(3089/898) Obervations and opinions

295) When this vital business [of dubbing a foreign language film] is being conducted by nameless men in shirtsleeves among plastic coffee cups and half-eaten sandwiches, the director and the stars are basking in expensive sunshine.

Anthony Burgess
A Mouthful of Air (1992)

296) Pornography is about dominance. Erotica is about mutuality.

Goria Steinem
"Erotica vs. Pornography"
adapted from articles in Ms. magazine
(9/77 and 11/78), reprinted in
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions [CQ]

297) The virtue of dress rehearsals is that they are a free show for a select group of artists and friends of the author, and where for one unique evening the audience is almost expurgated of idiots.

Alfred Jarry
"Twelve Theatrical Topics", Topic 4 (1960)
reprinted in Selected Works of Alfred Jarry (1965) [CQ]

298) History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even with being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons nobody really understands at the time - and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

299) The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Robert Wilson
in the International Herald Tribune (5/22/90) [CQ]

300) Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need repeat it. We can destroy it.

Robert Wilson
in the London Sunday Times (11/17/91) [CQ]

301) Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of human intellectual tradition.

Stephen Jay Gould
in the London Independent (1/24/90) [CQ]

302) If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.

Thomas Szasz
"Schizophrenia"
in The Second Sin (1973) [CQ]
also in The Untamed Tongue:
A Dissenting Dictionary (1990)

303) I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term - meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching - there would be a vast improvement in total output. The shear ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.

Ansel Adams
"A Personal Credo"
in "American Annual of Photography" v. 58 (1944)
reprinted in Photographers on Photography,
Nathan Lyons ed. (1966) [CQ]

304) No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

P.J. O'Rourke
"Studying for Our Drug Test"
in Give War a Chance (1992) [CQ]

305) If [...] men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no on would think of interfering.

Charles Darwin
The Descent of Man (1871)
quoted by Helena Cronin in
The Ant and the Peacock (1991)

306) One can deny that x is a natural kind without denying that x exists. Dirt, gems, and things that go bump in the night exist. They are even kinds of a sort. They simply are not natural kinds. They don't figure in any interesting or unified way in scientific explanation.

Owen Flanagan
Consciousness Reconsidered (1992)

Sources

[CQ] - The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993)


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 777 days remaining in the administration of the worst President ever.