People From Maine

"John Ford was the quintessential American director, an intuitive film maker with no intellectual pretensions who made movies as he wanted to make them, and in the end found them to be as popular with the buffs as with the general public. ... And the true test-of his genius is the fact, that, as cinema fashions have come and gone, his reputation has seldom faltered."

"John Ford came in and I was very scared of him. A rough character. I heard he despised the English, so I invented an Irish grandfather and told tales to him that simply were not true. [...] I found Ford to be a very curmudgeonly taskmaster, but always very fair. He always knew what he wanted in a scene. He never overshot. God help you if you didn't deliver what he wanted. And he liked me well enough that I finally told him that my Irish grandfather was fictional. He roared over that one. We've been close friends ever since. He used me a lot over the next few decades."

"Very early, I was a film buff.... I learned from everything. You learn for just meeting John Ford."

"As for the director, John Ford, from my first meeting with him to the day the picture was completed I knew I was in the hands of the consummate professional. I felt safe and secure with him. If I argued a line of dialogue with him or objected to a bit of business, I can now assure you it was more to assert my ego than it was to attack him. Almost entirely throughout the film, when we clashed, it turned out he was right and I was wrong. The main point to be made is that he would sit me down and show me where I was wrong. He is a totally remarkable director and one of the few deserving a place in the Pantheon. I'm told he's aging now, and cranky; well, I'm aging now, and cranky, but I bet if the right script came along (and were still around to write it), John Ford and I could knock the shit out of it."

"I never make visual references to Ford in my films, but I did remind my cameraman of Ford's very economical use of the close-up and careful handling of space. The first close-up of John Wayne in ' comes after 40 minutes! One of the top stars of the time! Still, he is incredibly powerful and present in the film. So I tried to do something similar here, partly in reaction to so many films shot today in the style of TV. I wanted to do an intimate story in wide shots, and it seemed appropriate, because the audacious use of space would emphasize the historical dimensions. That's also Ford, because my film is about values, and Ford's always are, too. Ford is one of the few classic American directors whose emphasis is on the collective rather than on the individual. I have read critics who believe he is reactionary, but they forget not only how nonjudgmental he is; he has a sense of the group's responsibility, of their mutual need. In ', John Wayne says, "This is work for a professional," but not in Yellow Ribbon, where they come and say, "How can we help?"."

"Godard and [[Ingmar Bergman|[Ingmar] Bergman]] have always admired him, Mr Nixon says he loved him and those who have nothing but disrespect for the average commercial movie will seldom hear a word against John Ford. Yet at the same time he has also been accused of everything under the sun from being a political reactionary to a moral sentimentalist. There was no doubt that he could make awful movies that extolled the American way of life in the most simplistic way. There was no doubt also that the old values of rough frontiersman integrity suited him best..."

"I only met John Ford once. On the steps of MGM one evening. We were introduced by mutual friends. People spend a lot of time comparing my work to his. Most of that's bullshit. First of all, I don't like most of his later films. I love The Informer and Grapes of Wrath and—what was that other one?—Tobacco Road. His best Western is '. Fonda was sensational in that. I hated '. I loved the book but I thought the movie was shit. But I suppose he didn't like much of what I did, either. I think we're very different."

"You won't like what I am going to say, because the people who I admire are the least-valued by cinema intellectuals; it seems like a tragic misunderstanding to me. My favorite filmmaker is De Sica: I know I'm upsetting you. And John Ford. But the Ford of twenty years ago, the De Sica of twelve years ago."

"Sometimes Ford failed to grasp the meaning of a question that a European director, or American directors like Elia Kazan, Richard Brooks, , or would have had no trouble assimilating. For example: How do you direct your actors? Ford couldn't understand the rationale for such a question. It seemed truly odd to him. Not dumb--like the radio journalist who asked him about "Fantastic Ride" [La Chevauchee fantastique is the French release title of Stagecoach]--but odd, and he didn't know what to answer. Since he was physically rather intimidating, with his one eye that seemed to peer deep inside of you and his piratelike countenance, even the bold could easily get flustered."

"He didn't direct you. He never told you what to do. He would talk to you, mostly about something completely different, and you find yourself doing the right thing. It was really very spooky—what he did."

"A good picture, as we all know, starts with a story. The next thing is to tell that story pictorially. [...] Fast-moving, pictorial, not overloaded with dialogue. You could see that picture without dialogue and know what it was all about. That was the secret of John Ford's pictures. You could run any one of his pictures silent, and you'd still know what they were all about."

"He was the first to dare use very lengthy long takes, going against Hollywood rules. He wouldn't cut to a closer shot. No one has been able to generate as much emotion as Ford does in long shots; watch The Grapes of Wrath and Young Mr. Lincoln."

"I've only been influenced by somebody once: prior to making Citizen Kane, I saw Stagecoach forty times. I didn't need to learn from somebody who had something to say, but from somebody who would show me how to say what I had in mind; and John Ford is perfect for that."

"Maureen O'Hara is one of the actresses I most dislike. Everybody thought I was her lover. Actually, I hated her and she hated me, but she was right for the parts."

"Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath and the subsequent John Ford movie promulgated a populist mythology about depression-era migrants to California who were dubbed "Okies," no matter what southwestern or midwestern state they hailed from. But most Californians regarded Okies as dirty, shifty, lazy, violent, and ignorant."

"This man directs less than any man in the business. As a matter of fact, he doesn't direct—he doesn't want any actor to give an impression of him playing the part. He wants the actor to create the part—that's why he hired him, because he saw him in this part."

"Now there was sophistry. A mage was a perilous beast, but a mage who was also a logician and a theologian was deadly enough to outface the devil himself."

"There was no help for it. He was what he was, and that was an incorrigible meddler. Which, he reflected, was not an inadequate description of a mage."

"May God preserve us from an honest pope."

"“Peace.” Gerbert rolled the word on his tongue. “Is that what it is? I’d been calling it happiness.”"

"“You weren’t waiting up for me, were you?” Gerbert shrugged. “You know how little I sleep. I was contemplating my sins.” “Sleep will do you more good.”"

"Traitors were not cherished even by those who bought them."

"In that instant, Gerbert hated him with a perfect hate. A monster, one could comprehend, and even forgive: one could see that a devil had possessed him. This flawless selfishness was beyond endurance."

"You are a fool, sir priest. Ignorance may excuse you. It will certainly kill you."

"“So eager still! Do you never tire?” “Oh, yes, my Lord,” said Gerbert. “But when I’ve struggled long and hard, and then at last I understand, I forget everything but that.”"

"Gerbert recognized quality in the plainness of the woman’s robe, and in the carving of a lintel, and in the hanging of a rug on a whitewashed wall. The only magic in it was the alchemy of taste."

"“I would tell you that the West is sadly fallen. What men knew once, they know no longer, nor want to know. It is all iron and edged blades, and lord smiting lord for a fistful of power. They dream of empires, and they kill for a furlong of wasteland. “But I, my lord, I want to know what the world is.”"

"I am asking you to help me. Our mutual master would stride naked into the desert, trusting in God and in his own brilliance to shield him from the sun. But the desert knows only that it is. Neither gods nor cleverness mean anything to it."

"During the past three decades, plant anatomists have established a number of lines of phylogenetic specializations in the structures of the stele."

"Harry's first publication (in 1951) was a short paper in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club entitled "Interesting weeds in New York City." It was during some of his collecting in the wilderness which is the Bronx that he was accosted by several policemen in a squad car, who demanded what he was doing with his odd vasculum over his shoulder. He explained he was a botanist and he was collecting plants. "You know all these weeds?", asked one the men. Upon being assured that he did, he was asked to join them in the car which drove some distance until they came to an open lot on which there was a flourishing crop. "What is it?" "Marihuana," was the reply. Whereupon one of the officers exploded, "Damn those kids, they told us they were tomatoes.""

"Every time Botany and Zoology fuse, Botany ends up screwed to the wall.""

"Our is increasingly an age of riots and rebellions, of radical self-creation in the streets: from London to Paris, the Arab Spring to Occupy, and more recently, the explosive fury of Ferguson and Baltimore. We are justifiably excited by the heat of the crowd; our collective pulse may even rise at the sight of masks, broken glass, and flames, because for so long these have represented the shards of the old world through which shines the glint of the new. Indeed, the global rebelliousness of the present owes much to the revolt - and repression - that marked Venezuela's and Latin America's own awakening."

"In Venezuela, the rejection of neoliberalism in the streets during the Caraczao led not only Chavez's election, but also to a long and continuing experiment in radical democracy that continues to this day in new institutions of local self-government, known as communes. At the time of the Carcazo, Chavez and others had been conspiring both within the army and alongside clandestine revolutionary groups, but the spontaneous rebellion by the people in the streets caught them off guard and forced them into action. On February, 1992, the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement attempted to depose Perez in a coup d'etat that failed to seize power."

"Nothing says "enough" like a bus on fire."

"General Mattocks was a sound lawyer; careful and conscientious as a counsellor, able and forcible at the Bar, brilliant as a public speaker. His personality always made a strong impression. Genuine and generous as a man; faithful and warm-hearted; broad-minded and judicious as a citizen, frank and fearless for the right as he saw it, he was an example of true manhood"

"The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Major Charles Porter Mattocks, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism on 6 April 1865, while serving with 17th Maine Infantry, in action at Deatonsville (Sailor's Creek), Virginia. Major Mattocks displayed extraordinary gallantry in leading a charge of his regiment which resulted in the capture of a large number of prisoners and a stand of colors."

"I am very sure that next to Mr. [Nathan] Webb in all pints that you would regard most essential Genl. Charles P. Mattocks of Portland is the man fittest and worthiest for the place. His character, ability, and professional standing, political honesty and manly support of the principles you are endeavoring to establish for the well-being of the Country, would render his appointment a tonic for public opinion and sentiment in political affairs."

"Judge Mattocks has been very successful since he became the head of the Probate Court, largely owing to his disposition of impartiality, and earnest desire to promote the best interests of all parties concerned. As a public speaker, General Mattocks stands in the front rank."

"Considering the fact that the armies of the Northern and Southern States participated in the hardest fought battles of the nineteenth century, and the additional fact that Maine is the only State which has placed two regiments of different arms of the service at the head of the list in each of these aims, it seems but fitting that, as we proudly look back upon Maine's record in the great struggle for national life, we should be reminded of the career of a Maine soldier, who did much to render famous in the war the name of his native State."

"When the two Regts. were panic-stricken they [his command] stood by me like heroes … Would I abandon men who showed themselves willing to give their own lives to save mine?"

"[Command] is one of the easiest things in the world if a man only is lavish of the immense power which is by the military code granted to a Regimental commander."

"The Republican Party is part of a larger American discussion about the tension between equality of opportunity and protection of property, which is sort of the point of the book, that this is a much larger American discussion, and Republicans began under Lincoln with the attempt to turn the discrepancy between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution into, at the time, a modern-day political solution. The Republican Party would manage, they hoped, to turn the principle of the Declaration of Independence, that everybody should have equality of opportunity, into a political reality. The Declaration of Independence was, of course, a set of principles; it wasn't any kind of law or codification of those principles. The Constitution went ahead and codified that the central idea of America was the protection of property, so the Republicans began with the idea that they would be the political arm of the Declaration of Independence's equality of opportunity. Throughout their history, three times now, they have swung from that pole through a sort of racist and xenophobic backlash against that principle, tied themselves to big business, and come out protecting the other American principle, which is the protection of property. That tension between equality of opportunity and the protection of property, both of which are central tenets of America, played out in the Republican Party."

"The history of the Republican Party is marked by vacillation between its founding principle of opportunity and its domination by the wealthy elite. The party came together in the 1850s in opposition to the wealthy slaveholders who controlled the federal government. Democrats acting on their behalf insisted that America’s primary principle was the Constitution's protection of property, and they pushed legislation to let planters monopolize the country’s resources at the expense of the working. ... Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity. Northerners and hardscrabble Westerners flocked to that vision, and elected Lincoln to the White House in 1860."

"The Republicans had fielded an army and navy of more than 2.5 million men, had invented national banking, currency, and taxation, had provided schools and homes for poor Americans, and had freed the country's four million slaves."

"Republicans have taken the stand that economic opportunity is central to the American ideal and that it is the government's responsibility to make it possible for everyone to rise."

"Motion Study is a means to permanent and practical waste elimination, — hence a prerequisite to efficient preparedness that shall be adequate, constructive and cumulative."

"[A]dvancement of the human factor in industry... varies so much that unless we use measurement and abide by the results, there is no possibility of repeating the process accurately and efficiently at will, or of predicting and controlling the future conditions that assure that advancement."

"No definite and permanent advance is made in any kind of work, whether with materials or men, until use is made of measurement."

"The first step in any great movement is to... arouse interest in the subject, to discuss the great problems involved, to outline the possible solutions, and to assign the various problems to those best fitted to undertake and handle them. The next step is to realize that all this discussion, valuable as it is, can grow into such action as it deserves, only if measurement is insisted upon from the very beginning of making the investigations outlined, if the records of measurement are in such form that they can be used by those who did not make them, that skill and experience may thus be transferred, and if the results of the measurements are incorporated into actual and universal practice as soon as they are properly synthesized into practical methods of least waste. The world has come to realize the truth of this as applied to material things. The day of standardization of materials and of machines is far advanced, and is daily progressing; but such has been rarely the case with measurement as applied to the human element."

"There is no industrial opportunity that offers a richer return than the elimination of needless motions, and the transformation of ill-directed and ineffective motions into efficient activity."