Authors From The United States

"To whatever extent the science of the past may have contributed to a mechanistic and economic image of man and a technocratic image of the good society, the new science of subjective experience may provide a counteracting force toward the ennobling of the image of the individual's possibilities, of the educational and socializing processes, and of the future. And since we have come to understand that science is not a description of "reality" but a metaphorical ordering of experience, the new science does not impugn the old. It is not a question of which view is "true" in some ultimate sense. Rather, it is a matter of which picture is more useful in guiding human affairs. Among the possible images that are reasonably in ac-cord with accumulated human experience, since the image held is that most likely to come into being, it is prudent to choose the noblest."

"Society gives legitimacy and society can take it away."

"So far what we’re doing here is pure science. We’re learning facts about the universe without worrying what they’re good for."

"Perhaps the only limits to the human mind are those we believe in."

"Something in his mind had snapped and he began collecting comics."

"Throughout history, the really fundamental changes in societies have come about not from the dictates of governments and the results of battles, but through vast numbers of people changing their minds — sometimes only a little bit."

"By deliberately changing the internal image of reality, people can change the world."

"The work of stopping US bombs from being dropped and bringing the US troops home, of ending war and creating lasting peace with justice requires a fundamental commitment to multi-issue organizing. At an anti-war protest not long ago, I saw a placard announcing "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." This slogan is one of many that turns disability into a metaphor, reinforces that disability means broken and is fundamentally undesirable, and ignores the multitude of actual lived disability experiences connected to war. For folks who know blindness/disability as a consequence of crushing military force, the "eye for an eye" slogan offers a superficial rationale for nonviolence but no lasting justice. In response, I'd like to stand next to those anti-war activists and hold a placard that reads "Another crip for peace," or maybe, "Blindness is sexy; military force is not." Because disability is one of the major consequences of war, we need an anti-war politics that doesn't transform disability into a symbol of either patriotism or tragedy, a politics that thinks hard about disability. Who gets killed, and who becomes disabled? Who profits from that killing and disabling? Whose bodies are used as weapons, and whose are treated as expendable? What happens to the countless people shattered, broken, burned, terrorized?"

"Building a politics that reflects all the multiplicity in our lives and in the world isn't optional, but rather absolutely necessary. Exile and Pride is one small part of that building project. When I'm asked, "Tell me, what is your book about?" I always pause. The request seems straightforward. But how do I sum up a book that ranges from the clearcuts of Oregon to the history of the freak show, from the complexities of queer rural working-class organizing to the disability politics of sexual objectification? Inevitably, I answer, "Home." I mean place, body, identity, community, family as home. I mean the hay pastures, trees, rocks, beaches, abandoned lots, kitchen tables, and sunflowers out back that have held and sustained us. I mean how we have fled from and yearned toward home. In the end, I mean a deeply honest multi-issue politics that will make home possible."

"In the decade since the initial release of Exile and Pride, I've often been asked, “What do you want readers to take away from your book?" The answer has become one of my activist mantras: "I want nondisabled progressive activists to add disability to their political agenda. And at the same time I want disability activists to abandon their single-issue politics and strategies." My answer remains as true in 2009 as it was in 1999. It's only been ten years, but I must say I'm impatient for my mantra to lose its relevancy. How long must we wait, for instance, before ADAPT and Critical Resistance join forces?"

"How is wartime violence brought home, in which nightmares and flashbacks, in what rage and addiction? All the answers depend upon naming disability and committing to a multi-layered analysis of how white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism, and ableism work in concert."

"In many trans and queer communities today, my particular gendered story is not all that unusual. But outside those communities, the reality of a white guy having a long, prideful lesbian past can be totally disorienting. Rather than explain myself in the face of cultural confusion, anger, and/or hatred, I yearn for the day when all the rules that confine and constrain gender, that punish gender transgression - rules shaped by misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, and shaped again by white supremacy, capitalism, ableism - come crashing down. I want my gendered story to be one of many stories that defy, bend, smash the gender binary. But in the end, what I really want is for all the many gendered possibilities in the world to be, not normal, but rather profoundly ordinary and familiar. (from "A Note about Gender, or Why Is This White Guy Writing about Being a Lesbian?")"

"Holding then to science with one hand — the left hand — we give the right hand to religion, and cry: "Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things, more wondrous than the shining worlds can tell." Obedient to the promise, religion does waken faculties within us, does teach our eyes to the beholding of more wonderful things. Those great worlds blazing like suns die like feeble stars in the glory of the morning, in the presence of this new light. The soul knows that an infinite sea of love is all about it, throbbing through it, everlasting arms of affection lift it, and it bathes itself in the clear consciousness of a Father's love."

"Your flaming torch aloft we bear, With burning heart an oath we swear To keep the faith, to fight it through, To crush the foe or sleep with you In Flanders' fields."

"Too famous, for his life was pure, And man can ill another's fame endure."

"Never does the heart of Woman throb with a softer and yet more embarrassing thought, then when the sudden consciousness is felt that she was born to love and to be loved. ... It is the first step into womanhood — a step that falls lightly, as if on flowers."

"Things don't just happen in this world of arising and passing away. We don't live in some kind of crazy, accidental universe. Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature. Laws such as the law of karma, which teaches us that as a certain seed gets planted, so will that fruit be."

"Give the the place in your families to which it is entitled, and then, through the unsearchable riches of Christ, many a household among you may hereafter realize that most blessed consummation, and appear !"

"This, as I understand it, is the orthodox doctrine of native depravity. They do not hold, (as some have reported,) that there is a mass of corrupt matter lodged in the heart, which sends off noxious exhalations like a dead body. But they maintain that the soul has entirely lost the image of God, in which it was originally created; that there is nothing pure or good remaining in it; that, in consequence of the withdrawment of those special, divine influences, which were given to our first parents, the proper balance of the powers is destroyed, they have lost their conformity to the law of God, and the holy dispositions, which were at first implanted in the soul, have given place to sinful dispositions, which are the source of all actual transgressions."

"Never before was a people so advantageously situated for working out this great problem in favor of human liberty."

"I have always remarked, that women, in all countries, are civil and obliging, tender and humane; that they are ever inclined to be gay and chearful, timorous, and modest; and that they do not hesitate, like men, to perform a generous action. Not haughty, not arrogant, not supercilious; they are full of courtesy, and fond of society: more liable in general to err than man, but in general also more virtuous, and performing more good actions than he. To a woman, whether civilized or savage, I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. With man it has often been otherwise. In wandering over the barren plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, and frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the wide-spread regions of the wandering Tartar; if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, the women have ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so: and to add to this virtue, (so worthy the appellation of benevolence), these actions have been performed in so free and so kind a manner, that if I was dry I drank the sweetest draught, and, if hungry, I eat the coarse morsel with a double relish."

"Where love is absent there can be no feast."

"The city of New Orleans is a city where les assassins et les voleurs sont considérés comme des gentlemen, où les policemen prennent, à tort et à travers, de pauvres noirs comme de points de cible pour leur revolver, où un cochon volé a plus de valeur que la vie de n’importe quel citoyen. [original French text]."

"The city of New Orleans is a city where assassins and thieves are considered to be gentlemen, where policemen wrongly use poor blacks as targets for their revolver, [and] where a stolen pig has more value than the life of any citizen. [English translation of the above text]"

"If a woman likes another woman, she's cordial. If she doesn't like her, she's very cordial."

"[Humor]: In its essence, merely tragedy standing on its head with its pants torn."

"When you write, you can hide behind your words. When you talk, you are up front, like the clown in the midway booth; any passer-by can bean you with a ball."

"All flowers are flirtatious—particularly if they carry hyphenated names. The more hyphens in the name, the flirtier the flower."

"Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, Greenest state in the Land of the Free, Raised in the woods so's he knew ev'ry tree, Kilt him a b'ar when he was only three— Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier."

"Thank God for reflex decisions; they are the sine qua non of serenity. Suppose you had to decide afresh each day whether or not to brush your teeth?"

"Open to all parties, but influenced by none."

"His reputation in future time will rest, as a patriot, on the manly independence which gave through the initiatory stage and progress of the Revolution the strong influence of the press he directed toward the cause of freedom, when royal flattery would have seduced and the power of government subdued its action."

"Words and sentences are subjects of revision; paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision."

"Wendell was a man of pronounced individuality, warm in his sympathies, singularly loyal in his attachments, and free from littleness. He never concealed his convictions, which were often critical of modern tendencies and points of view. If he seemed to champion the past at the expense of the present, it was because of his insistence on standards and his veneration for the summits not the table lands of tradition. His conversation had the charm of freedom from the commonplace."

"Now the dark waters at the bow fold back, like earth against the plow; foam brightens like the dogwood now at home, in my own country."

"When the patient is dead, it was the disease killed him, not the Doctor. Dead men tell no tales."

"Experience is a great softener of the mind; it gives knowledge."

"That Liberty, Which, not the thunder of Bellona's voice, With fleets, and armies, from the British shore, Shall wrest from us."

"Gravity is the most practical qualification of the physician."

"Farewell, old fellow! We privates loved you because you made us love ourselves."

"Well, on the fatal morning... the sun rose clear and cloudless, the heavens seemed made of brass, and the earth of iron, and as the sun began to mount towards the zenith, everything became quiet, and no sound was heard save a peckerwood on a neighboring tree, tapping on its old trunk, trying to find a worm for his dinner. We all knew it was but the dead calm that precedes the storm."

"We were willing to go anywhere, or to follow anyone who would lead us. We were anxious to flee, fight, or fortify. I have never seen an army so confused and demoralized. The whole thing seemed to be tottering and trembling."

"A law was made... allowing every person who owned twenty negroes to go home. It gave us the blues; we wanted twenty negroes. Negro property suddenly became very valuable, and there was raised the howl of "rich man's war, poor man's fight." The glory of the war, the glory of the South, the glory and the pride of our volunteers had no charms for the conscript."

"War had become a reality; they were tired of it. A law had been passed... called the conscript act. ... From this time on till the end of the war, a soldier was simply a machine, a conscript. ... All our pride and valor had gone, and we were sick of war and the Southern Confederacy."

"He was loved, respected, admired; yea, almost worshipped, by his troops. I do not believe there was a soldier in his army but would gladly have died for him. With him everything was his soldiers, and the newspapers, criticizing him at the time, said, "He would feed his soldiers if the country starved.""

"America has no north, no south, no east, no west; the sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains, the compass just points up and down, and we can laugh now at the absurd notion of there being a north and a south. ... We are one and undivided."

"I always shot at privates. It was they that did the shooting and killing, and if I could kill or wound a private, why, my chances were so much the better. I always looked upon officers as harmless personages."

"He would have a man shot at the drop of a hat, and drop it himself."

"It is good to be shifty in a new country."

"Far, oh, far is the Mango island, Far, oh, far is the tropical sea — Palms a-slant and the hills a-smile, and A cannibal maiden a-waiting for me. I’ve been deceived by a damsel Spanish And Indian maidens both red and brown, A black-eyed Turk and a blue-eyed Danish And a Puritan lassie of Salem town. ... But there’s truth in the heart of the maid of Mango, Though her cheeks is black like the kiln-baked cork, As she sets in the shade o’ the whingo-whango A-waitin’ for me — with a knife and fork."