People From St Louis

"The most important characteristic to be maintained in any revolution is flexibility."

"The economic independence and self-determination of all. Under a cybernetic communism, even during the socialist transition, work would be divorced from wages, the ownership of the means of production in the hands of all the people, and wealth distributed on the basis of need, independent of the social value of the individual’s contribution to society. We would aim to eliminate the dependence of women and children on the labour of men, as well as all other types of labour exploitation. Each person could choose his life style freely, changing it to suit his tastes without seriously inconveniencing anyone else; no one would be bound into any social structure against his will, for each person would be totally self-governing as soon as she was physically able."

"Jewish women in second-wave feminism helped to provide the theoretical underpinnings and models for radical action that were seized on and imitated throughout the United States and abroad. Their articles and books became classics of the movement and led the way into new arenas of cultural and political understanding in academe, politics, and grassroots organizing. Even a partial honor roll of Jewish women's liberation pioneers must include such figures as Shulamith Firestone, Ellen Willis, Robin Morgan, Alix Kates Shulman, Naomi Weisstein, Heather Booth, Susan Brownmiller, Marilyn Webb, Meredith Tax, Andrea Dworkin, Linda Gordon, Ellen DuBois, Ann Snitow, Marge Piercy, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Vivian Gornick. Despite historians' acknowledgment of the salience of Jewish women in earlier social movements, their prominence within radical feminism failed to attract much attention."

"In The Dialectic of Sex, a groundbreaking book of radical feminist theory, Shulamith Firestone writes that this conventional way of understanding the historical process as a series of snapshots-here is the American Revolution, here is the Declaration of Independence, here is the Emancipation Proclamation-is limiting and ultimately unhelpful. History, she states (drawing loosely on Marxist theory), is "the world as process, a natural flux of action and reaction, of opposites yet inseparable and interpenetrating... history as movie rather than as snapshot." Much of the popular LGBT history that has been published in our newspapers, magazines, and blogs falls into the category that Firestone criticizes."

"The most exciting social extrapolation around nowadays can be found in The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone. You will have a hard time with this book if you believe that Capitalism is God's Way or that Manly Competition is the Law of the Universe - but then you can go back to reading The Skylark of Valeron or whatever and forget about the real future. Firestone is a radical, a feminist, a Marxist (or rather, a thinker who has absorbed both Marx and Freud) and the author of a tough, difficult, analytic, fascinating book."

"In the popular political imagination we're familiar with the neocons as conniving militarists, masters of intrigue and cabals, graspers for the oil supplies of the world, and all the rest. But here we have them in what I suspect is the truest light: as college kid rubes who head out for a weekend in Vegas, get scammed out of their money by a two-bit hustler on the first night and then get played for fools by a couple hookers who leave them naked and handcuffed to their hotel beds."

"Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It's a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power."

"If you think back to the Swift Boat debacle of 2004, the surface issue was John Kerry's honesty and bravery as a sailor in Vietnam. Far more powerful, however, was the meta-message: George Bush slaps John Kerry around and Kerry either can't or won't hit back. For voters concerned with security and the toughness of their leaders, that's a devastating message — and one that has little or nothing to do with the truth of the surface charges. Someone who can't fight for himself certainly can't fight for you. At the time I called it the "Republicans' bitch-slap theory of electoral politics.""

"To the president the Democrats should be saying, Double or Nothing is Not a Foreign Policy.The great bulk of the public doesn't believe this president any more when he tries to gin up a phony crisis. They don't believe he'd have much of an idea of how to deal with a real one. Enough of the lies. Enough of the incompetence and failure.No buying into another of the president's phony crises."

"With all the efforts now to disassociate President Bush from conservatism, I am starting to believe that conservatism itself — not the political machine, mind you, but the ideology — is heading toward that misty land-over-the-ocean where ideologies go after they've shuffled off this mortal coil. Sort of like the way post-Stalinist lefties used to say, "You can't say Communism's failed. It's just never really been tried."But as it was with Communism, so with conservatism. When all the people who call themselves conservatives get together and run the government, they're on the line for it. Conservative president. Conservative House. Conservative Senate.What we appear to be in for now is the emergence of this phantom conservatism existing out in the ether, wholly cut loose from any connection to the actual people who are universally identified as the conservatives and who claim the label for themselves.We can even go a bit beyond this though. The big claim now is that President Bush isn't a conservative because he hasn't shrunk the size of government and he's a reckless deficit spender.But let's be honest: Balanced budgets and shrinking the size of government hasn't been part of conservatism — or to be more precise, Movement Conservatism — for going on thirty years. The conservative movement and the Republican party are the movement and party of deficit spending. And neither has any claim to any real association with limited or small government. Just isn't borne out by any factual record or political agenda. Not in the Reagan presidency, the Bush presidency or the second Bush presidency. The intervening period of fiscal restraint comes under Clinton."

"Primitive animals will sometimes keep chattering or twitching their muscles even after their heads have been cut off. And that's probably the best analogy today to the president's continuing enunciation of his policies."

"The president just seems to be living in some sort of alternative universe populated by the failed gods of his narcissism and vainglory."

"There's this old line the wise folks in Washington have that "it's not the crime, but the cover-up."But only fools believe that. It's always about the crime. The whole point of the cover-up is that a full revelation of the underlying crime is not survivable."

"The Bombers set a home run record and Yogi Berra, a vest-pocket immortal for the future, flailed past Lou Gehrig, a large, economy-size immortal from the past, in the runs-batted-in department. Yogi was the batting hero with the top average of .360 and that has to tickle everybody who knows him because Yogi is a delightful little guy. His ailing mother asked him to hit a couple of homers for her. "I'll try, Mom," said Yogi. He made no rash promises. He merely said he'd do his best and his best was good enough. He's such a sweet fellow that he couldn't even rub it into Don Newcombe when big Newk went to bat after Yogi had clouted his second homer of the finale. "I hit a pretty good pitch, Newk," said Yogi as he crouched behind the plate. Berra was trying to soften the pain. "Yes, you did," agreed Newk glumly."

"Well, we heard he was a high-ball hitter. All that means is his strength is a little stronger on high pitches than on low. We knew there wasn't much we could do."

"A remark once attributed to Sam Goldwyn will be attributed to Yogi Berra."

"Sure, his control wasn't perfect, but he didn't make all the mistakes he seemed to make. Berra hit that first home run off his chin. It was two strikes and Newk was just wasting one. I guess you have to hit Yogi to keep him from hitting you. You can't throw it bad enough by him. [...] Man, that Berra is a killer. All Newcombe has to do is get a third strike past him and he's probably pitching yet. Mantle? You saw how big Newk threw those strikes past him. Struck him out twice, didn't he?"

"Our similarities are different."

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future"

"The future ain't what it used to be."

"Never answer an anonymous letter."

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is."

"Always go to other people's funerals; otherwise they won't go to yours."

"Ninety percent of this game is half-mental."

"It's déjà vu all over again."

"If people don't want to come to the ballpark how are you going to stop them?"

"[What time is it?] You mean now?"

"You can observe a lot by watching."

"We made too many of the wrong mistakes."

"Thank you for making this day necessary."

"Pair up in threes."

"Little things are big."

"It gets late early out there."

"If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there."

"If you can't imitate him, don't copy him."

"If you ask me a question I don't know, I'm not going to answer."

"If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be."

"I really didn't say everything I said. [...] Then again, I might have said 'em, but you never know."

"I looked like this when I was young, and I still do."

"I knew the record would stand until it was broken."

"Dickey's teaching me all of his experience."

"It's unbelievable that Phil had to wait so long to get in to the Hall of Fame. Maris's home run record in 1961 has become something of a curse. He wasn't just a home run hitter, he could do everything—hit in the clutch, field, throw and run."

"For a while, he was far better than the team around him, and he could give me fits."

"Look, I was surprised when they offered me the job and I knew they weren't fooling, but this is not a joke. It will have to be fun for me to want to keep it, but I am not a joke."

"People seem to find it hard to believe, but I'm a very serious person. It wasn't luck that I became a ballplayer. I never wanted to be anything else and I never considered anything else and I worked my tail off for it. To say that I don't have any worries or nerves is the opposite of the truth. I worry about not being able to get around on the fast ball any more, I worry about getting hurt and having to quit playing before my time. I worry about the bowling alley I own with Phil Rizzuto making money. I worry about keeping Carm happy so she won't be sorry she married me, about the kids growing up good, and about keeping out of trouble with God. I worry a lot. I'm nobody's mascot, either. Sure, I like to get along with people and I hope I've made friends, but that's different."

"Sometimes I think there must be two Yogi Berras. There is the one who grew up on the Hill in St, Louis, who's been playing ball for the Yankees for fourteen years, has a beautiful wife named Carmen and three boys, Larry, Timmy, and Dale, and lives in a nice house in Montclair, N. J. That's me. Then there's the one you read about in the papers who is a kind of a comic-strip character, like Li'l Abner or Joe Palooka. [...] I don't know that Yogi at all, because he doesn't exist."

"I dunno. This game is getting funnier and funnier. We do everything but punch 'em in the nose and here we are all tied up in the Series. We flatten 'em by scores of 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0 and we still need one more to win. How do you figure that? Don't write this, but even if they beat us tomorrow, we're the better club."

"I gotta shake hands with himǃ That's one guy I know I'm better lookin' than."