People From New York City

"What happened at Hiroshima was less than a millionth part of a holocaust at present levels of world nuclear armament."

"The Hiroshima people’s experience, is a picture of what our whole world is always poised to become, a backdrop of scarcely imaginable horror lying just behind the surface of our normal life, and capable of breaking through into that normal life at any second.”—The New Yorker, February 1, 1982."

"You have lifted a shadow of fear for many families. God bless you and may God bless the victims."

"In America, we vote, we decide as a group of people what our policies are, and that's the way we do business. We don't let violence make those determinations for us."

"I don't shut anybody up... It’s not very democratic, not very American."

"Some white people hate black people, and some white people love black people, some black people hate white people, and some black people love white people. So you see it's not an issue of black and white, it's an issue of Lovers and Haters."

"I am a being of Heaven and Earth, of thunder and lightning, of rain and wind, of the galaxies, of the suns and the stars and the void through which they travel. The essence of nature, eternal, divine that all men seek to know to hear, known as the great illusion time, and the all-prevailing atmosphere. And now you know my background."

"Now Heaven and Earth are older than the temples, and older than the Scriptures, and whether we realize it or not, they hold more authority."

"The seasons come and the seasons go, the summer fruit and the winter snow, but here we are, and here we stay — until the time to go away. Ah, they say, there's a land that is great, and is grand; there's no fear, and no pain — we will all live again — and everyone will find the ones they love."

"What I mean by the Principle of Oneness is this: That we must learn to realize that there's nothing separate or apart. That everything is part of everything else. That there's nothing above us, or below us, or around us. All is inherent within us. Like Jesus said, "The Kingdom is Within.""

"There was a boy A very strange enchanted boy..."

"While we spoke of many things Fools and kings This he said to me: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn Is just to love and be loved in return.""

"We're not earthly beings any more… we're cosmic beings."

"The earth is my altar, the sky is my dome, mind is my garden, the heart is my home and I'm always at home — yea, I'm always at Om."

"Leaders encourage reflective backtalk. Norbert Wiener told me, “I never know what I say until I hear the response.” Leaders know the importance of having someone in their lives who will unfailingly and fearlessly tell them the truth."

"Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens, people feel centered and that gives their work meaning."

"The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born — that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. And the way we become leaders is by learning about leadership through life and job experiences, not with university degrees."

"Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led."

"The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment."

"We have more information now than we can use, and less knowledge and understanding than we need. Indeed, we seem to collect information because we have the ability to do so, but we are so busy collecting it that we haven’t devised a means of using it. The true measure of any society is not what it knows but what it does with what it knows."

"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality."

"A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless … someone's got to make a wake up call."

"Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing. Both roles are crucial, and they differ profoundly. I often observe people in top positions doing the wrong things well."

"The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it."

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

"Only a very foolish lawyer will dare guess the outcome of a jury trial."

"One of Judge Jerome Frank's law clerks objected to the length of one of his opinions. He spent all of a week and finally cut it down from sixty-five pages to one-half page. He left both on Judge Frank's desk without comment. The following morning Judge Frank rushed into his clerk's office and shouted, 'Bully for you,' displaying the clerk's work, 'we'll add it to the end'."

"To the somnambulist, sleep-walking may seem more pleasant and less hazardous than wakeful walking, but the latter is the wiser mode of locomotion in the congested traffic of a modern community. It is about time to abandon judicial somnambulism."

"True, no man can be wholly apart from his fellows. But, if each of us is a promontory, yet the promontory reaches out beyond the social mainland to a point where others cannot intrude. Beyond that point lies an unexplorable lonesomeness, a unique privacy. It is a no-other-man's land, for others can't penetrate it, can't communicate with it."

"Increasingly constructive doubt is the sign of advancing civilization. We must put question marks along many of our inherited legal dogmas, since they are dangerously out of line with social facts."

"Every lawyer of experience comes to know (more or less unconsciously) that in the great majority of cases, the precedents are none too good as bases of prediction. Somehow or other, there are plenty of precedents to go around."

"To say I removes a false impression of a Jovian aloofness."

"The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless."

"(1) If a convicted man has the money to pay the docket fee and for a transcript of the proceedings at his trial, the upper federal court, by at least reading the transcript, will ascertain whether or not there was reversible error at the trial, or whether or not there was such a lack of evidence that the defendant is entitled to a new trial or a dismissal of the indictment. (2) If, however, the defendant is so destitute that he cannot pay the docket fee, and if the trial judge has signed a certificate of 'bad faith,' then although a reading of the transcript shows clear reversible errors, the federal appellate court is powerless to hear the appeal and thus to rectify the errors; and even if the defendant has money enough to pay the docket fee but not enough for a transcript, the upper court usually has no way of determining whether there were such errors, must therefore assume there were none, and must accordingly refuse to consider his appeal. As a consequence, a poor man erroneously convicted-- e.g., where there was insufficient proof of his guilt--must go to prison and stay there. In such a situation-- i.e., where the upper court, if it had the transcript before it, would surely reverse for insufficiency of the evidence or on some other ground, but cannot do so solely because the defendant cannot pay for a transcript-- the result is this: He is punished because he is guilty of the crime of being poor (more or less on the principle, openly avowed in Erewhon only, that one who suffers misfortunes deserves criminal punishment)."

"You don’t think progress goes in a straight line, do you? Do you recognize that it is an ascending, accelerating, maybe even exponential curve? It takes hell’s own time to get started, but when it goes it goes like a bomb."

"I found a man who claimed he used to be a radio engineer. And if he was an engineer, I was Albert Einstein’s mother, but at least he knew which end of a soldering iron was hot."

"There’s an editor for you. They’re all the same. At first they’re all honey and sweet talk, with those long alcoholic lunches and blue-sky conversation about million-copy printings while they wheedle you into signing the contract. Then they turn nasty. They want the actual book delivered. When they don’t get it, or when the censors say they can’t print it, then there isn’t any more sweet talk and all the conversation is about how the aediles will escort you to debtors’ prison."

"Scientists are an agnostic lot, of course—well, most educated people are, aren’t they?"

"“See, there’s a bit of a problem here. It’s true that editors are always begging for something new and different, but if you’re dumb enough to try to give it to them they don’t recognize it. When they ask for ‘different,’ what they mean is something right down the good old ‘different’ groove.”"

"It was a nasty day in late December, just before the holidays. The weather was cold, wet, and miserable—well, I said it was London, didn’t I?"

"Is there any of me, or of any of us, that isn’t just consequence? I think, and I’ve thought it over a lot, that everything that ever happened keeps on happening, extending tendrils of itself endlessly into the moving present tense of time, porducing its echoes, and explosions and extinctions forever."

"“See, we don’t go in for your so-called ‘birth control’ here. No abortion. No contraception. We accept the gift of life when it is given. We believe that every human being, from the moment of conception on, has a right to a life—although,” he added, “not necessarily a long one.”"

"What will come of these things? That is a fair question. Unfortunately there is no answer. Not yet. If we knew the answer in advance, we would not have to perform the experiment."

"“You could rule the nation—and yet you don’t seem to go after that power.” The mayor frowned. “Power, Mrs. O’Hare? You mean the chance to make laws and compel others to do what you want them to? Why, good heavens, Mrs. O’Hare, who in his right mind would want that?”"

"It is a constant wonder to me how crazy a sane person can get."

"“Would it help, do you think, if I canceled this operation and tried to get you, the other you, on the phone? President-to-President? A one-on-one talk?” “Why, I think that would depend on what you said, Mr. President,” she said thoughtfully. “I’d say the truth!” he barked. “Might be an interesting change, at that.”"

"She laughed out loud. It was a very nice laugh. No girl looks beautiful when she’s laughing hard, and girls who worry about looking beautiful don’t do it. Dorotha Keefer looked like a healthy, pretty girl having a good time, which when you come down to it is about the best way for a girl to look."

"A soft drink and a couple of Twinkies didn’t make a meal, but at least they informed my stomach my intentions were good."

"He said in an injured tone: “Mister, naturally the staff won’t bother your stuff. What kind of a hotel do you think this is? “Of course, of course,” I said. But I knew he was lying, because I knew what kind of hotel it was. The staff was there only because being there gave them a chance to knock down more money than they could make any other way. What other kind of hotel was there?"

"She described herself as happy. This diagnosis did not come from any welling up of joy inside herself. It came from the observed fact, looking at herself objectively, that whenever she decided she wanted something she always got it, and what other definition of happiness could there be?"