University of Pennsylvania alumni

282 quotes found

"What is the use of reading the common news of the day, the tragic deaths and abuses of daily living, when for over half a lifetime we have known that they must have occurred just as they have occurred given the conditions that cause them? There is no light in it. It is trivial fill-gap. We know the plane will crash, the train be derailed. And we know why. No one cares, no one can care. We get the news and discount it, we are quite right in doing so. It is trivial. But the hunted news I get from some obscure patients' eyes is not trivial. It is profound: whole academies of learning, whole ecclesiastical hierarchies are founded upon it and have developed what they call their dialectic upon nothing else, their lying dialectics. A dialectic is any arbitrary system, which, since all systems are mere inventions, is necessarily in each case a false premise, upon which a closed system is built shutting out those who confine themselves to it from the rest of the world. All men one way or another use a dialectic of some sort into which they are shut, whether it be an Argentina or a Japan. So each group is maimed. Each is enclosed in a dialectic cloud, incommunicado, and for that reason we rush into wars and prides of the most superficial natures. Do we not see that we are inarticulate? That is what defeats us."

- William Carlos Williams

0 likesPoets from the United StatesPhysicians from New JerseyBeat Generation writersDemocratic socialistsUniversity of Pennsylvania alumni
"By the early 1900s...it was becoming commonplace in the academy to speak of race, along with class and gender, as a social construct .... The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists. Of course we expected bewilderment from people who still think of race as biology. We frequently get letters accusing us of being "racists," just like the KKK, and have even been called a "hate group." ... Our standard response is to draw an analogy with anti-royalism: to oppose monarchy does not mean killing the king; it means getting rid of crowns, thrones, royal titles, etc.... Every group within white America has at one time or another advanced its particular and narrowly defined interests at the expense of black people as a race. That applies to labor unionists, ethnic groups, college students, schoolteachers, taxpayers, and white women. Race Traitor will not abandon its focus on whiteness, no matter how vehement the pleas and how virtuously oppressed those doing the pleading. The editors meant it when they replied to a reader, "Make no mistake about it: we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as 'the white race' is destroyed — not 'deconstructed' but destroyed.""

- Noel Ignatiev

0 likesAuthors from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesPeople from PhiladelphiaHarvard University alumniUniversity of Pennsylvania alumni
"I think it’s wonderful to be the American Ambassador while we are able to celebrate the 100th year of U.S.-Albania diplomatic relations. As you know, last year, we celebrated 30 years since the restored relationship. And if we look across from the 100 years as well as the 30 years, I think we can say that the two of us, Albania and the United States have accomplished quite a lot. Just looking at the last 30 years alone, when I talk to friends who knew Albania in 1991 and I describe for them what we are doing together now, in 2022, they can hardly believe it. I will just give you a few examples. In 1991, as we all know, Albania was one of the poorest countries in the world and in those 30 years, as Albania broke free from the communist dictatorship, I think the people of Albania have proven themselves to be quite resilient and have inspired the world through their own determination. So, that’s why I announced when I got here that our program here, our agenda is to focus on democracy, defense, and business. So, you’ve broken free of communist dictatorship; the institutions of democracy and law, rule of law, have been installed, and we’re working to strengthen them as much as we can. You’ve gone from a country that is dependent to a country that is a member of NATO in 2009, a country that is on the doorstep of the European Union, and, as of January 1st this year, a country that sits next to the United States, China, Russia, France, Great Britain, as a member of the UN Security Council and that’s a big jump. Then of course the second issue is defense. And in those 30 years, those 100 years, we’ve gone from a communist dictatorship that was closed to the world, now Albania is host to U.S. forces, as of this year. So, this is an historic change. And then of course, finally, on business. Some of the biggest businesses are coming to Albania. We can talk more about this later, but they’re focused on energy for now and I see other areas being opened up as well, including in technology. So, we have the Skavica hydropower plant, it’s not a done deal yet, but it’s looking very good; and we have Vlora, the thermal power plant that will now be bringing in LNG. So, these have huge implications for Albania’s role in the region, not just in terms of Albania’s ability to secure energy for itself but for Albania’s contribution to the region, as a net exporter of energy and energy security."

- Yuri P. Kim

0 likesUnited States Ambassadors to AlbaniaUnited States Assistant Secretaries of State for European and Eurasian AffairsWomen from the United StatesPeople from South KoreaUniversity of Pennsylvania alumni
"In August 1945 British military intelligence unwittingly performed a splendid experiment in the social psychology of natural scientists. They delivered the news of Hiroshima to interned German atomic scientists, and secretly recorded the conversation that resulted. Only fragments of the record have got past restrictions on “classified” material, but they are enough to reveal the German scientists’ mentality—their soul, if I may use an outmoded term. They were conscience-stricken; they had failed “German science.” Casting about for reasons, they took note of the obvious disparity in size: the American A-bomb project had been enormously larger than their own. But that contrast only deepened the anguish of self-accusation. “We would not have had the moral courage,” Werner Heisenberg, the originator of the Uncertainty Principle, exclaimed, “to recommend to the government in the spring of 1942 that they should employ 120,000 people.” ... Implicit in that soul-searching was one measure of the scientist’s social and moral worth: his capacity to beat the competition, to win, whether fame for himself or wars for his country, or both together. When Heisenberg emerged from internment and discovered that the winners were uneasy, he turned to a different measure of the scientist’s worth. He and his colleagues had shown moral courage, he decided, of a higher order. They had dragged their feet, to withhold the A-bomb from their Nazi masters. ..."

- David Joravsky

0 likesHistorians from the United StatesAcademics from the United StatesUniversity of Pennsylvania alumniColumbia University alumniBrown University faculty