it be a matter of clothes regarded as incorrect for the occasion, a spot on a shirt-front, or need of a shave. Keeping up appearances all too often is the concern of persons who have nothing else worth keeping up."
"Novel reading called for wading through too much type. I had no patience for that. The very word "fiction" I abhorred. I wanted truth. Short stories, poems, paragraphs, brief essays, picture books-anything boiled down was more to my liking."
"I had another year to go when I quit (high) school-but I felt I was getting dumber and dumber each term, and that it would be a waste of time to continue."
"A good illustrator may draw from models but knows how to forget them."
"I made about ten drawings with a joke comment or dialogue for every one that I finished and sold. Thus I kept exercising my hand and eye."
"The flaring hoop-skirt had had its day, but complete coverage was still the fashion, woman's form being left to one's imagination."
"After a few weeks I decided to graduate myself to the life classes of Kenyon Cox and Carroll Beckwith on the floor above, and strangely enough, no one objected; I just walked in as if I belonged."
"Inspiration from my youthful partial knowledge of Dore's work had carried me a long way. But now I was becoming acquainted with the political and social satires of other leading graphic artists in England and France-Hogarth, Rowlandson, John Leech, George Cruikshank, John Tenniel, Daumier, and Steinlen, and all of these held important and increasing values for me."
"Journalism today is for the most part gentlemanly and decorous, in so far as the relations among newspapers in the big cities are concerned."
"Although I knew that art schools could not make artists, I enjoyed the environment and the thought that I had an aim in life."
"Usually politics was my theme, varied now and then, on an off day, by some travesty on prevailing fads."
"in 1933, fifty-three years after the sweeping defeat of this movement which had reaped so much editorial and oratorical abuse, its supposed evil nature had been forgotten, and Congress voted for the payment of government bonds in currency, one of the demands of the Greenback convention in 1880. And in the intervening years other planks in the Greenback platform had been embodied in government policies or had been generally approved in principle."
"I have always been sensitive to competent oratory, and from that year to the present time have heard all kinds-most of it I would say, as one of Plutarch's noble Grecians or Romans put it, "tall and lofty like a cypress tree, but bearing no fruit.""
"It seems unbelievable at this distance that we assailed a candidate because he combed his hair the wrong way, but that is a part of the record of mud-slinging in American politics. And I was a participant on the front page of a leading newspaper [The Inter-Ocean]."
"To escape from such thoughts I would go back to my drawing board and plunge into the making of pictures. And now I found a new means of escape-lectures and libraries. Both enabled me to get away for a little while from my discontented thoughts because of loss of freedom through wedlock. Lately I realized anew that my education was inadequate. So many questions came up that I couldn't answer, and I needed to fortify myself with such answers. By listening to the lectures and reading a wide variety of books I nursed the seed which had been planted in my mind by Keir Hardie's speech in Denver, and by Myron Reed's discussions of the human struggle there."
"Speakers for the Social Democratic party provided me with much food for thought. They attacked the whole capitalistic system, showed how its different units combined to exploit the producing masses to the nth degree, and how the distorted or suppressed news to protect this system, of which it was a part. Being loyal to the press, my first reaction to this denunciation was one of resentment, though I had to concede that some of the charges were true."
"Listening to lectures on the class struggle (after I discovered that such a struggle had been going on for ages), I found that I had a great deal in common with the everyday workers. In other years I had felt that as a newspaper artist I was a member of a profession which enjoyed important privileges and in which a man might possibly rise to fame and fortune. But I saw now that everyone who did productive work of any kind was at the mercy of those who employed him. They could make or break him whenever they so willed...I was living in a world morally and spiritually diseased, and I was learning some of the reasons why."
"Perhaps no editor has been so guilty of stirring up the baser passions of human beings as Hearst. Often in his early years as an editor and publisher, he did some political arousings on the side of the workers. It helped him get circulation. Gradually, however, he evolved a policy which prevailed over all liberal doctrines that he might advocate-devoting his publications to the will of the big moneyed interests to have and to retain everything that they possessed and to insure their hopes of getting more through their 'superior intelligence'"
"with this feeling, I poised in my mind some other questions as to the soundness of beliefs I had long held, based upon copy-book maxims drilled into one generation of American children after another: "Merit wins...Survival of the fittest...You can't change human nature...The best people...The poor you have with you always...and the whole long line of rubber-stamp moral precepts. What were these but glittering emblems set up by the moneyed class to serve its own purposes? Born bourgeois, my brain had been filled from infancy with the nonsense of super-patriotism, with the lily-white virtues of imperialism added in due time. I had harbored these false values because I didn't know any better. I had been a drifter, innocent and sheep-minded long enough."
"Now that I was awakening to the realities of the economic struggle, I realized that I could no longer conscientiously deal with certain subjects in the way that editors wanted them handled. I had ideas for pictorial attacks on institutions hooked up with the money power, but there was no sale for these. The few papers which dared strike at the system were small, and had no money to pay for my product. And I had to live and support a family."
"Where was I headed? I didn't quite know. I had talent, facility, and a desire to produce-but steadily my market was diminishing. I fell back on illustrated jokes, and even here struck a snag. Tramps were no longer so funny to me as they had been. And my attitude toward the farmer had changed-I no longer wanted to depict him as a mere comic character. His life was all too often bound up with tragedy. The Populists had been right in many of the things they had said about the farmer's plight."
"we got a hint of how the Espionage Act would be used as a club against people with anti-war beliefs"
"Most of us who were cooperatively bringing out the Masses were agreed upon that. Some channel of protest must be safeguarded for those who had not been stampeded into dumb obeisance to the world's war-makers."
"Slacker had come into the language as a term of frequent use. Bundles of Hearst newspapers had been burned in Times Square because Hearst was slow in swinging to the Allied cause but in a few weeks he had swung, and American flags were printed all over his daily sheets. So-called pro-Germans were being tarred and feathered by mobs in the West. Frank Little of the I.W.W. executive board had been lynched by business men in Butte, Montana. And new and appalling tales of cruelty to conscientious objectors were coming out of the prisons where they were confined."
"My world had grown small and shaky. I learned what ostracism means. Men and women whom I had counted as friends found it convenient to pass me on the street without speaking, or were brief and impersonal in their conversation. And often I felt that I was being pointed out as a treasonable being to be shunned as one would the plague."
"The term "Wobbly", said to have been fastened on the I. W. W. members in derision by a Los Angeles editor, had been adopted by them with enthusiasm."
"Editors of most of the magazines where I had long had entree also shied at my offerings. Sometimes they attempted to explain, but there was no need-it was obvious that they could not afford to continue using the work of one who was being prosecuted by the government on sedition charges. Thus I had difficulty in making a living. But there was one editor who stood by me-Jacob Marinoff, of the Big Stick, a Jewish humorous weekly, which also was under surveillance by the federal authorities."
"One week-end during that trial I went up to Monroe to see my folks. They made me feel at home as always, doing everything possible to insure my comfort. But I noticed that greetings from some of my old acquaintances around town lacked the warmth of the past. They talked with me nervously and seemed to be in a hurry, as if they might be open to criticism if they were seen tarrying with one who had been accused of disloyalty to his country."
"Of course clergymen and other paid teachers and moralists admonished us to be upright and unselfish, and for people with good incomes it was easy to condemn those living on the edge of poverty as inferior, impractical, shiftless, and lacking respect for the social code. It was easy to shout thief at the other fellow when you had no temptation to steal-I mean steal in a petty way. But stealing in a big way was often accepted as good business judgment."
"I found that life was a continual struggle for most of us-and this on a plane not much above that of the struggle of wild animals-and that society dismissed this obvious truth as a negligible factor in determining human conduct as well as our mental and physical well-being. I began to see that this economic battle persisted even in the midst of an exhaustless plenty, and that most humans lived and died trying to succeed in a material sense, in short, to reach the goal of a triumphant animalism."
"Every one of us is born with some kind of talent. In early manhood or womanhood each individual begins to see a path, though perhaps dimly, that beckons to him or her. All of us have this leaning toward, or desire for doing ably, a certain kind of work, and only want an opportunity to prove our capacity in that direction. These hunches, these signs of one's natural trend, are usually right, and are not to be thrust aside without regret in later life. I am antagonistic to the money-making fetish because it sidetracks our natural selves, leaving us no alternative but to accept the situation and take any kind of work for a weekly wage. We are expected to "make good," which is another way of saying make money. Therefore we do things for which we have no real understanding and often no liking, without thought as to whether it is best for us, and soon or late find that living has become drab and empty."
"So most of us pray not for riches, but for just enough to assure our living in normal comfort and perhaps a little extra for funeral expenses at the end."
"I do not think of myself as having arrived at any degree of achievement commensurate with my potential talent and capacity for work. I am just one among the many who have tried to approximate some measure of integrity in a world that is a sorry bewilderment of wretchedness and affluence."
"During the last four decades of his life-journey, as this chronicle has revealed, it became more and more evident that there was one wrong, one thing over all, standing in the way of honest and contented living the unjust treatment of those who produce the wealth of the world by those who own most of that wealth; and that the continual fight between the moneyed interests and the working people (including artists) was the vital problem of our time. Now, during these recurring and ever-increasing conflicts, is it not obvious that we have to take sides? I think it has come to that, for all of us."
"I do believe that man is destined to be released for a more ennobling life, when each one of us can go even farther with our talent or natural ability than we thought possible."
"the change is at hand-the old order is cracking. It has been said that 'the cure for democracy is more democracy'"
"I can see no hope for humanity so long as one's right to live depends upon one's ability to pay the cost of living imposed by those who exploit our daily needs. I think I know human nature well enough to know that the average individual works better when encouraged and praised, and does his worst when humiliated and looked upon as a slave. Some kind of congenial work is necessary to contentment. From the small boy tinkering with the construction of a toy to the old lady knitting, with no thought in their minds of cash payment-we see the desire of human beings to be doing something with their minds and hands. If the continual pressure for monetary gain whenever we render any kind of service were removed, I believe people would enjoy working for the common good. This is demonstrated over and over again in time of floods and other disasters when the call to communal welfare is the only incentive."
"Individual development depends upon mass-solution of the economic problems of everyday living. The inventors, thinkers, and the common man have made this world ripe for healthful leisure, and have created far more than enough goods for all. But through all this progress the business man has assumed the right to the lion's share while those who did the creating and hard work were compelled to fight for whatever they could get-or starve."
"the big war of 1914-1918 was not my war. It was plainly not a war for democracy but for plutocracy; not for peace but for plunder, and to make our country military-minded. It was capitalism's war-not mine."
"With more and more governments, however crude and experimental, dedicated to industrial democracy and universal brotherhood, the era of peace and joy in living will come on earth."
"In my youth I hoped for no higher status in life than to be among those who would follow in the wake of Thomas Nast, Joseph Keppler, and Bernhard Gillam, outstanding artists in the field of political caricature. And when in my early twenties I grew familiar with the political and social satires of the graphic artists of England and France across two centuries, these gave even greater stimulus to my ambition. Dreamily I anticipated that my destiny was to succeed as a caricaturist of some influence in public affairs."
"Sometimes a prosperous individual will say to me: "Any man can succeed in his ambition if he really wants to. Take you, for instance. Haven't you accomplished what you wanted to do?" And I answer: "Yes" Then I have a repentant feeling for saying that because "No" would be quite as correct. I tell him that "Yes" is only one small word of a full, honest answer: only a little part of the whole truth. I point out that I was compelled to waste about half of my life scheming and worrying over the problem of making enough money to keep going, while attempting at the same time to put aside some of it for lean years and old age, like a dog hiding a bone. This exercise of my acquisitive sense, this trying to mix business with creative ability-though it did not strangle my talent-might have done so except for fortuitous circumstances, kind and encouraging parents, limited competition, and an instinct which told me it ought not to be strangled if I could possibly help it. Or perhaps a little bird singing in a tree-top just for joy helped to give me the hint. Finally I achieved a kind of success."
"Material considerations thwarted me at every turn. It was my money-earning ability that determined my right to exist, and I got through in a way-but what a way! Having spent so much of my time maneuvering to make enough cash with which to live decently, I count most of that effort a hindrance to my development, both as a man and as an artist. Instinctively most men are proud to be able to provide for themselves and their dependents, and I was no exception to the rule. That duty I accepted willingly. Still it seemed to me unworthy of any one to make that the main reason for living."
"It took me a long time to understand why so much that surrounded me was too ugly to tolerate without protest. But eventually I learned the reason. I saw that the conduct of my fellow-men could not be otherwise than disappointing, in fact parasitical and corrupt, and that most of our troubles emanated from a cause which manifestly would grow worse so long as we put up with it. That cause was Capitalism. Man's natural self-interest. become perverted and ruthless! The motivating principle of business (though not openly confessed), when summed up, meant: "Get yours; never mind the other fellow." I saw, too, that our law-makers and judges of the meaning of the law put property rights first and left human rights to shift for themselves."
"experience proved that those in authority of publishing institutions were seldom impressed by that which was new or even a little different. Of course, they would tell us they wanted "something new" and were "looking for originality," but generally speaking they would accept nothing but the trite."
"I hope it will not be said of me that my cartoons never hurt. To be a caricaturist all one's life of the kind whose pictures "never hurt" is my idea of futility. It should not be the function of a political caricaturist just to be funny. The operation sometimes calls for cruelty. But to produce a cartoon that is nothing but an insulting burlesque of a public man is not my idea of a forceful cartoon. However, it often happens that a public man serves as a symbol of wrong because of his record and as such he should be a cartoonist's subject, not to be attacked as a man so much as the idea for which he stands. When one feels that everybody, even the most predatory of capitalists, is also a victim of his own system, one's steel is in danger of not being ground sharp enough for effective attack. But not to hurt with an idea and the manner of expressing it proves that the cartoonist is nothing but a court jester whom the money monarchs like to have around, and when he dies they will say "he never hurt.""
"A conviction founded on bitter experience is often overthrown by a passing mood. We forget the sorrow that taught us our truth, and fall right into the same kind of sorrow again. It is easier to bear the loss of something you need than to have something you don't need but can't lose."
"The unhappy mortal is the one who has not all the freedom his nature wants him to have. He starts to soar and then in a little time is jerked suddenly back by the thought of conventional duty. He's like the pigeon that a hunter tosses into the air to attract other pigeons and then yanks down by the string tied to its leg."
"Step right up and hit the man you hate most. "I hate a Jew," says one. So he takes a throw at "the kike." "I hate an Irishman," says another, and he drives at "the mick." Another hates an Englishman, another a German or a Japanese; so the devil in human nature spends itself in this way until wisdom touches the human mind and says, "Now calm yourself and wipe the froth from your mouth!" Then one begins to think, and finally learns this truth: that race hatred is one of the lowest and meanest of human passions. Until we learn to judge every individual on his own peculiar merits, we haven't taken a first good step toward social intelligence."
"There is no bigger lie hurled at discouraged artists by the smug critics than: "Genius will always find its way through the direst poverty." Of course, it has been done, but at what cost to the genius no one else can know. Poverty is stifling, and having too much money can also be stifling, but most paralyzing to the creative faculties is poverty. If it ever acts as an incentive, it is more often destructive."
"While I had no great admiration for my own intelligence or my ability to understand political economy, neither did I have a servile respect for the intelligence of editors and publishers whom I had met, and who expected their writers and cartoonists to conform to a particular policy of their own. Think of spending one's life promoting and propagandizing the prejudices and political "principles" of a Frank Munsey or a Northcliffe or a Hearst! As a choice between accepting the political judgment of the average newspaper owner and my own judgment as to what was best for my country and the future of mankind, I voted in favor of myself. I'd make up my mind, and follow through. But the difficulty ahead was the small demand for my point of view in the editorial offices of successful newspapers and magazines."
"Though I was always curious about political platforms, statesmanship and the campaign issues which agitated the minds of my elders, at this period in my life it was drawing pictures, composition, light and shade, and all that goes with creative work which was my study and main interest. Ideas were secondary in importance. In my thirties, now living in New York City, with time to think things over, and beginning to experience something of the harsh problems which one with a family must encounter merely to exist, I came to the conclusion that this talent of mine ought to be purposeful and that the use I made of it was more important than having been born with it."
"As I view them retrospectively, it is some satisfaction to know that I did not spend many years of my life cartooning the trivial turns in current politics. Although a few of these are related to the topical issues of other days, it will be noted that practically all of them are generalizations on the one important issue of this era the world over: Plutocracy versus the principles of Socialism, which in a broader sense is the same old issue that has aroused the talent of artists and writers throughout history: the exclusive arrogance of birth or wealth that humiliates and enslaves the too-tolerant, common man-the same old issue which in this twentieth century is coming to a showdown."
"September 1st: As I begin these notes, I am where I ought to be in the summer, at my home among the stone-fenced hills of Connecticut. I will be 60 years of age January next. Three things are worshipful-the Sun, giver of life; a Human Being who believes something worth while and will die for it if need be; and Art, the recreator of life. I walked to the village today and noted a gentle rise of my spirits as I watched the butterflies careen through the fields of goldenrod."
"I look out over the hills this beautiful forenoon. It ought to be a day care free. Nevertheless, a taint of anxiety is in my mind. The rural postman has not brought the right letter. One with a check in it. The thought of expenses and inadequate income persists. This is the blot that is ever before the beauty of the world in the lives of most of us; anxiety that disturbs the harmony with our inner selves over money matters. There is a divine discontent that a humble man of understanding accepts gracefully, but this dollar discontent, this adjustment to a commercial age, is what prevents the artist-soul in all people from expanding. (September 2nd)"
"Literature and art ought to make people soul hungry. (September 4th)"
"The work of the world, the nerve, muscle and brain of human beings is the one big essential fact of our existence. Though most of labor is regimented and automatic, the skilled craft laborer, the artist producer-all, I like to think-do the best they can in a world where the big rewards go to those who have got out of the class called labor, into ownership and responsible management. (September 7th)"
"every town should have an art gallery for the people. (September 11th)"
"most people are artists and dreamers in their youth, but their talent and appreciation for art are destroyed by continual application to business and the duty of getting on. (September 11)"
"Dante's Inferno was peopled mostly with those who had committed crimes recognized as such by the statute laws of this world. I enlarged the conception of this inferno to include many other kinds of offenders-in fact, all of us. I wanted a bigger and better-a democratic Hell, and modern efficiency. I felt that editors, preachers, politicians, poets, landlords, lawyers, cartoonists-and many others-should not be exempt from a properly planned region for future punishment. (September 16th)"
"No day passes that one does not hark back to the personalities and events of yesteryear. (September 17th)"
"September 18th: To call one a propagandist is generally to dismiss him from the sacred realm of art. The favorite cry of critics, "Oh, he is a propagandist, not an artist." These propagandists against propaganda amuse me. Propaganda is a kind of enthusiasm for or against something that you think ought to be spread-that is, propagated. Your propaganda may be wrong-or not worth while from another's viewpoint, but that is a personal matter. Duty, sacrifice, beauty, bravery, death and eternity-all allowable subjects for poets and dramatists out of which they can fashion works of art. When others do not believe in your enthusiasm your work runs the risk of being condemned as propaganda. There never was a real work of art in which it is not plain that the author wants you to share his loves and sympathies and his ideas of right and wrong."
"Hardly a day goes by that the problem of duty to myself-versus duty to others does not arise. (September 29th)"
"I don't mind tinkling a little in this Bedlam called popularity, but my real desire is to ring true-as nearly true as I can get. I have always believed in my star, that light to live and create, and to express myself in pictures of simplicity and strength. (October 1st)"
"An artist will protect his offspring as a hen covers her chicks. Dismiss the created offering of an artist as unworthy, you start a rebellion that savors of outraged paternity. But one never ought to let rejection sink in. He should be up and at it. (October 6th)"
"...instructors never meant much to me. You listen to a teacher and are thankful for his point of view. But your art school is worth while mainly because you learn to be patient and because many others are there who are going in your direction toward creative expression. The atmosphere and contacts are congenial and stimulating. On the whole-the bigger and better school is the world you live in-alone you make your way. (October 7th)"
"aside from the appearance of a tree by day or night-is it not kin of the human family with its roots in the earth and its arms stretching toward the sky as if to seek and to know the great mystery? (October 8th)"
"What crimes and follies are committed by the need for money! Most people live at high pressure . (October 11th)"
"No great height is reached when it is said of you that you are a master of expression. What matters is what you have to say. Is your message big enough for humanity, or is it a reflex of your narrowness and petty prejudice? (October 11th)"
"In art and literature I am always on the side of the experimentalist and those who break with tradition, knowing full well that there are some rules of art just as truly as there is a law of equilibrium. These rules a real artist picks up as he does the brush, the pencil, or chisel that have come down from antiquity. But a real artist is also a rebel. Tradition, for all its accepted truisms, is the enemy. The fact that a few accepted or basic facts reveal themselves in all art from the primitive to the classical is not more important than that the iconoclast shall have his day. Within the larger truths there are always a lot of other truths that no one sees till the radical dares to investigate and bring them to light. (October 13th)"
"is it not wrong for intelligent, creative men to exercise the humorous faculties of their minds, every day, all of the time, year in and year out? I would say that it is brain-abuse. (October 16th)"
"Nothing is important but what we do and how well we do it. If money comes-well and good; if not-we may regret not having had the thrill of plenty to carry out our dreams; but there is comfort in the thought of having lived without being tempted away from our principles by too much consideration for a pile of money. (October 17th)"
"I have made many sketches of the moon and its frame of sky and cloud, always changing, never repeating. I never cease to wonder at the vast populations of the world since time began and no two faces have ever been just alike. And however much governments and society try to mold the human mind to think according to pattern, there is always a tiny something different and non-conformist in every human being, though they fear to express it. (October 25th)"
"When anyone tells me he hates a particular race of people, I can work up a little hate myself-not for the race-but for the one who is talking. (October 27th)"
"No matter how individualistic and aloof the creative mind is it wants the kinship of all kinds of minds. To be accepted by a few in authority, although a grateful distinction, is not quite satisfactory. In the long run every true artist wants the wave-length universal. (October 30th)"
"One has to catch a train in this kind of a civilization. You can't be careless or gay, you must crowd in and go somewhere, or get left on the desert of your dreams. (October 31st)"
"Judged by that standard of success which most of the American people accept and believe, I would be classed among the failures. Now past sixty, with an obvious talent and reasonably industrious in doing the work I like, yet never in my life very far from bankruptcy. If I should happen to be a money success when I am old-and the years ahead of me very few-the fact remains the same; in the common vernacular, I lacked brains to get on and clean up; throughout all the years of an average life-time. I belong with the failures-with the man who is sitting at home tonight after his day's work who knows that his wife, his relatives and friends think; "he is a failure." I'm with this man and the whole army of splendid men and women who wear the ragged badge of defeat. I know that some people are successful who deserve to be, but I am with the unadaptable, the out-of-luck, the weary with the money-struggle. I am with them but not sadly because in my vision of a new world there is going to be a different definition of success. (March 1st)"
"Only last year we lost the gay, faithful friend and comrade, Art Young, who "kept up with the procession," till the last moment of his life. The very night he died, last New Year's Eve, he mailed me a post card on which he wrote, "Dear Ella-It has been a long road but now I think we are getting somewhere." And then in a corner he put the word "Teheran", which means so much to us."
"On the twenty-ninth day of December he mailed me one of his unique postcards, Art himself toiling up a big hill with all kinds of war birds and "blitzkrieg" around him. The card is inscribed underneath, "It's a long road, but now we are getting somewhere"...Art had been through many hard places in the "road" with me, and our "comradeship" of so many years is even closer than a family. It is our family...He really loved people, like our mutual friends, Gene Debs, Horace Traubel-Whitman's disciple-Fred Long, and a few others, close, and understanding. Now, all of these comrades have passed out of life and we must keep their memories green, paying more attention to the young people the new generation; that was the strong point in the character of Art Young...Art Young is still in our lives. His work remains. We just have to close our ranks, get a little closer with more understanding love and when the history of the "people's culture" of America is written, Art Young's name will shine very brightly. Because of his great talent in illustrating the struggles of the people against fascism in all its forms-not only in art forms, but also in humorous understanding words-he will be understood and loved by the youth of the future, and we older ones, in spite of loneliness and misunderstanding, shall work a little harder to win the war. The word "remember" was also on Art's card. Yes, we will remember and translate that memory into action."
"Cartooning capitalism is far more inspiring than capitalistic cartooning. Compare some of the weak, insipid, vulgar pictorial attacks upon Socialism in capitalist papers with the virile, gripping, masterful specimens of the art produced by such revolutionary artists as Ryan Walker, Art Young, Balfour Ker, Ward Savage and Walter Crane, in their terrific onslaughts upon the capitalist system and its regime of riches and squalor, money and misery, crime and corruption. These are the young artists of the social revolution. Their every perception and touch has the divine quality of inspiration, and they are rising grandly to supremacy and exaltation."
"Art Young drew a picture of a complacent cherub carrying a tiny pail of water dipped from the "Ocean of Truth." The pail was marked "Dogma," and my editorial read: "I publish this little picture in answer to numberless correspondents who want to know just what this magazine is trying to do.' It is trying not to try to empty the ocean, for one thing. And in a propaganda paper that alone is a task.""
"Art Young's drawings are published in the principal Army paper, Red Star, the satirical magazine Crocodile, Ogonyok magazine and others. He belonged to those artists to whom working means fighting for justice, and in our time one cannot fight for justice without being an active anti-fascist. Art Young was our friend and comrade-in-arms because his efforts were directed against Nazism. His biting cartoons appeal to the masses. His hard-hitting style is effective not only in his country but far beyond it. His works, impressive for their clear-cut statement of political themes and simplicity of form, can be achieved only by an experienced master. I have on my table one Art Young drawing dealing with the heroic struggle of the Red Army against Hitler's Germany. Hitler is shown in it. This is one of those social caricatures depicting the loathsome character of the Nazi regime with great impressiveness. Drawings such as this expose the rottenness of Hitler's "New Order" and the monstrosity of Nazi crimes. Thus, a fervent anti-Nazi takes part in the great battle waged by freedom-loving nations against evil forces. The artistic intelligentsia has lost one of its outstanding members. But Art Young's work will live on and call upon his young colleagues to take an active part in the struggle against Hitler's Germany for the happiness of mankind."
"Sometimes I'm lonely, but I am never discouraged," Art said to my sister Katherine, her daughter Frances, and me, when we were together at what was to be his last supper. He died a few hours later. In retrospect, it seemed as if he unconsciously spoke his own epitaph, not in a somber or foreboding spirit but in his naturally philosophical and calm manner. "I figure I should be able to live another twenty years," he continued, "and I know that in that time I will see socialism spread through the world." Our conversation was desultory-now serious, now gay, but with an undercurrent of the great changes taking place in the world, of which he was so keenly aware...He spoke considerably on longevity that night, of George Bernard Shaw and Mother Bloor and of our mother...He was a consistent and courageous admirer of the Soviet Union and the Red Army and described himself to me more than once as "A non-party Bolshevik." He had an extraordinary capacity to remain friends with people far removed from his social ideas-if they were honest in their views. But he would never sell his talents for what he disbelieved in, no matter how great his personal sacrifices. His friendship with Brisbane was on this basis...Art Young was gentle in manner, kindly and reassuring. But he was a great fighter against injustice, poverty, inequalities, and against fascism in all its forms. He was never downhearted about the progress of the world. He spoke to us rather regretfully that night about having to sell his little place in Connecticut where he had always planned to have a museum for his pictures and which he had started to build, I believe, or at least had designed. "I got a little money to live a little longer," he said. He said once to his friend Marguerite Tucker: "If I was in the Soviet Union I would be a people's artist and would not need to worry about money."
"Since Mark Twain, have there been many clearer notes expressed of the basic American folk-mind than may be found in the drawings of Art Young? All the virtues and faults of the American people are contained in these shrewd scratchings of a master-pen: the credulity, the good-natured humor, the scorn for windbags, political and ecclesiastical, a sort of generous gambling spirit, an instinctive hatred of injustice, a simplicity and homely barnyard greatness...Art Young carries over into the modern social revolution this native tradition of a cornfed socialism that extends from Father Abraham Lincoln down through Mark Twain, and Bob Ingersoll, Walt Whitman, Thomas Nast, Edward Bellamy, Brann the Iconoclast, Ryan Walker, Carl Sandburg, the old Appeal to Reason and Eugene V. Debs...Going through the capitalist Hell with him, I am shaken with horror and indignation. Only a great imaginative artist could illuminate so plainly the truth we are prone to forget: that we are living in Hell. War is hell. Peace is hell. Everyday life under capitalism is hell. There is no compromising with such a system-it is Hell, and must be destroyed. Art Young can rouse these feelings in any American mind, and I wish more of us could learn to be as effective."
"He was a great artist with a generous heart full of feeling and understanding. He suffered with the struggles of the downtrodden, and sided with them in their plights. When an injustice had been committed, he flashed his sharp pen and brush against the tyrants and fascists. His art, like himself, had a keen wit that penetrated deeply. Wherever and whenever Art Young's name is mentioned, people, without exception, express a love for the man and his work. He was truly a people's artist...I once asked him if he ever felt lousy about any cartoon he had done, and he told us of one he had been asked to draw for the old Life, when it was a humorous weekly. The editor had asked for a double-page spread, on which he was to draw a comic figure of a Jewish Broadway producer controlling the gay White Way. Art finished the drawing and received a hundred-dollar check which he needed very badly. But he was somehow not very happy about the idea. At that time, Art recalled, we had no political awareness, no organizations that fought anti-Semitism. So he went to the editor, returned the check and asked for his cartoon back. He walked down the street tearing it up, and with every rip he said he felt happy, although hungry. To most of us artists, Art Young was more than a friend; more than a fellow-artist who for so many years had worked with us, with whom we had exchanged confidences. We all had a special respect for Art Young. He carried with dignity our convictions, and in trying times, when some writers of the old Masses and Liberator went sour one way or another, Art Young stood fast, and the artists were with him. The works of Art Young will live, and the principles and spirit that Art Young stood for will remain an outstanding inspiration, an everlasting monument to a great man and a great artist."
"Art Young was one of the most picturesque and highly regarded cartoonists of his generation, one of the early masters of the medium. Usually forgotten these days, he was, in his day, the subject of a certain amount of sensational news coverage. And he can be credited with a couple of historic firsts, too. But mostly, he was an artist of principle at a time, the turn of the 19th into the 20th century and immediately thereafter, when cartoonists weren't yet particularly noted for doing much more than making funny faces."
"For a brief time, roughly between 1912 and 1918, The Masses became the rallying center-as sometimes also a combination of circus, nursery, and boxing ring-for almost everything that was then alive and irreverent in American culture. In its pages you could find brilliant artists and cartoonists, like John Sloan, Stuart Davis, and Art Young; one of the best journalists in our history, John Reed (journalist), a writer full of an indignation against American injustice that was itself utterly American; a shrewd and caustic propagandist like Max Eastman; some gifted writers of fiction, like Sherwood Anderson; and one of the few serious theoretical minds American socialism has produced, William English Walling. All joined in a rumpus of revolt, tearing to shreds the genteel tradition that had been dominant in American culture, poking fun at moral prudishness and literary timidity, mocking the deceits of bourgeois individualism, and preaching a peculiarly uncomplicated version of the class struggle. There has never been, and probably never will again be, another radical magazine in the U. S. quite like The Masses, with its slapdash gathering of energy, youth, hope...As one looks back across the shambles of the intervening decades, it is hard not to envy them: the fierce young John Reed (journalist) making his prose into a lyric of revolt, the handsome young Max Eastman mediating among a raucus of opinions, the cherubic Art Young drawing his revolutionary cartoons with the other worldly aplomb of a Bronson Alcott. History cannot be recalled, but in this instance at least, nostalgia seems a part of realism. For who among us, if enabled by some feat of imagination, would not change places with the men of The Masses in their days of glory?"
"One explanation for the neglect of women's part in shaping The Masses and its content may lie in an image of the magazine constructed by its chroniclers. Indeed, the extent to which historians have neglected discussion of Masses women is quite remarkable. Daniel Aaron, in his Writers on the Left (1961), devotes some twenty pages to The Masses. He deals with Eastman, Dell, and Reed at considerable length, while mentioning the founding members Inez Haynes Irwin and Mary Heaton Vorse in a single line...More recent histories redress the balance somewhat-notably Judith Schwartz's study of women of the Greenwich Village Heterodoxy club, many of whose members had ties with The Masses, and Art for The Masses, Rebecca Zurier's 1987 anthology of the work of Masses artists. Nancy Cott's frequent allusions to Masses women in The Grounding of Modern Feminism (1987) indicate how very central to that grounding to the shaping of turn-of-the-century feminist discourse Masses women were. But in many imaginations, The Masses remains the project of Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, Reed, Art Young, and Charles Winter."
"It was in 1917 that my teacher and I first met Art Young at our Forest Hills home. He was a guest whom Anne Sullivan Macy especially welcomed. Her many-faceted personality was an open book to him. Then his delightful kindliness, humor, sudden whims, sincerity, and the dreams of beauty hovering round his fighting citadel endeared him to her kindred spirit. At a time when reaction was riding roughshod over the earth and throttling those who protested against the betrayal of the people's aspiration to genuine liberty by the capitalist empires, Art Young was emerging from his trial for anti-war charges a gentle yet formidable Samson, and I recall the gay courage with which he defied any power to muzzle the thunder and lightning of his art. It was a marvel how many truths he packed into pictures which opened blind eyes to our community of fate and interest with the downtrodden and the toilers of the world. Some of Art Young's drawings were embossed for me, and I sensed vividly the highly individual and forceful manner in which he presented with the brush ideas that he hoped would serve as a ferment in American economic philosophy. My fingers could appreciate his pictorial power in uncovering hell and its network of race prejudice and enslavement. A year never passed during which I was not thrilled by his inventiveness in devising themes that provoked wide discussion and pushed further the painfully slow campaign of education in true freedom among the working people. Little by little the pillars loosened at which his Samson hatred of oppression tugged, and it is devoutly to be hoped that his death has left them irrevocably sagging to their downfall. There is no calculating the might of patient efforts like his which quietly root themselves in the granite of tyranny and crumble it into life-giving soil. Besides the keen-eyed radical and uncompromising idealist there was another aspect of Art Young I knew-his brimming joy in all things friendly and wholesome, all things that foster song, laughter, and poetry. He said the song of a bird or a burst of morning-glories at this door or a sparkle of dew-wet verdure was enough to crowd new ideas into his day, and evening peace flooded his imagination with fantastic beckoning forms in the trees around him. In all moods, places, and activities he sought to make his labors a telling force in a future that would enable everyone with a special gift or genius to achieve a nobler civilization."
"All day, every day, the circles are in the Square, close packed huddles, voices rising and falling and rising again. "Did y' see Art Young's cartoon in The Masses? That one where two big cops are draggin' a little guy off to jail? One bystander says: "What's he been doin'?" and another guy says: "Overthrowin' the gov'ment." It's a scream!""
""Tell me the story of your life!" With an owlish solemnity equal to my own, he replied: "I was born in Illinois, studied in Paris,-But the rest doesn't matter-at least not yet? A man must be dead at least fifty years before we can take a human interest in these dry facts of his early life. "I would rather draw political cartoons than anything else;" said Mr. Young. "I believe in the picture with a purpose. There must be a vital idea back of every drawing that is really worth while. I have no patience with these so-called artists who expect intricate technicality to make up for a lack of ideas. In fact, I don't believe in technique at all...Real art is, in the last analysis, simply self-expression. Socialism always has been and suppose always will be the keynote of my work. To me it is the culmination of all radicalism and the thought back of most of my drawings. I have been very fortunate in being allowed considerable freedom in this direction even when employed by capitalist papers. But you see," he concluded naively, "I made that a condition of my work." He summed up the purpose of his work in the following words simplicity and strength. The proud possessor of an idea must present it simply and with sufficient force to make it comprehensible to the proletarian for whom Mr. Young states that all his work is done. "It is the working man, seated by his lamp in the evenings in his shirt sleeves pouring over the evening paper for whom I make my drawings." There was no affectation, no posing, nothing but the most virile and yet child-like simplicity here. Strength and simplicity are, he says the keynote of all good work. And that was the strongest impression of the interview, as it was of the studio, as it is of his work, as it seems to be of the man himself-strength and simplicity."
"@%&#!! I don't understand. Why would Art Young-the greatest radical political cartoonist in our history need any introduction??? Never mind, I remember now: Art Young was a Radical! Political!! Cartoonist!!!"
"Discussing his selection process for work in his 1936 collection of The Best of Art Young he wrote: "I did not spend many years of my life cartooning the trivial turns in current politics. Although a few of these are related to the topical issues of other days, it will be noted that practically all of them are generalizations on the one important issue of this era the world over: Plutocracy versus the principles of Socialism." Art Young might be a bit disheartened to find out that the grand Soviet experiment kinda fizzled. But by having kept his eye on the fundamentals, his cartoons are rarely musty artifacts from yesterday's papers and seem like urgent dispatches from tomorrow's news."
"Even subsequent contact with blacks during a trip to Alabama and his growing social consciousness did little to alter Young's vision of southern blacks, who appeared to him happy-go-lucky primitives; he remained unaware of the hard lives behind their mask of joviality and insouciance."
"The Church is evolving. The face of the Church is no longer European or American, but also African and Asian. It is very interesting to see the universality of the Church. This is one of the most impressive parts of this encounter, I think."
"The perennial challenge in any discussion concerning law comes down to how it is understood and embraced – is it a matter of the literal application of the law or rather the spirit that stands behind it and gives it purpose and life. There is an art in maintaining a healthy balance, keeping the two in dialogue and not creating dividing lines. As in many things, it plays out sometimes better in theory than in actual practice."
"In my life, many things have happened and I never would have chosen them, but they were put in my path and God brought me exactly to where I needed to be."
"How difficult it is for us to say, along with the Prodigal Son, "I have sinned." But there can be no healing before we acknowledge responsibility. The biggest stumbling block I can see is the denial of guilt where guilt is due. Second, we need to believe that mercy and healing are possible. "Can God forgive what I did?" I heard that in jail, too. Nobody is so vicious (or damaged) that the virtues can't take root in his soul, after repentance and a humble openness to Christ."
"It was an incredibly fun experience to try an inhabit that voice and try to get into Huck’s head and see Los Angeles from the point-of-view of this naive kid from backwoods Missouri."
"My wife and I were out doing a kayak trip on the [Los Angeles River] ... It’s a wilder place than you would think from just driving over it on the freeway. I started to think about the idea of the River as this place where you could have an adventure. I started to imagine, ok, what would it be like if Huck Finn were alive today and he were traveling down the River."
"The original Huck Finn is not about slavery; it’s not about race. This is a story about an abused kid looking for a safe haven."
"Huck undergoes a change in Twain’s original in terms of how he sees the slave Jim, and Huck undergoes a similar change in this book."
"I started thinking of Huck Finn as a protoypical American myth."
"I want to draw a direct line from the racially discriminatory housing practices of the middle decades of the twentieth century and the laws and policies that create attendance zones for public schools today."
"By carving up our cities into attendance zones, we are perpetuating the economic and racial divisions that marked one of the darkest eras of our nation’s past."
"We already have a name for this practice of using your address to determine whether or not you are eligible for valuable government services. We call it redlining. Educational redlining is analogous to redlining in the housing market. In each case, valuable government services are reserved for more privileged communities, using geographic preferences as a way to limit who is eligible to receive them."
"Almost 80 percent of public school children attend their assigned public school. If American public schools are divided along economic and racial lines (and it’s indisputable that they are), then it is primarily because of geographic school assignment, not because a minority of parents look to escape the failing schools they’ve been assigned to."
"What is this peculiar, misshapen thing that we call an attendance zone? It’s an administrative service area. Government bureaucrats carve up the map and determine who gets preferred enrollment at what school. There are no elected officials at the attendance-zone level—and no political representation. The residents of a school zone are not subject to special taxes that go to the local school. An attendance zone is also a license to discriminate. If the school is full (most of the best schools are), then the attendance zone provides the school with the ability to exclude families who live within the district’s jurisdictional boundaries but outside of the arbitrary zone for that school as drawn by district staff."
"The harder you look at attendance zones, the more they appear to violate fundamental principles. Isn’t public education supposed to be "the Great Equalizer" providing equal opportunity for all children, regardless of race or income level? Aren’t we all supposed to be treated equally under the law?"
"Here is the truth: 78% of public school children attend their assigned public school. If American public schools are divided along economic and racial lines (and it’s indisputable that they are), then it is primarily because of school assignment policies, not because a minority of parents look for better public school options for their children."
"How are children assigned to schools? By their address. Our public schools are segregated because of the lines that are drawn, showing who gets into good public schools and who gets kept out. These lines often exclude many middle-class and lower-income families, especially immigrants and minorities."
"[Cautionary verse] is a genre that has receded from view in recent years, but it’s hiding in the shadows, ready to pop out and horrify the stultified masses. Yet it will likely delight anyone who believes that children’s literature should be more than just morality tales dressed up with colorful pictures. Perhaps poems like these can help embolden the humorists of tomorrow. The way things are going, we’re likely to need them."
"Writing in the New Yorker, Calvin Tompkins once suggested that stories by Belloc and others are not appropriate for children and are really meant for the grown-ups. To test his hypothesis, I suggest reading one of these classics aloud to a seven-year-old. In my experience, the child very quickly understands that she’s being told a sophisticated joke, and the butt of the joke is the parent who is constantly urging her toward upright behavior. I want to suggest that Gothic nonsense should be a part of every child’s upbringing."
"The public school system is a foundational part of our social contract. But our laws and policies ensure that the most coveted public schools are only accessible to the select few who have the resources to play the game. We have to do better to fulfill Justice Warren’s promise."
"The core belief driving our work is so simple that it might sound radical. Even the best and most coveted public schools should be open and accessible to all families."
"The public schools are not as inclusive as we typically assume them to be, and they often turn children away for arbitrary or discriminatory reasons, violating the foundational promise of common schools that are open to all children."
"Historically, the most coveted public schools in America use government-drawn maps to discriminate against students who live in "less desirable" parts of town."
"It’s commonplace for Americans of all races and income levels to use a false address to get into a school that they aren’t zoned for. School districts then sometimes hire private eyes to spy on kids and even put parents in jail for crossing the lines."
"So when a charter school is found to be cherry-picking its students, there are consequences. Local ACLU chapters, including Southern California and Arizona, have published reports detailing how charter schools have either broken the law or violated its spirit…But the rest of the public schools are held to a very low legal standard of access and face very little scrutiny of their enrollment practices."
"It’s clear that our public education system is not "available to all on equal terms." As a country, we desperately need to repair our social contract. One vital way to do that is to restore the promise of public education as a system of common schools that are truly open to all American children."
"Public education in our country has long relied on certain foundational myths. Many—perhaps most—of us have largely accepted these myths as articles of faith. Now, a handful of journalists and activist parents are exposing the often-troubling realities."
"With school access governed by government-drawn maps, families bid up the prices of homes within the coveted zone. As a result, the best schools are almost always located in the areas with the most expensive homes. A home within the zone will often cost $200,000 or more than an equivalent home just outside it. This is the real cost of a supposedly "free" public education."
"District bureaucrats will insist that these maps are necessary to preserve the neighborhood school. But it’s worth remembering that we all shop at neighborhood grocery stores, and we don’t need exclusionary government maps to do it."
"American public schools were once explicitly Christian and even Protestant. I would argue that, until recently, they were implicitly Christian while also offering a heavy dose of moderate liberalism, the dominant American civil religion of the last century. But as our politics have fractured, this traditional approach to education has given way in many schools. What’s been sucked into the void has differed from place to place: sometimes a reactionary conservatism, and sometimes a radical progressive ideology that seeks to destroy much of what we’ve inherited from prior generations."
"Perhaps, one day, the public school system will launch a counter-reformation to address some of the core problems that have prevented it from fulfilling its noble purpose. But for now, the vested powers of the educational establishment, much like the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, have chosen to take a purely defensive position. Heretics who call for reform are labeled segregationists, book banners, or at the very least, "divisive.""
"It can be dangerous, too, getting so involved in the minutiae of a setting."
"There does seem to be an inclination to find ways to prolong life among people who have the most resources."
"I am always striving to push the limits of categories, and if people have a hard time classifying me, I see that as a very good thing."
"As far as I’m concerned: good writing is good writing, wherever you shelve it."
"My advice to all writers is to spend the time you need learning to write a great story. Read widely and write every day. Don’t limit yourself to a certain kind of writing, and write what inspires you."
"Wikidata is one of the best options for an open, common knowledge graph of background information for use in an application or AI system. SPARQL is the most common way to access the data and here's one resource to get help in learning how to use it effectively."
"My ultimate goal is to help figure out how to create truly intelligent machines and it’s a goal I will never achieve in my lifetime."
"The most important development in information technology in the last 25 or 50 years has been the world wide web."
"The working hypothesis that I accepted in college was that animals and people are machines... What I have always found interesting since I was an Undergraduate was the idea that we could make machines as smart as people."
"In the course of my professional career, I have seen a lot of amazing things come to fruition in the area of intelligent systems."
"Spirituality is just staying awake. Spirituality is the awareness that we are in God's presence."
"I would not trade this vocation for anything and loved working with all of the archbishops. I am glad I was not assigned anywhere else."
"Yeah. Well, there is something about Batman – even for me growing up… I’ve always felt like he’s really troubled, you know? He’s working out a pretty massive trauma that happened to him, and I think that by keeping that alive in the story – through a nightmare or imagery like that, you feel like it’s still boiling. To me, it keeps him on point as a character. Like, if you let that fade too far into the background, you start to go, “No wait – why is he doing this again? What’s he upset about? Like, there’s police. He knows that, right?” [Laughs] You know, we have a little thing called the justice system, and it works okay."
"I think it's the sacrifice. The Superman we have now, this risen Superman, in a lot of ways his place on Earth, in my way of thinking, has been solidified. He is all things now. He is not only the sacrifice, but he is the risen. He's a man, but he's also like a god. You know what I mean? He has completed the apprenticeship in humanity, and now has his Master's Degree. To me that's what it is about. I think in the end when you see him, the way I would think about it--and look, frankly there's not enough movie, I know that sounds crazy in context [laughs], to really explore it. But that was always the plan going forward. In the end if there was two more movies, the last movie really is a Superman movie in a lot of ways."
"Les Paul's influence on electric guitar (and on recorded music in general) is inestimable. Not only was he a groundbreaking player, but he was also a visionary. [...] Today, "Lover" might sound like little more than a charming novelty, but when Paul was recording it, he was working his way toward studio recording techniques that are still in use."
"The proponents of the latest tactical assault on evolution simply invent a new spin to describe their position or find new legal attacks. The rhetoric is designed to cover up the unquestionably religious motivation they have."
"Dogma doesn’t build better medical devices; good science does."
"In special creationism, living things do not share common ancestry….common ancestry is the fundamental difference between special creationism and evolution."
"Creation science argues that there are only two views, special creationism and evolution; thus, arguments against evolution are arguments in favor of creationism. Literature supporting creation science is based on alleged examples of evidence against evolution, which are considered not only proof against evolution but also positive evidence for creationism. Understandably, there is nothing in the creation science canon providing a positive scientific case for the sudden emergence of the universe in its present form at one time, let alone for its specific doctrines a six-thousand-year-old Earth and universe, the occurrence of a worldwide flood responsible for the fossil record and geological features such as the Grand Canyon, and the impossibility of evolution except within sharp limits."
"The critiques of evolution offered in such ID literature, however, is recognizable as a proper subset of the critiques offered by creation science literature, and they are no more valid."
"ID advocates complain that their views are rejected out of hand by the scientific establishment, yet they do not play by normal rules of presenting their views first through scientific conferences and then to peer-reviewed journals and then in textbooks."
"Significantly, the first publication to use the phrase intelligent design was not a theoretical paper but a high school textbook, Of Pandas and People! Ordinarily, one does the research first and then produces the textbook."
"To anyone familiar with the history of the antievolution movement, the attacks on evolution are perhaps the most obvious link between ID and earlier forms of creationism."
"ID, like creation science, has goals that are primarily religious."
"The actual point of the peppered moth example—that it illustrates how camouflage, a common adaptation that appears designed, can evolve through a simple natural process—is always completely ignored."
"To a biologist, the “it’s just microevolution” argument is painfully obtuse."
"In the creationist concept of created kind—and the creationist demand to “Show me macroevolution”—we have a classic example of the movable-goalposts strategy for winning. Any amount of evolution that can be demonstrated to the creationists’ satisfaction is effectively by definition microevolution within a kind. No matter how extensive the documented change is, the macroevolution goalposts are always out of reach. The inviolable biblical kind is protected with strategic vagueness."
"The objections to evolution are not serious scientific arguments; they are superficially investigated and poorly reasoned talking points."
"Important to note is that Johnson is not trained as either a scientist or a theologian, nor has he ever practiced either discipline. His analysis of evolution is therefore based upon his own reading of the lay literature to which he has access and the interpretation on the scientific literature by popularizers. As a result, neither this book (Darwin on Trial) nor his subsequent ones provide a satisfactory scientific critique of biological evolution. Nor does it break new ground theologically. Nonetheless, its publication led to a large following, and he has had an active career on the lecture circuit as a result."
"To be scientific in our era is to search for solely natural explanations."
"Thus, it seems clear that intelligent design should be considered a religion for First Amendment purposes."
"Three of intelligent design’s most damaging constitutional problems: its singling out of evolution education for reform, its explicitly religious background, and it status as unsuccessful science."
"The first problem with this argument (“teach the controversy”) is that there is no scientific controversy about evolution, and the second problem is that intelligent design doesn’t qualify as a scientific theory."
"By now it should be clear that “teaching the controversy” is not about the concern for good pedagogy but about advancing the antievolution agenda."
"Eliminating your right to justice and recourse when you have been harmed by a business or product explicitly contradicts the Republicans’ message of individual freedom and responsibility. Instead, their motto should be: “You’re on your own.” But the deck is stacked against you. In order to protect yourself you will have to be your own lawyer, doctor, and even insurer."
"Our Wisconsin Constitution says it’s the Legislature’s duty to protect the public welfare. That hasn’t stopped Republicans from taking away many of your rights this session, from health and safety protections to your ability to access courts and justice. The Republicans’ mantra should be, in the words of Janis Joplin, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”"
"What's reality? I don't know. When my bird was looking at my computer monitor I thought, "That bird has no idea what he's looking at." And yet what does the bird do? Does he panic? No, he can't really panic, he just does the best he can. Is he able to live in a world where he's so ignorant? Well, he doesn't really have a choice. Yeah, he can kinda live. Usually the bird is okay even though he doesn't understand the world. He can kinda learn what's safe and what's dangerous. That's where I've been living. You're that bird looking at the monitor, and you're thinking to yourself, "I can figure this out." Maybe you have some bird ideas. Maybe that's the best you can do."
"An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity."
"Now, I had to do something I'm ashamed of. I had to put a call to a subroutine that I stuck right here. I'm kind of ashamed of that. And as a matter of fact, God just questioned my judgment. He said, "Terry, are you worthy to be the man who makes the temple?" If you are, you must answer: is this niggerlicious, or is this divine intellect? And that's the question. I'll leave you with that. You know, Google – they ask you interview questions. Well, the kind of question I face on the job is: is this niggerlicious? Is this too much voodoo for our purposes? For our mission statement? Our mission is to be a modern Commodore 64. Is this too much voodoo? This is voodoo; the question is – is this too much. And this is the hardest question you could ever face in programming."
"What people are going to read is, "It's about a pathetic schizophrenic who made a crappy operating system." My perspective is, "God said I made His temple.""
"So, someone wanted to know what I use Ubuntu for. I use it to download VMware to run TempleOS. What do you use Internet Explorer for? You use Internet Explorer to download Firefox. There you have it."
"The CIA niggers glow in the dark, you can see 'em if you're driving. You just run them over, that's what you do. Fucking CIA niggers!"
"When I fight Satan, I use the sharpest knives I can find. I ain't shedding no tears cause you don't like "nagger"."
"Hell no, I'm a white man, I wrote my own fucking compiler. I'm not a nigger like Linus, I'm a professional!"
"The difference between a professional and amateur ni-. The difference between an amateur and a professional is you write your own compiler, okay?"
"You're a nigger, you're a fucking nigger!"
"I like elephants and God likes elephants."
"You banned me from Twitter, God bans you from Heaven."
"I am King Terry the Terrible. The CIA will be executed with an A10 gun. The fist of God maybe, individuals will be spared through extreme repentence and humility."
"Now, there was a nigger, who came up with this idea: cout << "Hello" << endl;, well that's pretty niggerlicious."
"History perhaps can never become an exact science; the human element will inevitably assert itself to some extent. Race and religious sympathies will warp human judgments; but if we have more faith fulness to scientific methods of investigation— a more careful application of the rules of evidence in reviewing old authorities and new testimony, with truer and broader perspectives, — there are grounds for expecting excellent results in the future!"
"Statehood was welcomed by the people with real rejoicing. As a territory the people had no part in the election of a President, nor in the legislation by Congress, and all of the conditions of territorial life tended to make a people dependent rather than self-reliant. The chief concern of the people of Dakota, however, during the ten years' fight for statehood, had been for the division of the territory into two states. In this they were moved by motives of the highest patriotism. The leaders of that period believed that it would be a crime for them to sit idly by and permit the great territory to become one state, with but two members of the United States Senate, thus entailing to posterity forever a sort of political vassalage to the small states of the eastern seaboard."