Social Critics

"Without some redistribution of wealth and power, downward mobility and debilitating poverty will continue to drive people into desperate channels. And without principled opposition to xenophobias from above and below, these desperate channels will produce a cold-hearted and mean-spirited America no longer worth fighting for or living in. (p79)"

"In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot enter the twenty-first century at each other's throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, patriarchy, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation--and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p 109)"

"One of the most authentic, brilliant, prophetic and healing voices in America today."

"With the slow and halting development, in late years, of what is styled "social history," male scholars, and occasionally a female scholar, have gradually manifested more consciousness that women had been in history and had done something, whatever it was, in the making of history. As to the state of things before this movement for the writing of social history was well launched, Arthur Meier Schlesinger, one of the pioneers in it, appropriately commented in his New Viewpoints in American History (1922): "An examination of the standard histories of the United States and of the history textbooks in use in our schools raises the pertinent question whether women have ever made a contribution to American national progress that is worthy of record. If the silence of the historians is taken to mean anything, it would appear that one-half of our population have been negligible factors in our country's history"...At all events Professor Schlesinger's appeal of 1922 for some consideration of women's contributions to the making of history effected no immediate revolution in the thinking of his guild. How completely it could be ignored was illustrated in 1940, nearly twenty years later, in The Course of American Democratic Thought: An Intellectual History since 1815, by Ralph H. Gabriel."

"The use of history as therapy means the corruption of history as history."

"Let us by all means teach black history, African history, women’s history, Hispanic history, Asian history. But let us teach them as history, not as filiopietistic commemoration. The purpose of history is to promote not group self-esteem, but understanding of the world and the past, dispassionate analysis, judgment, and perspective, respect for divergent cultures and traditions, and unflinching protection for those unifying ideas of tolerance, democracy, and human rights that make free historical inquiry possible."

"Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in a mordant protest written soon after the election, found the intellectual “in a situation he has not known for a generation.” After twenty years of Democratic rule, during which the intellectual had been in the main understood and respected, business had come back into power, bringing with it “the vulgarization which has been the almost invariable consequence of business supremacy.”"

"Fascists were not conservative in any very meaningful sense... in a meaningful sense, were revolutionaries."

"[F]ascism and communism are clearly more like each other than they are like anything in between."

"Santayana's aphorism must be reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are condemned to repeat it."

"The purpose of democratic statecraft is, or should be, to find the means of ordered liberty in a world condemned to everlasting change."

"Who takes the blame: the leader who talks of poverty but lives in luxury, or the poor who choose a leader of that type?"

"We respect law, when the law respects our needs. Whenever legality clashes with morality, legality should be opposed and morality should be upheld."

"Right wins only when we dare and act."

"Positive secularism is not tolerance of all religions, but it is the total denial of religious beliefs: it is the emergence of homogeneous human outlook which is based upon verifiable facts of life."

"Religious belief prevented the growth of a sense of realism. But atheism at once makes man realistic and alive to the needs of morality."

"Soul is as much a falsehood as god is. The stories connected with ghosts, spirit communication, salvation and life after death are fancies of the primitive mind which answered the question of death in a primitive way. Now we understand death as the failure of the mechanism of the body either due to wear and tear or to an accidental obstruction. Advances in medical science can repair the body and can, likely, protect it from death altogether."

"Because morality is a social necessity, the moment faith in god is banished, man's gaze turns from god to man and he becomes socially conscious. Religious belief prevented the growth of a sense of realism. But atheism at once makes man realistic and alive to the needs of morality. Atheism alone is the surest way to morality. Those who oppose atheism in any form betray their vested interests in inequality of some kind of other."

"Further, economic systems … have never arranged themselves by themselves. It is men who do the ordering according to their attitudes, desires and understanding of things. Changes take place, not independent of man's will, but on account of man's wills. Civilization has progressed by man's interference with material conditions."

"Real morality is possible when the sanctions for morality are also tangible and real. Therefore, atheism shifts the basis of morality from faith in god to obligations of social living. Moral conduct is not a passport to heaven; it is social necessity."

"Human problems are more psychological than materialistic. This is not only true of individual behaviour, but in mass action also. A suggestion from a leader sparks off a revolution. Material circumstances help mass action, but in themselves do not raise action. The conditions of untouchability and of poverty in India, especially at the time of famine in Bengal in 1945-46, when thousands of destitute died of sheer hunger in the streets of Calcutta City, are such as would provoke an immediate revolution. But the revolution does not come off in the Indian masses. The reason is clear. In India there are revolutionary circumstances, but there is no revolutionary consciousness among the people. If the revolutionary consciousness is present, people would revolt against any injustice on the slightest pretext. And consciousness is essentially psychological."

"Atheism ensures morality. Morality is a social necessity. The immorality of one disturbs the happiness of another in social relations. So checks and counter-checks maintain morality."

"The amount of people that are struggling out there because of these fucking billionaires, and they got us all arguing liberal and conservative. We gotta stop doing that, like I am so tired of hearing about people going to bed worried about what’s going to happen next week. There is so much fucking money in this country, and there is so much work being done. And if you work a whole fucking week at a job, you should be able to pay your fucking rent. You shouldn’t have to go out and get another fucking job and still be struggling. It’s bad for the country 'cause the kids don’t see their parents and they’re not getting the upbringing they need. These fucking billionaires! They need to be put down, you know? Like fucking rabid dogs They’re rabid with fucking greed, and just going out and just dividing everybody."

"I'm not a big fan of Steve Jobs, personally. I dunno, I just don't understand what the big deal was with that guy... I don't get it. (on whether Jobs personally invented the iPhone) But did he? Did he? Did he sit down, "I'm gonna invent the iPhone!" and then he sits there soldering, possibly welding... didn't he have like a crew of guys helping him out? Then why when he went to those nerd fests didn't he have like a chorus of scientists behind him who helped him out, too? He walked out like he was Tesla... I think he just kinda, like, told people what to invent. Like he just kinda came in like, "I want my whole music collection in that phone. GET ON IT." And then all these nameless, faceless guys made it happen and then they have the big nerd concert and he goes out there by himself. No belt, you know, sneakers on... I just didn't buy it."

"Bankers get bonuses... the upper echelon get anywhere from ten million up to a hundred million, and the President of the United States makes like four hundred grand a year. So right there. I've watched enough wrestling to see a rigged game... There's like people with Youtube channels making as much as the leader of the free world. So I just think he's set up to be bribed, and, uh, you act accordingly. So basically anybody who comes at me going, you know, "The conservative right or these liberals..." like, I just zone out. I can't even talk to you if you're actually looking at it like those are two (separate) choices that you're getting. You're not... Once you get past a certain level, it just seems like... you've jumped in the river and you act accordingly or you get that convertible ride in Dallas."

"That's what killed me, when Bruce became Caitlin, that was like, a national news story, like at a ridiculous level. There's like, baby seals washing up on the beach cause there's no fish left, and they're talking to this... lady, you know, like, "So Bruce, can your Olympic back handle a D cup or you gonna go with something a little more perky?"... I miss that guy. I miss him already. He should've told us. He should've given us a chance to say goodbye. I watched him on the Olympics. I watched him on Chips. I watched him on that horrible show my wife watched where he just walks around in the background... And then you couldn't react, you couldn't on any level, you couldn't (be like) "What the f(uck)?" on any level. You couldn't say that or you were automatically homophobic. Like, dude, I didn't hear your inner thoughts. I didn't know what you were doing... You shave your beard off, people are like "Oh my God, that's your chin? Wow!" This guy walked out a dude, came back a woman, and you're just supposed to be like, "Oh yeah, so anyways, Caitlin, (as I was saying)...""

"First of all, getting mad at a politician is like getting mad at Jennifer Aniston cause it's bad episode of Friends. They don't write it."

"Realize that sleeping on a futon when you're 30 is not the worst thing. You know what's worse? Sleeping in a king bed next to a wife you're not really in love with but for some reason married, and you got a couple kids, and you got a job you hate. You'll be laying there fantasizing about sleeping on a futon. There's no risk when you go after a dream. There's a tremendous amount to risk to playing it safe."

"I get sick of people making excuses for her. She blew it. Look, you lost to a guy who said three things a week that would torpedo anybody else's campaign. How do you do that? That's like you're playing a football game and the other team throws twenty interceptions, and you still figure out how to blow it. At what point do you take responsibility? ... You blew it. You. Blew it. You put the wrong team around you, you didn't generate enough excitement to beat this guy who (was just) tripping over one coffee table after another..."

"There's a critical point, when you've stayed single too long, that your brain switches from "No, don't say that" to "Eh, fuck it. Say it, see what happens.""

"I am so pro-swine flu it's ridiculous. We need a plague. It's gotta happen. And don't worry, it's only gonna kill the weak. Seriously. Put on a sweater, take some vitamins, you're gonna be fine! We gotta let mother nature do her thing, man. She keeps trying to help us out and we won't let her do it."

"Women are just constantly patting themselves on the back about how difficult their lives are and no one corrects 'em cause they wanna fuck 'em."

"Oh look, an ATM! Ok, here we go! I lost all my money, now what do I do? Get a gun! Rob a casino! Good idea! Look at all the lights! This is beautiful."

"Of all the Victorian novelists, he was probably the most antagonistic to the Victorian age itself."

"Dickens was by far the best after-dinner speaker I have ever heard. , , , Mr. Parkinson, , and are good, but Dickens was above them all. For years I scarcely missed an opportunity of hearing him speak in public."

"(on whether motherhood is the world's most difficult job) I did roofing in the middle of July as a redhead. I thought that THAT was difficult. But these mothers are bending over at the waist, putting DVDs into DVD players... I don't know how they do it!"

"Seriously, any other town you go to there's this little devil and a little angel on your shoulder. A little good advice, a little bad advice. – You go to Las Vegas, there's like a devil and a devil and they're just battling it out the whole time. It's like, "Smoke some crack!" "Get a hooker!" And then I go, "YEA! Yea, this is a good town. Smoke some crack and get a hooker! Alright!""

"He had a large loving mind and the strongest sympathy with the poorer classes. He felt sure a better feeling, and much greater union of classes, would take place in time. And I pray earnestly it may."

"He had his literary weaknesses, Charles Dickens, but they were all dear, big, attractive ones, virtues grown a bit wild and rank. Somehow when you put him -- with his elemental humor, his inexhaustible vitality, his humanity, sympathy, and pity -- beside the Impeccables, he always looms large."

"His eye brings in almost too rich a harvest for him to deal with, and gives him an aloofness and a hardness which freeze his sentimentalism and make it seem a concession to the public, a veil thrown over the penetrating glance which left to itself pierced to the bone. With such a power at his command Dickens made his books blaze up, not by tightening the plot or sharpening the wit, but by throwing another handful of people on the fire."

"When I was a child I devoured Dickens. I think there is hardly any volume of Dickens' work that I have not read. There was something that fascinated me about the kind of life he depicted and I remember that in school I read literally all Dickens' novels. I think there was a kind of exotic nature - the transitional life of Victorian England that he captured was to me so exotic."

"In fact, the real problem with the thesis of A Genealogy of Morals is that the noble and the aristocrat are just as likely to be stupid as the plebeian. I had noted in my teens that major writers are usually those who have had to struggle against the odds -- to "pull their cart out of the mud," as I put it -- while writers who have had an easy start in life are usually second rate -- or at least, not quite first-rate. Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Shaw, H. G. Wells, are examples of the first kind; in the twentieth century, John Galsworthy, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Samuel Beckett are examples of the second kind. They are far from being mediocre writers; yet they tend to be tinged with a certain pessimism that arises from never having achieved a certain resistance against problems."

"Little Dorrit is a more seditious book than Das Kapital. All over Europe men and women are in prison for pamphlets and speeches which are to Little Dorrit as red pepper to dynamite. Fortunately for social evolution Governments never know where to strike. Barnacle and Stiltstalking were far too conceited to recognize their own portraits."

"(on whether motherhood is the world's most difficult job) Dude, any job that you can do in your pajamas is not a difficult job, alright? You're 35 years old playing hide and go seek... you're living the dream! No time card, no taxes... you're off the fucking grid!"

"The soul of Hogarth has migrated into the body of Dickens."

"I was exposed to Dickens, Dumas, Victor Hugo, de Maupassant, Balzac."

"But let us not lose the use of Dickens's wit and insight, because he chooses to speak in a circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in his main drift and purpose in every book he has written; and all of them, but especially Hard Times, should be studied with close and earnest care by persons interested in social questions. They will find much that is partial, and, because partial, apparently unjust; but if they examine all the evidence on the other side, which Dickens seems to overlook, it will appear, after all their trouble, that his view was the finally right one, grossly and sharply told."

"Dickens was a pure modernist — a leader of the steam-whistle party par excellence — and he had no understanding of any power of antiquity except a sort of jackdaw sentiment for cathedral towers. He knew nothing of the nobler power of superstition — was essentially a stage manager, and used everything for effect on the pit. His Christmas meant mistletoe and pudding — neither resurrection from dead, nor rising of new stars, nor teaching of wise men, nor shepherds. His hero is essentially the ironmaster."

"Who calls him spurious and shoddy Shall do it over my lifeless body. I heartily invite such birds To come outside and say those words!"

"In Oliver Twist, Hard Times, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Dickens attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached. Yet he managed to do it without making himself hated, and, more than this, the very people he attacked have swallowed him so completely that he has become a national institution himself. In its attitude towards Dickens the English public has always been a little like the elephant which feels a blow with a walking-stick as a delightful tickling. Before I was ten years old I was having Dickens ladled down my throat by schoolmasters in whom even at that age I could see a strong resemblance to Mr. Creakle, and one knows without needing to be told that lawyers delight in Sergeant Buzfuz and that Little Dorrit is a favourite in the Home Office. Dickens seems to have succeeded in attacking everybody and antagonizing nobody."