people-from-prague

"You are like a child who whistles in the dark. As though the dark cared, my poor child, as though the dark cared."

"Women are like teeth. Some tremble and never fall and some fall and never tremble."

"It was though I had been in possession of one of those small shells with Japanese flowers which are sold at street corners. When plunged into a bowl of water, the tightly sealed shell opens and the flat, dry, coiled-up, insignificant shreds of paper contained within float out and unfold their variegated and unsuspected splendour; with Gordon I had found my bowl of water."

"My mind sometimes wanders. Do unto others and so on. Very nice again, but what if others have a different taste from yours? I don't remember who said it."

"Beyond my upset I was flooded by a deep happiness, similar to the one he made me feel when forcing me to surrender to his virility. No one else before him had given me this gratification, but I realised now that the longing to be violated, body and soul, must have always been inside me."

"After the verb “to love,” “to help” is the most beautiful verb in the world!"

"Like other Muslims, Indonesian Islamic leaders—reformists, hardly less than orthodox—were thus by Western standards not only lacking in political experience, but were, by the nature of their orientation and training, ill-equipped to formulate political goals as such. The santri {Javanese practitioners of a more orthodox Islam} civilization, in other words, is not a political ideal so much as the idealization of a religious community—the ummah—which would subsume within its all-embracing confines all walks of life, subordinating the state to the dictates of the Islamic ethic…. If given political expression in Darul Islam—the so-called “Islamic State”—the political program of Islam is limited to postulating a state which, irrespective of its constitutional form, economic organization, and social composition, is to be ruled by Muslims in accordance with Islamic Law."

"The political significance of Indonesian Islam, including Javanese Islam, stems in no small measure from the fact that in Islam the borderline between religion and politics is, at best very thin. Islam is a way of life as much as a religion…. Islam does not recognize the existence of independent, secular realms of life…. Separation of religion and politics, in other words, was, at best a temporary phenomenon of Islam in decline. In an era of Islamic awakening, it could not survive for long, either in independent Muslim lands or in Islamic areas ruled by non-Muslims…."

"Nam et escae execrantur quae saepius sumuntur."

"Certum est enim, longos esse crines omnibus sed breves sensus mulieribus."

"I understand my appointment to the episcopal see of Litoměřice, according to our Redemptorist charism, as a missionary vocation with particular attention to those who are most in need of our help."

"I'm in a position now where I really have to think whether I should go to a pub, but I go from time to time with friends and have a glass of wine. It's good to show that a bishop is a normal person."

"However, until before the bhakti trend set in, before the so-called 'dark ages', in the Tamil classical age, in the age of Murugan, the Tamil man seems to have had a clear, optimistic, rather simple, very secular view of life, in a heroic age of meat-eating and wine-drinking pre-feudal society, with relatively simple but meaningful religious conceptions."

"As Wheeler pointed out long ago, Harappan civilization is the most spatially extensive of all the early civilizations we know."

"Tamilnadu has known no "real" [R]enaissance-like development . . . there was no development comparable to the European rinascimento of the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries, to European rationalism of the seventeen–eighteenth centuries or to European empiricism and positivism of the nineteenth century."

"the pitfall of the simplistic view of Indian cultural development, which reduces everything to the tension between autochthonous features (primarily Dravidian) and imported Indo-Aryan traits. ... [the indigenous Tamil framework] was invaded, partly violated and raped, partly adopted and adapted, by the attempts of later commentators to force Tamil ideology into the procrustean mould of the Brahminic-Sanskritic models."

"Censorship has an advantage of making you express yourself in very inventive ways and to think in symbols…those are the only weapons you have against censorship. It also helps by filling your desk drawers with mountains of rejected scripts you can use later in life, if you’re as lucky as I am."

"The Czech people has never had any sensitivity to current affairs. They were always prepared to defend the stale and unviable. In the Middle Ages, they wanted to reform the moribund Western Gothic with the Hussite movement. In the Great War, they lapsed into a primitive Slavophile doctrine and then they began to throw in their lot with morally putrid Western democracy."

"Well, it’s down a hill, both of them, right? That’s the basics."

"I wish I had as much athleticism as she has to hop from sport to sport and win everything. Unfortunately I'm only good at ski racing and she still beat me!"

"Moravec gave me this recording ages ago, but only now have I found the time and inclination to listen to it. I've no desire to pick holes in his interpretation and, when all's said and done, there's really nothing to pick holes in. These two sonatas aren't a part of my repertory, so I can listen to them purely for my own enjoyment (an enjoyment guaranteed, of course, by the composer). Moravec is an altogether admirable and professional pianist. He understands what he's playing."

"The means determine the goal. If lies and violence are the means, the results cannot be good.... We have been in Palestine for twelve years [i.e. since the 1917 without having even once made a serious attempt at seeking through negotiations the consent of the indigenous people.... I believe that it will be possible for us to hold Palestine and continue to grow for a long time. This will be done first with British aid and then later with the help of our own bayonets -- shamefully called Haganah [defense] -- clearly because we have no faith in our own policy. But by that time we will not be able to do without the bayonets. The means will have determined the goal. Jewish Palestine will no longer have anything of that Zion for which I once put myself on the line."

"Nationalism is a state of mind permeating the large majority of the people and claiming to permeate all its members; it recognises the nation-State as the ideal form of political organization and the nationality as the source of all creative cultural energy and economic well-being. The supreme loyalty of man is therefore due to his nationality, as his own life is supposedly rooted in and made possible by its welfare."

"Hitler's seizure of power in Germany dumfounded the whole Socialist world. German socialism had long been looked upon by the more conservative Socialist groups as a shining example. After all, it was the movement that had produced Bebel and Kautsky; its membership ran into the millions; it had organized powerful and wealthy labor and co-operative movements."

"The writings of Bellamy and Blatchford early appealed to me. The "Cooperative Commonwealth" of Gronlund also impressed me, but the writings of Kautsky were so clear and conclusive that I readily grasped, not merely his argument, but also caught the spirit of his socialist utterance—and I thank him and all who helped me out of darkness into light."

"Kautsky knew as well as Bernstein that advanced industrial societies were changing in ways unpredicted by Marx and Engels. But he set himself up as the Pope of Marxism in opposition to Bernstein as Anti-Pope. He protected 'orthodoxy' against attacks on its fundamental doctrines. He honoured the legacy of Marxism's co-founders. He wrote a lengthy disquisition on the agrarian question querying the evidence and analysis adduced by Eduard David. Nor did he fail to stress that developments around the world in industrial organization were following the path predicted by Marx and Engels."

"The worst reproach that Engels could make against the first English Marxists was that they were applying Marxism in a sectarian spirit. What would he have said, had he lived to see it, about a school of Marxists who after succeeding in capturing the state power proceeded to make a state religion of Marxism, a religion whose articles of faith and their interpretation are watched over by the government, a religion, the criticism of which, nay, the slightest deviation from which, is sternly punished by the State; a Marxism ruling by the methods of the Spanish Inquisition, propagated with fire and sword, practicing a theatrical ritual, as illustrated by the embalmed body of Lenin: a Marxism reduced to the status not only of a state religion but of a medieval or oriental faith? Such a Marxism may indeed be called a doctrinaire fanaticism."

"The Bolsheviki under Lenin's leadership, however, succeeded in capturing control of the armed forces in Petrograd and later in Moscow and thus laid the foundation for a new dictatorship in place of the old Czarist dictatorship."

"I expect that soon the failure of the attempts to transform Russia into a Socialist community by methods of dictatorship will become apparent to all. The failure of the Communist experiment in Russia, however, does not mean the downfall of the Bolshevik regime. The two things are not necessarily linked together. Nay, they are mutually exclusive. The same backwardness that makes Socialism in Russia at the present time impossible favors the strengthening of despotism once it has taken root."

"Der naheliegende Einwand, daß es für den einzelnen nur sehr wenig ins Gewicht fällt, ob er selbst fleißig und eifrig ist, daß es für ihn wichtiger ist, daß alle anderen es sind, wird von ihnen entweder gar nicht oder in unzulänglicher Weise berücksichtigt. Sie glauben, auf dem kategorischen Imperativ allein das sozialistische Gemeinwesen aufbauen zu können. Wie leicht sie es sich dabei zu machen pflegen, zeigt wohl am besten Kautsky, der die Behauptung aufstellt: »Ist der Sozialismus eine gesellschaftliche Notwendigkeit, dann wäre, wenn er in Konflikt mit der Menschennatur käme, diese es, die den Kürzeren ziehen würde, und nicht der Sozialismus«. Das ist reinster Utopismus."

"Karl Kautsky, who was of Czech parentage but lived most of his life in Germany, also attacked Bernstein, but from a more centrist position than that of the fiery Luxemburg. Kautsky had at one time been a Marxist theorist much admired by Lenin, although as early as 1893 he had displayed a more sympathetic attitude to parliamentarism, writing that ‘a genuine parliamentary regime can be just as good an instrument for the dictatorship of the proletariat as it is an instrument for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’. Later not only Kautsky, but also the more radical Luxemburg, who had scathingly attacked Bernstein for his notion of evolutionary socialism, were to point to the dictatorial implications of the seizure of power in Russia by Lenin and the Bolsheviks."

"He who thinks that lasting peace can be brought about by means of war, “the last war,” is wrong. Equally wrong are those who imagine that the working class can be assured prosperity and freedom by organizing economic life an a militaristic basis. No less erroneous is it to strive for a dictatorship for the purpose of crushing the enemy and establishing the proletariat in a privileged position in the state and Society while reducing the rest of the population to the position of pariahs as a means of establishing ultimately socialist equality for all. But most objectionable of all would it be to attempt to build a regime of humanity upon the basis of brutality."

"Under all circumstances we shall remain the champions of democracy and humanity. We reject as senseless and cruel and ruinous to both our cause and our nation the suggestion that we strive to arrive at humanity by the method of brutality."

"According to the laws of social development established by Marx, a backward agricultural country cannot show the way to Socialism to other countries. Its failure in this respect is foreordained. It is merely a question of when and how this failure will finally manifest itself. Until now the Bolsheviki have been skillful in disguising their failure under the mask of promises of a glorious future. The last such promise was the Five-Year plan. But the Bolshevist state economy has been in existence now more than fifteen years. For more than ten years the USSR has been enjoying complete peace. And yet, contrary to all promises, things under the Bolshevist state economy have been getting worse every year, (excepting the short period of the Nep), and the day is not far distant when even the most credulous will become convinced that the Bolshevist way leads not upward, toward Socialism, but downward, to open ruin or slow disintegration."

"When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught."

"Dictators may torture or kill us, but they shall not succeed in demoralizing the soul of our movement, in bringing it to a state where for the sake of saving its life it is willing to renounce its ideal. Our cause will conquer in spite of everything, for in economic life as well as in politics the highest ability to accomplish and to advance things belongs to communities and organizations of free men working in free cooperation. These free communities will far outstrip every collective body, every organization that is built on compulsion and that can be maintained only by brute force; and ultimately the communities based on oppression will perish."

"Our duty is not merely to abolish the capitalist order but to set up a higher order in its place. But we must oppose those forces aiming to destroy capitalism only in order to replace it with another barbarous mode of production."

"The choice of methods and weapons to be used by the champions of democracy will not depend upon our wishes but will be determined by political and social conditions. and especially by the methods and weapons of the enemy."

"Frank, you are, without doubt, a scarcity. Anyone who looks at the historical record of the juncture of art and technology finds you nearly unaccompanied when it comes to documenting this historical record between the years of the late-1960's up to the early 1990s. Basically there is you, Jack Burnham's book Beyond Modern Sculpture (1968), and Gene Youngblood's reference work Expanded Cinema (1970). Specifically, your books Origins and Development of Kinetic Art (1968), Art, Action and Participation (1975) and Art of the Electronic Age (1993) are indispensable research tools in helping us figure out how art got to where it is today - in your terms virtualized."

"As far as the sensory experience of the spectator goes, the most outstanding American kinetic artist is unquestionably the Chinese-born Wen-Ying Tsai. His pieces, which are perfect on the technological level, serve the primary purpose of giving a complete visual experience to the spectator, whose sound solicitations provoke a choreographic, chromatic and rhythmic response in the ‘cybernetic sculptures’. [...]"

"Roy Ascott was among the first artists to launch an appeal for total spectator participation: for him, the strict antinomy between action and contemplation needed to be abolished."

"One of the main reasons for my interest early on in the art and technology relationship was that during my studies of movement and light in art I was struck by the technical components in this art. Contrary to most, if not all, specialists in the field who put the stress on purely plastic issues and in the first place on the constructivist tradition, I was convinced that the technical and technological elements played a decisive part in this art. One almost paradoxical experience was my encounter with the kinetic artist and author of the book Constructivism, George Rickey, and my discovery of the most subtle technical movements in his mobile sculptures. But what seemed to me still more decisive for my option towards the art and technology problematic was the encounter in the early 1950s with artists like Nicholas Schöffer and Frank Malina whose works were based on some first hand or second hand scientific knowledge and who effectively or symbolically employed contemporary technological elements that gave their works a prospective cultural meaning. The same sentiment prevailed in me when I encountered similar artistic endeavors from the 1950s onwards in the works of Piotr Kowalski, Roy Ascott and many others which confirmed me in the aesthetic option I had taken, particularly when I discovered that this option was not antinomic (contradictory) to another aspect of the creative works of the time, i.e. spectator participation."

"Roy Ascott... aimed to achieve a wider 'cybernetic' awareness through acting on the psychology of the spectator, who was invited to regroup the elements of the technological universe and exploit certain of its meanings."

"Peter [Sellers] was always a mixed-up guy, a childish fellow. But if you're fond of children, you're also fond of childish men. He was always very helpful to me. After he was famous, and when I was still in trouble with the US embassy, he wrote a letter in support of me which was magnificent. But it is true that he was very cruel to his children. He was so hurt by the way children treat you when you're their father. I have been hurt by my children. But he was not in possession of a proper brain when it came to these things."

"[On the Pink Panther films] I had a scene with Peter [Sellers] in my office. He said something like, "Don't worry chief, I'll settle it," and gave me an encouraging wink. So I started winking out of nervousness, and couldn't stop. It wasn't in the script but Blake Edwards [the director] loved it. But it became a problem. I made those films for 20 years, and after 10 years they ran out of good scripts. They used to say to me, "Herbert, wink here, wink." And I said, "I'm not going to wink. You write a good scene and I won't have to wink.""

"By determining law — so far as it is the subject of a specific science of law — as norm, it is delimited against nature; and science of law against natural science. But in addition to legal norms, there are other norms regulating the behavior of men to each other, that is, social norms; and the science of law is therefore not the only discipline directed toward the cognition and description of social norms. There other social norms may be called “morals.” and the discipline directed toward their cognition and description, “ethics.” So far as justice is a postulate of morals, the relationship between justice and law is included in the relationship between morals and law."

"It is called a “pure” theory of law, because it only describes the law and attempts to eliminate from the object of this description everything that is not strictly law: Its aim is to free the science of law from alien elements. This is the methodological basis of the theory."

"The characterization of Kelsen’s pure theory of law as an ideology is here not meant as a reproach, though its defenders are bound to regard it as such. Since every social order rests on an ideology, every statement of the criteria by which we can determine what is appropriate law in such an order must also be an ideology. The only reason why it is important to show that this is also true of the pure theory of law is that its author prides himself on being able to ‘unmask’ all other theories of law as ideologies and to have provided the only theory which is not an ideology. This Ideolologie-kritik is even regarded by some of his disciples as one of Kelsen’s greatest achievements. Yet, since every cultural order can be maintained only by an ideology, Kelsen succeeds only in replacing one ideology with another that postulates that all orders maintained by force are orders of the same kind, deserving the description (and dignity) of an order of law, the term which before was used to describe a particular kind of order valued because it secured individual freedom. Though within his system of thought his assertion is tautologically true, he has no right to assert, as he constantly does, that other statements in which, as he knows, the term ‘law’ is used in a different sense, are not true. What ‘law’ is to mean we can ascertain only from what those who used the word in shaping our social order intended it to mean, not by attaching to it some meaning which covers all the uses ever made of it. Those men certainly did not mean by law, as Kelsen does, any ‘social technique’ which employs force, but used it in order to distinguish a particular ‘social technique’, a particular kind of restraint on the use of force, which by the designation of law they tried to distinguish from others. The use of enforceable generic rules in order to induce the formation of a self-maintaining order and the direction of an organization by command towards particular purposes are certainly not the same ‘social techniques’. And if, because of accidental historical developments, the term ‘law’ has come to be used in connection with both these different techniques, it should certainly not be the aim of analysis to add to the confusion by insisting that these different uses of the word must be brought under the same definition."

"Justice is primarily a possible, but not a necessary, quality of a social order regulating the mutual relations of men. Only secondarily it is a virtue of man, since a man is just, if his behavior conforms to the norms of a social order supposed to be just. But what does it really mean to say that a social order is just? It means that this order regulates the behavior of men in a way satisfactory to all men, that is to say, so that all men find their happiness in it. The longing for justice is men's eternal longing for happiness. It is happiness that men cannot find alone, as an isolated individual, and hence seeks in society. Justice is social happiness. It is happiness guaranteed by a social order."

"Law is an order of human behavior. An “order” is a system of rules. Law is not, as it is sometimes said, a rule. It is a set of rules having the kind of unity we understand by a system. It is impossible to grasp the nature of law if we limit our attention to the single isolated rule."