Lutherans From The United States

"The encounter with bureaucracy takes place in a mode of explicit abstraction. … This fact gives rise to a contradiction. The individual expects to be treated “justly.” As we have seen, there is considerable moral investment in this expectation. The expected “just” treatment, however, is possible only if the bureaucracy operates abstractly, and that means it will treat the individual “as a number.” Thus the very “justice” of this treatment entails a depersonalization of each individual case. At least potentially, this constitutes a threat to the individual’s self-esteem and, in the extreme case, to his subjective identity. The degree to which this threat is actually felt will depend on extrinsic factors, such as the influence of culture critics who decry the “alienating” effects of bureaucratic organization. One may safely generalize here that the threat will be felt in direct proportion to the development of individualistic and personalistic values in the consciousness of the individual. Where such values are highly developed, it is likely that the intrinsic abstraction of bureaucracy will be felt as an acute irritation at best or an intolerable oppression at worst. In such cases the “duties” of the bureaucrat collide directly with the “rights” of the client—not, of course, those “rights” that are bureaucratically defined and find their correlates in the “duties” of the bureaucrat, but rather those “rights” that derive from extrabureaucratic values of personal autonomy, dignity and worth. The individual whose allegiance is given to such values is almost certainly going to resent being treated “as a number.”"

"There's none of this wisecracking and cynicism that you see in … some of the other cartoons. He's supposed to be a role model for kids. He cares about other people."

"There are two kinds of genius, the imitable and the inimitable. "Gumby" is a work of the second sort, the thing so completely, singularly itself, so far off down its own road, so unpredictable and odd, bizarrely constituted and eccentrically executed that there's nowhere for anyone to take it, no variations to play on the theme. He is original and inarguable, and though he has gone in and out of fashion, been parodied and abused [...] whatever insults have been done him are only further testament to his iconic power."

"Clokey says he underwent "a marvelous, life-changing experience" by taking LSD in supervised doses in the late 1960s. "It opened my awareness to what life is all about," he says. [...] — There's a master's thesis for someone who wants to hunt for the psychedelic influence in the shows."

"It’s so satisfying, and when you see it on screen, you feel like God because you’re bringing life to clay."

"I didn’t allow merchandising for seven years after it was on the air because I was very idealistic, and I didn’t want parents to think we were trying to exploit their children."

"Clay is embedded in our subconscious. It has been there for at least 50,000 years."

"The essence of Gumby is that he makes children feel safe. He's their greatest pal."

"I am stunned by this lawless and violent act which must be condemned and should be met with the full force of law. We join in lifting prayer that God's grace and presence rest with Dr. Tiller's family and friends."

"George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name, murder.""

"Dr. Tiller was a fearless, passionate defender of women’s reproductive health and rights. It’s time that this nation stop demonizing these doctors, and start honoring them."

"Operation Rescue has worked tirelessly on peaceful, non-violent measures to bring him to justice through the legal system, the legislative system. Mr. Tiller was an abortionist. But this wasn’t personal. We are pro life, and this act was antithetical to what we believe. Our prayers go out to his family and the thousands of people this will impact.""

"The Kansas National Organization for Women is deeply saddened at the cowardly act of violence committed against Dr. George Tiller, a champion for women's reproductive freedom—an act that ultimately took his life. Dr. Tiller, although previously surviving many acts of terrorism and violence directed at him and his clinic, did not allow it to stop him from standing up for the rights of all women. Kansas NOW grieves not only the loss of Dr. Tiller, but also the loss that all women needing access to safe abortion have suffered due to this act of violence."

"I'm very articulate when I wanna be. You wanna talk to me?"

"I don't like to practice; I like spontaneity. When I don't play guitar for a week and I pick it up again, I play better."

"Crazier things have happened on the road."

"Of course, I believe I have an unfair edge over most of my colleagues right now. My mind works faster than my mouth does. Washington would probably be a better place if more people took a moment to think before they spoke."

"I'll be eighty this month. Age, if nothing else, entitles me to set the record straight before I dissolve. I've given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can't divorce a book."

"Actors and actresses are overrated...Once just a few people knew about them. Then films started and we found ourselves canned like sardines and sent all over the world. It gave us an exaggerated idea of our importance. A scientist who saves thousands of lives is much more important. I wouldn't be twenty years old today for anything. Films aren't entertainments any more, they are realism. I come out of these films positively exhausted. I want to throw up."

"Think what you've just said. All foods should be healthy. We ate meat without any of the things they inject in cows and chickens these days. Bread tasted like bread. Now everything is refined, teens are fat, people have heart attacks at 39. Does that make me nuts? [...] In the thirties I was told I had a tumor down there. I met with a surgeon who was puffy faced and sweating and his hands trembled. He said he wanted to cut through my rectum to get at the growth. I stood and shouted, "Physician, heal thyself!" and I simply fled. A pure bean sprouts diet cured me in months and the tumor shrank and disappeared. I rest my case."

"U.S. News: You criticize the Miranda ruling, which gives suspects the right to have a lawyer present before police questioning. Shouldn't people, who may be innocent, have such protection? Meese: Suspects who are innocent of a crime should. But the thing is, you don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect."

"There are two tactical approaches for candidates seeking their party’s nomination in election campaigns. One is to strongly debate the issues and firmly advocate your positions, but to avoid personal attacks on your opponents or needless divisiveness. The other is to vigorously attack your fellow candidates, disparaging them personally and seeking to raise yourself up by dragging them down. Ronald Reagan was famous for epitomizing the former path. Donald Trump, unfortunately, has chosen to follow the latter course... At a time when the nation is suffering under one of the most divisive and incompetent presidents in history, our people need positive, unifying leadership, not negative, destructive political rhetoric."

"I was attorney general; my name is Meese. I say, go to college. Don't carry a piece."

"The Arab World is where innocent people are kidnapped, blindfolded, tied up, tortured and beheaded, and then videotape of all of this is released to the world as though they’re somehow proud of their barbarism. Somehow, I wouldn’t be too concerned about the sensitivity of the Arab world. They don’t seem to have very much. It’s going to come down to them or us."

"Given the way these mutants treat women in their societies, the women are probably better off in U.S. custody. They treat women like furniture in those countries. If I was a woman, I think I’d rather be in an American jail cell than I would be living with one of those-whatever they are over there."

"On the September 26, 2008 broadcast of CNN's "Situation Room", while sitting next to Wolf Blitzer, Cafferty directly highlighted Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's abysmal interview performance with Katie Couric earlier in the week. Cafferty stated, prior to playing a particularly embarrassing segment of the interview in which Palin stumbles across a murky, confused, ambiguous answer to Couric's query regarding the pending economic bailout package, "There's a reason the McCain campaign keeps Sarah Palin away from the press." After the clip's conclusion, he then went on to say, "...Did you get that? If John McCain wins, this woman will be one 72 year-old's heartbeat away from being president of the United States, and if that doesn't scare the Hell out of you, it should...I'm 65 and have been covering politics as you have [addressing Blitzer] for a long time, and that is one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever seen for someone aspiring to one of the highest offices in this country. That's all I have to say." Blitzer responded in a light-hearted, seemingly forced defense of Palin, stating, "Yeah, but she's cramming a lot of information..." Cafferty interrupted, "There's no excuse for that. She's supposed to know a little bit of this, you know. Don't make excuses for her - that's pathetic." Blitzer replied, "It was not her best answer. I agree with you on that," and the segment came to a close."

"Well, I don't know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different. We're in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They're holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We also are running hundred of billions of dollars worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years"."

"I get paid to ask questions I don't know the answers to and to complain about the things that bother me."

"Is Anna Nicole Smith still dead?"

"On November 7, 2006, Cafferty called Donald Rumsfeld "an obnoxious jerk and war criminal"."

"I would guess it didn't exactly represent a profile in courage for the vice president to wander over there to the F-word network for a sit down with Brit Hume. I mean, that's a little like Bonnie interviewing Clyde, ain't it?"

"Her instinct, her mastery over the machine, was pure witchcraft. I cannot analyze this woman's acting. I only know that no one else so effectively worked in front of a camera."

"Every man's harmless fantasy mistress. By being worshiped by the entire world she gave you the feeling that if your imagination had to sin, it can at least congratulate itself on its impeccable taste."

"Today this young woman —The Garbo as she is known — is the most glamorous figure in the whole world; there is no one with a more magnetic, romantic or exotic personality, there never has been a film star with so wide an appeal... Greta Garbo is Queen of Hollywood, her salary is fabulous, her word law. She has pointed features in a round face, her mouth is wide and knife-like. Her teeth are large and square and like evenly matched pearls; her eyes are pale, with lashes so long that when she lowers her lids they strike her cheeks; her complexion is of an unearthly whiteness and so delicate that she looks to have one layer of skin less than other people, and the suspicion of a frown is sooner perceptible."

"Garbo still belongs to that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy, when one literally lost oneself in a human image as one would in a philtre, when the face represented a kind of absolute state of the flesh, which could be neither reached nor renounced."

"The mystery surrounding Garbo was as thick as a London fog."

"I t'ank I go home."

"I never said, "I want to be alone." I only said, "I want to be let alone! There is all the difference."

"I am bewildered by the thousands of strange people who write me letters. They do not know me. Why do they do that?"

"I think an artist who abandons his art is the saddest thing in the world, sadder than death. There must have been something about Garbo's film career that profoundly revolted her."

"Except physically, we know little more about Garbo than we know about Shakespeare."

"What, when drunk, one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober."

"She is the most miraculous blend of personality and sheer dramatic talent that the screen has ever known and her presence in The Painted Veil immediately makes it one of the season's cinema events."

"You're the purple light of a summer night in Spain. You're the National Gallery; you're Garbo's Salary; you're cellophane!"

"We knew each other. We talked. We passed each other going to the set of our own films. We were doing our jobs. We had great mutual respect."

"Garbo is lonely. She always has been and she always will be. She lives in the core of a vast aching aloneness. She is a great artist, but it is both her supreme glory and her supreme tragedy that art is to her the only reality. The figures of living men and women, the events of everyday existence, move about her, shadowy, unsubstantial. It is only when she breathes the breath of life into a part, clothes with her own flesh and blood the concept of a playwright, that she herself is fully awake, fully alive."