Columnists From The United States

"Buddha didn’t teach that life hurts because of pain; it hurts because the cause of suffering hasn’t been examined."

"Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future. The past is closed and limited; the future is open and free."

"To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence you hear the truth and know the solutions."

"Reagan was on the rise, the anti-war movement had sunk to a low ebb, and the New Age was barely christened when The Aquarian Conspiracy appeared in 1980. Overnight Marilyn Ferguson’s book became famous and sold in the millions. I was a young doctor who had just learned to meditate when I picked up a dog-eared paperback copy at a Catskill spiritual retreat. Ferguson’s message shot through me like electricity: a “benign conspiracy” was bringing about the greatest shift in consciousness in the twentieth century. In one stroke Ferguson unified a movement that seemed like small, isolated outposts on the fringes of respectable society. Ferguson was a uniter and a futurist. By showing feminists what they shared with environmentalists, New Age spiritual seekers with peace activists, her book inspired a movement that didn’t define the future in terms of technology. She was a one-woman movement for hope. She promised every voice in the wilderness that there were a thousand other voices like theirs."

"It’s time to rescue "intelligent design" from the politics of religion. There are too many riddles not yet answered by either biology or the Bible, and by asking them honestly, without foregone conclusions, science could take a huge leap forward."

"Most have simply washed their hands of the problem, claiming that the bigotry or bias on Wikipedia is just an unfortunate side-effect that we have to accept. But this is not a trivial unintended consequence of an open source system; bias goes against the very principle of Wikipedia and must be addressed. I have to deal with this bias and misinformation every time a journalist interviews me and references my Wikipedia article. I need to spend the first 30 minutes of interviews to correct all the misleading information from my Wikipedia article... Most of the skeptic editors on my article believe me to be a very dangerous man — and believe that it is Wikipedia’s responsibility to warn the world of how dangerous my ideas are."

"To say that Nature displays intelligence doesn't make you a Christian fundamentalist. Einstein said as much, and a fascinating theory called the anthropic principle has been seriously considered by Stephen Hawking, among others."

"Laughter is Humanity's mechanism to escape suffering."

"R-E-M-O-R-S-E! Those dry Martinis did the work for me; Last night at twelve I felt immense, To-day I feel like thirty cents. My eyes are bleared, my coppers hot, I’ll try to eat, but I cannot. It is no time for mirth and laughter, The cold, gray dawn of the morning after."

"Early to Bed and Early to Rise is a Bad Rule for any one who wishes to become acquainted with our most Prominent and Influential People."

"A Piker always has his entire Stock of Goods in the Show Window."

"Moral: When Wealth walks in at the Door, the Press Agent comes in through the Window."

": In uplifting, get underneath."

": Don't try to Account for Anything."

""Whom are you?" he asked, for he had attended business college."

"Moral: If it were not for the presents, an elopement would be preferable."

": It all depends."

"In the city a funeral is just an interruption of traffic; in the country it is a form of entertainment."

"She was a soprano of the kind often used for augmenting grief at a funeral."

"The music teacher came twice a week to bridge the awful gap between Dorothy and Chopin."

"If fathers who fear fathering and run away from it could only see how little fathering is enough. Mostly, the father just needs to be there."

"Each generation's job is to question what parents accept on faith, to explore possibilities, and adapt the last generation's system of values for a new age."

"But after the intimacy-inducing rituals of puberty, boys who would be men are told we must go it alone, we must achieve our heroism as the Lone Ranger, we must see the other men as threats to our masculine mastery, as objects of competition."

"In considering the ledger equal, understand the greatest gift you have given your parents is the opportunity to raise you. The things a child gets from parents can't compare to the things a parent gets from raising a child. Only by experiencing this can you understand the degree to which children give meaning to parents' lives."

"As boys without bonds to their fathers grow older and more desperate about their masculinity, they are in danger of forming gangs in which they strut their masculinity for one another, often overdo it, and sometimes turn to displays of fierce, macho bravado and even violence."

"Our love of lockstep is our greatest curse, the source of all that bedevils us. It is the source of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, terrorism, bigotry of every variety and hue, because it tells us there is one right way to do things, to look, to behave, to feel, when the only right way is to feel your heart hammering inside you and to listen to what its timpani is saying."

"If men got pregnant, there would be safe, reliable methods of birth control. They'd be inexpensive, too."

"Some of my best friends are men. It is simply that I think women are superior to men. There, I've said it. It's my dirty little secret. [...] The other day, a very wise friend of mine asked "Have you ever noticed that what passes as a terrific man would only be an adequate woman?" A Roman candle went off in my head; she was absolutely right. What I expect from my male friends is that there are polite and clean. What I expect from my female friends is unconditional love, the ability to finish my sentences for me when I am sobbing, and the ability to tell me why the meat thermometer isn't supposed to touch the bone."

"People who wish to salute the free and independent side of their evolutionary character acquire cats. People who wish to pay homage to their servile and salivating roots own dogs."

"Here is the real domino theory: Gay man to gay man, bisexual man to straight woman, addict mother to newborn baby, they all fall down and someday it will come to you."

"People always blame the girl; she should have said no. A monosyllable, but conventional wisdom has always been that boys can't manage it."

"A great number of people in this country do not even take the Atlantic Charter seriously. They think it is some jiggery-pokery trumped up by Roosevelt and Churchill to propagandize their meeting at sea in 1941. They do not see it for what it should be: an extension of the Rights of Man, and another logical step in the fulfillment of the purpose of this nation. The scornful conception of the Atlantic Charter and of all other attempts to state our purpose will not do. For unless the spirit of the people is behind these declarations, they will have no true value. The essence of patriotism is in believing in the principles of America. Either you believe in the equalitarian idea behind this republic or you do not. Either you believe in Lincoln's "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" or you do not. Either you believe in liberty, justice, and right, or you do not. If you do, then our appeal to the revolutionary spirit of the world will be heard, but if you do not, all the Atlantic Charters in the world will not inspire the conquered nations to fight for principles that we proclaim but do not follow."

"The root of the trouble lies, I think, in the military situation. We do not like this unprecedented parade of bad news; we don't like to get shoved around all over the world; so we are complaining bitterly about almost everything. But neither do the British like it, and neither do the Russians, nor the Chinese, nor the Dutch, who have had to take a lot more than we have. Adverse criticism of our allies will not help our military situation. It does no good to complain now about Singapore; that milk has been well and truly spilt. It does even less good to meditate on King George III, or the last World War, or the war debts, or the unfortunate accents and manners of certain officials sent out here from Whitehall. I have not read any adverse criticism in the British press about Pearl Harbor (what would we have said if they had got caught like that at Alexandria or Gibraltar or Scapa Flow?); I have heard no attacks in the House of Commons on our naval dispositions or on the size of our expeditionary forces; I have heard of very few recriminations about our failure to be ready for war despite our years of criticizing British unpreparedness."

"Why, then, all the sniping over here? We are not doing anybody any favors in this war. This is no exercise in knight-errantry. The Russians and the British are doing just as much for us as we are doing for them. They need our weapons and what men we can send; we need their help, and we need it desperately if we are ever to win this war. If most of the people who are doing most of he complaining had their own way with our foreign policy, we might not have had any allies today, and unless we had wanted to connive with the Japs at the destruction of China, the Netherlands Indies, and the British Empire, we should still have been attacked at Pearl Harbor. There was only one honorable course on December 7, and we chose it; there is only one honorable course now, and that is to be helpful or to be quiet."

"I have heard it often- that if the conquered peoples of Europe do not like our democracy the way it is, they can go fly a kite. It is absolutely true that a great majority of us found the old life very comfortable and would like to go back to the "normality" that produced it; but... we destroyed that "normality" trying to save our lives and cannot now go back to it any more than we can turn 1943 back into 1938. Nor can we tell the conquered peoples of Europe to go fly a kite if they do not like our democracy, because we need their help and will need it desperately before the war is over, and in order to get it we shall have to remove the doubts that are in their minds. That means that the people of America must look forward and not backward. That means that we must prove that our democracy is just as efficient as the totalitarian creed of our enemies. That means that we must make democracy live up to its promises. "Most governments," said Abraham Lincoln, "have been based on the denial of the equal rights of men; ours began by affirming those rights. We made the experiment, and the fruit is before us. Look at it- think of it." The democracy of Lincoln is not dead. It has not lost its revolutionary fervor. It has not lost its appeal to the men of the world. Our problem is to prove that we really believe in it."

""We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable Rights; that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Could anything be more in conflict with the fundamental philosophy of the totalitarian states? These states do not agree that there are any truths in this paragraph; they deny most vehemently and have taken up the sword to prove that all men are not created equal, but that they, the master races, have the right and duty to dictate to the lesser men of the world; they do not concede that man has any "unalienable Rights" except his right to bear arms and carry out the will of the God-state; and they deny him not only his liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but his life as well."

"The second paragraph of the Declaration continues: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." This clearly is the very antithesis of the totalitarian belief. Those governments were not instituted to secure these individual rights for their people. Neither the Nazis nor the Japanese militarists nor the Fascists of Italy derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed," and their concentration camps and common graves are full of people who even dared to suggest that the people had any right to criticize let alone to alter or abolish, the existing regimes."

"I wonder when I hear people scoffing at the four freedoms and wondering whether wars, after all, ever really settle anything. Do we, even now, understand the revolutionary nature of this war? Are we putting everything to the test; will it help win the war? Are we clear on the enormity of our task? Do we realize the size of the stakes?"

"These are the thing we are really talking about when we speak of "our way of life"; and these are precisely the things that are at stake in this war. For the Germans have denied every democratic and Christian principle that has been handed down to us and preserved and developed in this great republic. The Greeks gave us the idea of intellectual liberalism, Plato the conception of reason, yet the Nazis deny their right to exist. Christ gave us the doctrine of love and mercy, but the Germans scorn Christ as a Jew and scoff at love and mercy. The French confirmed our faith in democracy with their cry of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," yet the Germans dismiss this as a hypocritical slogan to be opposed, as Hitler's pal Hans von Bülow has said, by their "Prussian realities of Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery." The Romans and British gave us our conception of the "rule of law and the sanctity of treaties," and we have known for years what the totalitarians thought of these fundamental virtues. We in the United States have given all these honorable things a worthy home and have proved to the world what can be done by heroic men whose minds are free to question and experiment, to seek truth according to their own conscience, and to listen sympathetically to the most unorthodox views."

"But we must understand that these are not permanent things. Democracy is no heirloom to be possessed and passed on like a Governor Winthrop desk. It is "an endowment like life that must be purchased in every generation." Sympathy and reason and true democracy can be destroyed overnight. They can be destroyed by a conqueror, as in Norway; they can be taken from us by our own selfishness, as in France. Every bureaucrat who tampers with freedom of the press, every newspaper publisher who willfully suppresses or distorts or minimizes the truth; every unreasonable citizen who nurses his own prejudices and refuses to listen sympathetically to the other fellow's point of view, is, we must clearly understand, endangering these principles for which we are fighting. Never before in the history of the republic has it been so important that we understand this fact, for in time of war these principles are often threatened at the top by a small minority of officials who would curtail our freedom to know, and at the bottom by a number of people who, even in the face of the enemy, cannot shelve their own prejudices or abandon the interests of their particular groups."

"Governments are the only vessels that leak from the top"

"People are always dying in the Times who don't seem to die in other papers, and they die at greater length and maybe even with a little more grace."

"Europe has a press that stresses opinions; America a press, radio, and television that emphasize news."

"The rising power of the United States in world affairs … requires, not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and criticism.... Our job in this age, as I see it, is not to serve as cheerleaders for our side in the present world struggle but to help the largest possible number of people to see the realities of the changing and convulsive world in which American policy must operate."

"In foreign policy you have to wait twenty-five years to see how it comes out."

"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears but by diligent hard work, he overcame them."

"The most shocking part [about the assassination of JFK] is...the sequence of the shooting, the timing,... the wounds and the autopsy. It’s all quite shocking when you...think seriously about it. It doesn’t make any sense the way they described it. That’s the most shocking part of the case. When you start to investigate Oswald, of course there are a thousand interesting things that come up. The files on Oswald were much more closely supervised by the CIA then we knew at the time and were omitted by the Warren Commission. They treated it like a routine investigation, but it was hardly so. We draw a line between the cover-up and the assassination. The cover-up is filled with another cast of characters. That is to say, the Warren Commission itself, who is in charge of the investigation; and the main man, Alan Dulles, the ex-chief of the CIA and one of the most powerful figures in government. He was fired by Kennedy, as were all his top officials, two years earlier. He was put in charge of the investigation and buried certain information. That’s part of the cover-up."

"Fidel Castro was a brilliant person who predicted everything that has happened in the world since 2001... I made the film Comandante with the idea that it would be a historical profile of the man. The film can be seen on YouTube, but it could never be screened in theaters in the United States because they censored it and removed it a week before it was due for release...Then we made Looking for Fidel, which was possibly the most aggressive interview with Fidel. I asked him very difficult questions and that movie was screened on HBO. However, given the good job that Fidel did answering the questions they do not put it on enough on U.S. television. HBO instructed me to ask Fidel hard, tough questions, to put him on the spot. As you all know, that was not easily done and he was brilliant in his answers to all my questions. I think that’s why HBO has not shown the movie again."

"Julian Assange did much for free speech and is now being victimised by the abusers of that concept."

"Strong mind, no sun, friends who visit, work to be done, one documentary coming out from Alex Gibney that is not expected to be kind."