Discourse

"The prosecutor, his voice trembling, added that the "N-word" was so vile he would not utter it. "It's the filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language.""

"Blacks stayed at home during the civil rights march. Niggers are the ones that marched.... A nigger is one like Hosea Williams. He wants to come up here and cause trouble."

"Then I come down to Houston, I went to a bowling alley. I couldn't go bowling, there were no bowling balls. The people here throw 'em all in the sea, thought they were nigger eggs... thought they were nigger eggs."

"Let's face it. Our ass is in a crack. We're gonna have to let this nigger bill pass."

"O some tell me that a nigger won't steal, But I've seen a nigger in my corn-field; O run, nigger, run, for the patrol will catch you, O run, nigger, run, for 'tis almost day."

"The White House is now so saturated with the odor of the nigger that the rats had taken refuge in the stable."

"Ten little nigger boys went out to dine; One choked his little self, and then there were nine...One little nigger boy living all alone; He got married, and then there were none."

"It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger—but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither."

"The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again."

"Things at the White House Looking mighty curious, Niggers running everywhere, White people furious."

"I am opposed to the nigger's voting, it matters not what his advertised moral and mental qualifications may be. I am just as much opposed to Booker Washington, with all his Anglo-Saxon reenforcement, voting, as I am to voting by the coconut-headed, chocolate-colored typical little coon, Andy Dotson, who blacks my shoes every morning. Neither one is fit to perform the supreme functions of citizenship."

"Republicanism means Negro equality, while the Democratic Party means that the white man is supreme. That is why we [white] Southerners are all Democrats... History has no record of Negro rule. The situation is grave, and calls for wisdom and all manner of statesmanship. If we had our say, the Negro could never vote. I believe that God made the white man out of better clay than that which the Negro was made from... We don't need another race to help us at this time. In some of the states, the Negro holds the vote of control... In Chicago, the Republicans needed the Negro vote to elect their whole ticket, so a nigger was nominated for judge and elected."

"Sam, why don't you all let this nigger bill pass?"

"A jury would not dare convict a white man for killing a nigger in Mississippi."

"Saucy, impudent nigger, you!"

"There is not the intemperate drunkenness of denunciation and vomit of false witness, hatred, uncharitableness and all things degrading and unspiritual and unclean that are the mark of a certain type of "Christian literature" on the subject,—for example the superlative specimen of this noxious compound which Sir John Woodroffe has cited from the pages of Mr. Harold Begbie, "virile" perhaps if violence is virile, but certainly not sane. But still it is a mass of unsparing condemnation, exaggerated where it has any foundation at all and serenely illogical in its blithe joy of deliberate misrepresentation."

"What have the Hindus done to these disciples of Christ that every Christian child is taught to call the Hindus "vile", and "wretches", and the most horrible devils on earth? Part of the Sunday School education for children here consists in teaching them to hate everybody who is not a Christian, and the Hindus especially, so that, from their very childhood they may subscribe their pennies to the missions. If not for truth's sake, for the sake of the morality of their own children, the Christian missionaries ought not to allow such things going on. Is it any wonder that such children grow up to be ruthless and cruel men and women? The greater a preacher can paint the tortures of eternal hell — the fire that is burning there, the brimstone - the higher is his position among the orthodox. A servant-girl in the employ of a friend of mine had to be sent to a lunatic asylum as a result of her attending what they call here the revivalist-preaching. The dose of hell-fire and brimstone was too much for her. Look again at the books published in Madras against the Hindu religion. If a Hindu writes one such line against the Christian religion, the missionaries will cry fire and vengeance."

"Lord Minto wrote to the Chairman of the East India Company in 1807 to say how the publications of the Serampore Press had the effect not to convert but to alienate the adherents of Hinduism and Islam. He said “pray read especially the miserable stuff addressed to the Hindus in which…… without proof or argument of any kind pages are filled with hell fire denounced against the whole race of men, etc…….”"

"It is not true that I am against any religion. It is equally untrue that I am hostile to the Christian missionaries in India. But I protest against certain of their methods of raising money in America. What is meant by those pictures in the school-books for children where the Hindu mother is painted as throwing her children to the crocodiles in the Ganga? The mother is black, but the baby is painted white, to arouse more sympathy, and get more money. What is meant by those pictures which paint a man burning his wife at a stake with his own hands, so that she may become a ghost and torment the husband's enemy? What is meant by the pictures of huge cars crushing over human beings? The other day a book was published for children in this country, where one of these gentlemen tells a narrative of his visit to Calcutta. He says he saw a car running over fanatics in the streets of Calcutta. I have heard one of these gentlemen preach in Memphis that in every village of India there is a pond full of the bones of little babies."

"Memory, about the futile struggle to remember. It’s a eulogy to all the people who flee the terrible conditions in their home countries, desperately hoping for a better life here, and never make it."

"How is one to explain the contradiction illustrated by that orator? Is it because Abraham had a prescriptive right to be a great man, so that what he did is great, and when another does the same it is sin, a heinous sin? In that case I do not wish to participate in such thoughtless eulogy. If faith does not make it a holy act to be willing to murder one's son then let the same condemnation be pronounced upon Abraham as upon every other man."

"EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead."

"The eulogies of my intelligence are positively intended to evade the question “Is what she says true?”"

"La satire ment sur les gens de lettres pendant leur vie, et l'éloge ment après leur mort."

"There is a man in each scholar, a man who inquires and stands in need of answers. I am anxious to answer the scholar qua man but not the representative of a certain discipline, that insatiable, ever inquisitive phantom which like a vampire drains whom it possesses of his humanity."

"Cognition is autonomous; it refuses to have any answers foisted on it from the outside."

"Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received."

"“Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent,” said Miss Susan. “But answers do.”"

"The answer is never the answer."

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

"The question begs the answer, can you forgive me somehow?"

"Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question."

"Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician."

"Our questions and answers are in part determined by the historical tradition in which we find ourselves."

"The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."

"If I had a group under me, they would try and figure out what I wanted the answer to be, and they would tell me what I wanted to hear ... I've watched that approach at 20 public companies ... The main thing is: Are you reasonably sure that you know what you're doing?"

"I'm for mystery, not interpretive answers."

"If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have."

"It would be silly to throw away the right answer because we don't like it."

"It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question."

"Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. ... Their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports."

"Have you ever considered that too many answers are the same as no answer at all?"

"Art is the expression of a man's life, of his mode of being, of his relations with the universe, since it is, in fact, man's inarticulate answer to the universe's unspoken message."

"Which eyes should I look for to find the ultimate unreasoned answer?"

"Mysteries abound where most we seek for answers."

"There are these four ways of answering questions. Which four? There are questions that should be answered categorically [straightforwardly yes, no, this, that]. There are questions that should be answered with an analytical (qualified) answer [defining or redefining the terms]. There are questions that should be answered with a counter-question. There are questions that should be put aside. These are the four ways of answering questions."

"What does a claimant need to show in order to succeed on a theory of duress by threat? The Restatement Second suggests four requirements.' First, there must be a threat. Second, the threat must be of a kind that the law condemns. Third, the threat must induce the victim's manifestation of assent. Fourth, the threat mustbe sufficiently grave to justify the victim's assent. First, what is a threat? Though the Restatement Second attempts no definition, it may be of interest to consider that question in passing here. To begin with, a threat is a manifestation of an intent to do or not to do something in the future ("I'll break your arm" or "I'll break our contract"). But a promise is also a manifestation to do something in the future. Suppose a contractor says to a landowner, "I'll build the house." That is a promise. How does a threat differ from such a promise? Ordinarily, at least, a significant difference between a threat and any other statement of intention is that a threat manifests an intention to do or not to do something that is less desirable from the promisee's point of view than if the alternative were the case. Suppose that after the landowner has gotten the contractor to agree to build the house, the contractor says, "I will not build the house." You would call that a threat because his not building the house is less desirable from the landowner's point of view than his building it. Or suppose I say, "I'll give you a kiss." You might well ask, "Is that a threat or a promise?" And I would say that the answer depends on you: I have made a statement of intention, and whether it is the kind of a statement that is described here as a threat depends on whether my kissing you is less desirable from your point of view than my not kissing you."

"It is amazing what's happening to the discredited media like CNN, MSDNC, New York Times, and Washington Post. Their businesses have dropped off a cliff, which is actually a very good thing for the American people, because they are Fake News (likewise the networks, ABC, NBC, CBS)"

"Orwell's 1984 explained that "the special function of certain Newspeak words … was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them." During the week after U.S. missiles hit sites in Sudan and Afghanistan, some Americans seemed uncomfortable. A vocal minority even voiced opposition. But approval was routine among those who had learned a few easy Orwellian lessons... At all times, Americans must be kept fully informed about who to hate and fear... No matter how many times they’ve lied in the past, U.S. officials are credible in the present. When they... [say] the bombed pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum was making ingredients for nerve gas, that should be good enough for us.... Might doesn’t make right — except in the real world, when it’s American might. Only someone of dubious political orientation would split hairs about international law."

"...a lot of people say they've lost trust in the media, and they think everything is propaganda. And then it becomes very hard to come to any kind of a consensus in society where we say, well, look; you and I disagree on a certain policy, but here are some facts underlying it, and we can at least agree on those facts, whereas now I feel like a lot of people are just adrift. They don't know what to believe."