1515) Boiled down to its core, everything criminologists have learned about crime in recent research is that most adolescents who become delinquents, and the overwhelming majority of adults who commit violent crimes, started very young. They were the impulsive, aggressive, irritable children who would not obey their parents, bullied their neighbors and acted out when they got to school. Because they are accustomed to getting their way by physical force, they see no reason to change. They actually like the way they act, and this makes it increasingly difficult to reverse their anti-social proclivities. After age eleven or twelve, their cases seem intractable [...] Modern research suggests that there are positive alternative treatments. Many factors go into producing personality: temperament, the genetic component you are born with; the neighborhood in which you grow up; and perhaps most important, the style of your parents.
Fox Butterfield All God's Children (1995) quoted in a review by Robert Stone, "The Sins of the Fathers" in New York Review of Books (11/2/1995)
1516) [T]he psychic and physical characteristics of human beings, and the differences between individuals, are the consequence of an interaction between the genes that are present in the fertilized egg and the sequence of environmental circumstances that the developing organism experiences during its life cycle. With a few exceptions [...] human characteristics are all subject to this interaction of forces. There are, morever, random events in cell growth and differentiation that are neither genetic nor environmental in the usual sense, and which play an extremely important part in development, especially in behavioral traits.
An important consequence of the unique interaction between internal and external forces [...] is that knowledge of genetic differences contain no information at all about whether a characteristic can be changed by environmental and social arrangements. The most elementary error about genetics and development is to suppose that "genetic" is the opposite of "changeable" and that an answer to the question "how much can a trait be changed by social, historical and individual circumstances" is given by an answer to the question "how important are genes."
[...] Genetics is the study of similarity between relatives, and the problem of human genetics is that, in a species with a family and social structure and a taboo against manipulating individual life histories experimentally, there is a confounding between the similarity of relatives that arises from biological causes and the similarity that arise from social causes.
To say that genetic differences are relevant to hetero- and homosexuality is not, however, to say that there are "genes for homosexuality" or even that there is a "genetic tendency to homosexuality." This critical point can be illustrated by an example I owe to the philosopher of science, Elliott Sober. If we look at the chromosomes of people who knit and those who do not, we will find that with few exceptions, knitters have two X chromosomes [women], while people with one X and one Y chromosome [men] almost never knit. Yet it would be absurd to say that we had discovered genes for knitting. [...] [I]n our culture, women are taught to knit and men are not. The beauty of this example is its historical (and geographical) contingency. Had we made our observations before the end of the eighteenth century (or even now in a few Irish, Scottish and Newfoundland communities), the results would have been reversed. Hand knitting was men's works before the introduction of knitting machines around 1790, and was turned into a female domestic occupation only when mechanization made it economically marginal.
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 464 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1510) To have doubted one's own first principals is the mark of a civilized man.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Ideas and Doubts (1920) "Vespertyne", personal e-mail (10/27/1995)
1511) If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought - not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Dissent, U.S. v Schwimmer (1928) posted by "Vespertyne" on the Court TV Project Justice discussion board (10/28/1995)
1512) No generalization is wholly true, not even this one.
unknown "Vespertyne", personal e-mail (10/27/1995)
[Note: This quote, often in the form "No generalization is worth a damn" has been attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, George Barnard Shaw and Douglas McArthur. It's worth noting that [ALQ] does not list it as coming from Holmes, and it is not listed as Twain's by [QMT], [QT] or [TQ].]
1513) Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperilled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our Government is the potent, omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means--to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal--would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this Court should resolutely set its face.
Louis D. Brandeis dissent, Olmstead v. United States 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928) "Vespertyne", personal e-mail (10/27/1995)
1514) The protection guaranteed by the amendments is much broader in scope. The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect, that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Louis D. Brandeis dissent, Olmstead v. United States 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928) "Vespertyne", personal e-mail (10/27/1995)
Sources
[ALQ] – Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations (1993) [QMT] - The Quotable Mark Twain (1998), R. Kent Rasmussen, ed. [QT] - Quotable Twain (2002), David W, Barber, ed. [TQ] - Twainquotes.com
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 464 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1507) In order to save mankind we have to learn to live together in concord in spite of traditional differences of religion, civilization, nationality, class and race. In order to live together in concord successfully, we have to know each other's past, since human life, like the rest of the phenomenal universe, can be observed by human minds only as it presents itself to them on the move through time. [...] For our now urgent common purpose of self-preservation, it will not be enough to explore our common underlying human nature. The psychologist's work needs to be supplemented by the archaeologist's, the anthropologist's and the sociologist's. We must learn to recognize, and as far as possible, to understand, the different cultural configurations in which our common human nature has expressed itself in the different religions, civilizations, and nationalities into which human culture has come to be articulated in the course of its history. We shall, however, have to do more than just understand each other's cultural heritages, and more even than appreciate them. We shall have to value them and love them as being parts of mankind's common treasure and therefore being ours too, as truly as the heirlooms that we ourselves shall be contributing to the common stock.
Arnold J. Toynbee A Study of History (1934-1961) John Bergez, personal e-mail (10/26/1995)
1508) A complex meaning system seems to involve focusing attention alternately on the self and the Other. [...] But complexity consists of integration as well as differentiation. Just as we have learned to separate ourselves from each other and from the environment, we now need to learn how to reunite ourselves with other entities around us without losing our hard-won individuality.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990) John Bergez, personal e-mail (10/26/1995)
1509) Man is perishable. That may be; but let us perish resisting and if it is nothingness that awaits us, do not let us so act that it shall be a just fate.
Etienne Pivert de Senancour Obermann (1804) John Bergez, personal e-mail (10/26/1995)
[Note: A variant version is:
Man is perishable. That may be; but let us perish resisting and if it is nothingness that awaits us, let us so act that it shall be an unjust fate.
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 464 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1501) The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
Lesley Poles Hartley The Go-Between (1953) [B16]
1502) History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.
E.L. Doctorow in Writers at Work (1988) George Plimpton, ed. [CQ]
1503) The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
Cyril Connolly quoted by David Pryce-Jones in Journal and Memoir (1983) [CQ]
1504) Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell 1984 (1949)
1505) Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false naming of real events.
Adrienne Rich Of Woman Born (1976) [CQ]
1506) It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past [...] Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.
George Steiner In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture (1971) [CQ]
Sources
[B16] - Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition (1993) [CQ] - 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 465 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
I just learned about this from Eliot Gelwan's Follow Me Here weblog — a new feature from Blogger that plays an ongoing slide show of photos, drawing, graphs and other visual material that have been uploaded to Blogger weblogs. It's called Blogger Play, and (ripping off from Eliot) it provides something of a check on the visual zeitgeist of the blogosphere at the moment.
My, there must be much apoplexy in the right-wing troglosphere* right now — not only is it Al Gore (the guy they've continually lied about, the one who would have won the 2000 election if they hadn't gone nuclear and used the Supreme Court to suppress the vote counting), but he got the award for fighting against global warming (which every good right-winger knows is an enormous lie kept alive by a vast scientific conspiracy)! Perhaps the wingers take solace in their general disinterest and distrust in international institutions, especially those which promote cooperation and peace. (I can't wait to hear how the Peace Prize is a threat to American sovereignity.)
My advice to the right wing: start right now working on getting one of your heroes the prize next year. I suggest Ann Coulter.
*Note: I thought this might be a new coinage, but it's not quite. A Google search shows 3 unique hits of the word used in this sense.
1496) If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will maintain us.
Francis Bacon speech as Attorney General prosecuting the Overbury murder case (11/1615) [CQ]
1497) It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent man suffer.
Sir William Blackstone Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69) [CQ]
1498) Justice must always question itself, just as society can exist only bymeans of the work it does on itself and on its institutions.
Michael Foucault "Vous Etes Dangeroux" in Michael Foucault (1989) Didler Eribon, ed. [CQ]
1499) Justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.
Lord Hewart British judge, ruling on the quashing of a conviction on technical grounds (11/9/1923) in Rex v. Sussex Justices quoted in Kings' Bench Reports v. 1 (1924)
1500) Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn letter to three students (10/1967) Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1970) Leopold Labedz, ed. [CQ]
Sources
[CQ] - 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 465 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1488) Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without the abrasive friction of conflict.
Saul Alinsky "The Purpose" in Rules for Radicals (1971) [CQ]
1489) Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
James Baldwin "Every Good-Bye Ain't Gone" in New York (12/19/1977) reprinted in The Price of the Ticket (1985) [CQ]
1490) I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life [...] to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world, or if it were sublime, to know it by experience.
Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854) [ODQ]
1491) The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience [...] not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life.
Leo Tolstoy letter (2/23/1903) Tolstoy's Letters v.2 (1978) [CQ]
1492) Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place.
Moliere (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) The Misanthrope (1666) spoken by the character Philinte [CQ]
1493) In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.
H.G. Wells The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1931) [CQ]
1494) Men must be capable of imagining and execution and insisting on social change if they are to reform or even maintain civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility.
Rebecca West The Meaning of Treason (1949) [CQ]
1495) Telling the future by looking at the past assumes that conditions remain constant. This is like driving a car by looking in the rear view mirror.
Herb Brody (attributed) posted by George Osner [IQM] (10/25/1995
Sources
[CQ] - Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993) [IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list [ODQ] - Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th edition (1992)
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 465 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1481) A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Winston Churchill, New York Times (7/5/1954) posted by jr3000 [UAQ] (10/14/1995)
1482) What is the hardest thing in the world? To think.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays (1841) posted by jr3000 [UAQ] (10/14/1995)
1483) The [legal] system rigidly excludes [from juries] men of brains.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) Roughing It (1872) quoted by Laura Masnerus in "Must A Juror's Mind Be Empty to Be Open?" in Sunday New York Times Week in Review (4/6/1997)
1484) It is not best that we should all think alike; it is the difference of opinion that makes horseraces.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) posted by jr3000 [UAQ] (10/14/1995)
1485) When all men think alike, no one thinks very much.
Walter Lippmann (widely attributed) quoted in Speakers Encyclopedia (1955) posted by jr3000 [UAQ] (10/14/1995)
1486) Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices--just recognize them.
Edward R. Murrow commentary (12/31/1955) quoted in Contemporary Quotations (1964) posted by jr3000 [UAQ] (10/14/1995)
1487) Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies.
R. Buckminster Fuller Utopia or Oblivion (1969) [B16]
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 466 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1475) I cannot believe — and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable — that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.
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 466 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
R. Buckminster Fuller "Moral of the Work" in Synergetics (1975) [B16]
1470) Explanations exist: they have existed for all times, for there is always an easy solution to every problem — neat, plausible and wrong.
H.L. Mencken "The Divine Afflatus" New York Evening Mail (11/16/1917) published in Prejudices: Second Series (1920) [WQ] posted by Jim Speirs [ISQ] (10/22/1995)
[Note: A variant sometimes seen is "There usually is an answer to any problem: simple, clear and wrong."]
1471) Already I had learned from thee that because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true; nor because it is uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false. Nor, again, is it necessarily true because rudely uttered, nor untrue because the language is brilliant. Wisdom and folly both are like meats that are wholesome and unwholesome, and courtly or simple words are like town-made or rustic vessels--both kinds of food may be served in either kind of dish.
St. Augustine Confessions (397-398 CE) [WQ] posted by Todd McMasters [IQM] (10/24/1995)
[Note: A partial variant version: "A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently."]
1472) The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself.
Karl Barth (widely attributed) posted by Todd McMasters [IQM] (10/24/1995)
Sources
[B16] - Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition (1993) [IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list [ISQ] - Internet Serial-Quotations mailing list [UAQ] - Usenet alt.quotations newsgroup [WQ] - Wikiquote [YQ] - The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), Fred R. Shapiro, ed.
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 467 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1457) Scientists don't ask us to take their word for what is real; they refer to the verdict of observation and experiment. That is precisely what distinguishes a scientist from a shaman. Whether the experiments employ tissue paper and comb or the space telescope, they represent an open, unsecretive process that is the opposite of shamanistic black magic. It is true that at any given time some theories may have moved ahead of experiment; fortunately, scientists do exercise the creative power of the human imagination. But no theory can long be taken seriously unless ultimately tested against the verdict of nature.
Timothy Ferris letter to the editor New York Times Book Review (10/15/1995) [responding to a review of George Johnson's Fire in the Mind, written by Stephen R.L. Clark (9/24/1995)]
1458) Bridge failures, Mr. Petroski writes (citing a landmark study from University College, London), occur in a 30-year cycle: 30 years of practice at stretching a style - cantilever, truss, box girder or suspension - to its evident, appalling limit. Hubris, complacency, grandiosity all contribute to what he calls "a climate of confidence and daring." A reader looking up at the airliners flying over our bridges cannot help wondering about those larger but fewer engines, stretched and bloated fuselages, now all flying on smaller, thinner wings.
M.R. Montgomery "To Get To The Other Side" New York Times Book Review (10/15/1995) [citing from and reviewing Henry Petroski Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America (1995)
1459) Nowhere is civilization so perfectly mirrored as in speech. If our knowledge of speech, or the speech itself, is not yet perfect, neither is civilization.
Mario Pei quoted by Samuel R. Delany as the epigram for Babel-17 (1966)
1460) The central task of education is to implant a will and a facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together. In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer Reflections on the Human Condition (1973) [WQ]
[Note: This quote, in the form
In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists
is frequently credited to Al Rogers of GlobalSchool Net, from a speech at the CUE Annual Conference, but Rogers has said that he was quoting from Hoffer, who was extending an idea that originated with Alvin Toffler:
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.
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 468 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1455) The United States has been divided into two parties since George Washington's day. The Hamiltonian party - variously known throughout history as the Federalists, the Whigs and most recently the Republicans - was the party of a strong national Government in alliance with big business. The Jeffersonian party, known for most of its history as the Democrats, supported states' rights, hated the cultural elite and thought that the major banks and businesses were in unholy league with foreigners to undermine the living standards of the average American family.
[...] Ever since Abraham Lincoln debated Stephen Douglas, the G.O.P. has been a Hamiltonian party. Its founders were in the tradition of the Federalists, America's first governing party, which was crushed by the Jeffersonians in 1800. The Whigs replaced the Federalists and themselves broke up in a welter of third and fourth parties in the 1840's and 50's. Lincoln got the formula right and the Republicans stuck with it until the Depression.
The Republican Party fought the Civil War against Democrats who believed in states' rights. Like the Federalists and Whigs, the classic G.O.P was not only pro-big-business and big-government but also anti-populist. On racial issues especially, the Republicans prided themselves on their enlightened views. [...]
Teddy Roosevelt was one of the most vigorous exponents of Republican Hamiltonianism. While he tried to disentangle the G.O.P. from an uncritical embrace of everything big business, his faith in big government remained strong. "There was a time," Roosevelt said, "when the limitation of governmental power meant increasing liberty for the people. In the present day, the limitation of governmental power, of governmental action, means the enslavement of the people by the great corporations."
[...] Republican domination of the Presidency and Congress broke down in the Depression, when their traditional policies no longer worked; Herbert Hoover's refusal to use the full power of the Government gave Franklin Roosevelt the chance to look Hamiltonian, using the national government to bolster the national economy. With the success of the New Deal, Democrats broke out of their Southern ghetto to rule for two generations. On those occasions where Republicans took power, they did so only with the help of men like Eisenhower and Nixon, whose views placed them squarely in the Hamiltonian tradition.
The current upheaval in American politics has come about because neither the Democrats nor the Republicans adequately represent either the underlying Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian parties. Ron Brown's Commerce Department and Bill Clinton's trade policy are sure enough big government, big business approaches, but the Democrats' ties to labor and the left make them suspect to the business establishment.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are increasingly split between their historic Hamiltonianism and the yahoo Jeffersonianism of their new Southern allies. Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond have little in common with Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower. Pat Robertson thinks that the world's bankers are the lackeys of Satan, while traditional Republicans revere them as the custodians of the faith. This split can only widen. Christ and Antichrist cannot run on the same ticket.
In fact, the Democrats are all that hold the Republicans together now. Big business wants to get rid of the remaining shackles and government-imposed costs of the New Deal era. With the exception of farm subsidies, this is fine with the white South. The yahoo Jeffersonians for very different reasons also want to trim back the Government.
But once this has been accomplished there will be a struggle between the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian wings. The winners will consolidate their hold on the Republican name; the losers will ultimately form a new party. Both sides will bid for the support of the remaining Democrats. Most conservative and liberal centrists in the Democratic Party - people like Senators Sam Nunn and Bill Bradley - will move towards the Hamiltonians. So will most African-Americans. Labor will be torn between the anti-business stance of the Jeffersonians and the Hamiltonian sympathy for reasonable regulation of business in the national interest.
In the end, the United States will once again have a strong two-party system, with the Republicans of 2010 possibly the rough equivalent of the Democrats of of 1896. The new G.O.P. will be strong in the white South, anti-elitist and anti-big business. It will be pro-military but isolationist. It will stand for states' rights against Federal intrusions. It will be a party of protest, for those left behind by economic and social change. It will be a stormy party, combining genuine heartfelt cries for economic justice with demagogic rhetoric on subjects like immigration, culture, religion and trade. In retrospect, the 1994 election may ultimately be seen not as the triumph of the Republicans' Southern strategy, but as the triumph of the white South's Republican strategy.
The other party will be internationalist, pro-business and moderately progressive. Looking more to Theodore Roosevelt than to his cousin Franklin, it will favor a relatively strong Federal Government and a basic social security safety net, but will not attempt to recreate the network of subsidies and social programs of the New Deal era. It will be moderately conservative on social and cultural issues, but it will also be tolerant.
The next historic movement in American politics is likely to be the emergence of such a moderately progressive Hamiltonian party - a party that might reach from Jack Kemp on the right through Colin Powell and William Weld in the center to Bill Bradley and Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the left. Jesse Jackson might not like it, but a new generation of African-American leaders will find it their least bad choice.
Walter Russell Mead "Newt's Real Target: The Other Roosevelt" New York Times Magazine (10/15/1995)
1456) An America where people can get rich, but nobody is poor. An America where entrepreneurship is rewarded, but wage work is respected as well. An America that trades fully with the world but empowers its labor force to compete. An America that esteems traditional values but looks with live-and-let-live tolerance upon those with their own codes. An America where choice in the bedroom is paired with choice in schoolroom. An America where the vital idea of community is adaptive and evolutionary, not static or backward-looking.
James P. Pinkerton What Comes Next: The End of Big Government and the New Paradigm Ahead (1995) quoted by Norman Ornstein in "Big Idea Man" New York Times Book Review (10/15/1995)
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 468 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1449) Histories make [men] wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
Sir Francis Bacon "Of Studies" Essays (1625) [WQ] John Bergez, personal e-mail (10/13/1995)
1450) [The United States] has always been an oligarchy of money.
Gore Vidal interviewed by Andrew Solomon in "Gore Vidal Receives A Visitor" New York Times Magazine (10/15/1995)
1451) There's something wrong with a system where it's better to be guilty and rich and have good lawyers than to be innocent and poor and have bad ones.
William Julius Wilson quoted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in "Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Black Man" The New Yorker (10/23/1995) posted by Susan l143 on the AOL Court TV Project Justice discussion board (10/17/1995)
1452) When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
William Hazlitt "On The Spirit of Controversy" The Atlas (1/30/1830) reprinted in The Collected Works of William Hazlitt (1902-1904) [WQ] posted by Chris West [ISQ] (10/17/1995)
1453) So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
Peter Drucker The Frontiers of Management (1986) posted by Jim Speirs [ISQ] (10/14/1995)
1454) Charisma is often seen as ethos in our society.
Tom Aberger personal e-mail (10/17/1995)
Sources
[ISQ] - Internet Serial-Quotations mailing list [WQ] - Wikiquote
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 469 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1445) No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.
Margaret Sanger Woman and the New Race (1920) posted by Shazia Lakhani [IQM] (10/13/1995)
1446) A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage, and a job after.
Gloria Steinem Newsweek (3/28/1960) quoted by Susan L. Rattiner in Women's Wit and Wisdom (2000) posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (10/14/1995)
1447) There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina, so pretty much everything else should be open to anyone.
Florynce Kennedy Ms. (3/1973) [YQ] posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (10/14/1995)
[Note: Sometimes attributed to Gloria Steinem, apparently incorrectly.]
1448) [I]n the popular imagination, the history of women's rights is more commonly charted as a flat dead line that, only twenty years ago, began a sharp and unprecedented incline. [...] This map is in itself harmful to women's rights; it presents women's struggle for liberty as if it were a one-time event, a curious and even noxious by-product of a postmodern age. [...] An accurate charting of American women's progress through history might look more like a corkscrew tilted slightly to one side, its loops inching closer to the line of freedom with the passage of time--but, like a mathematical curve approaching infinity, never touching its goal. [...] Each revolution promises to be "the revolution" that will free her from the orbit, that will grant her, finally, a full measure of human justice and dignity. But each time, the spiral turns her back just short of the finish line.
Susan Faludi Backlash (1991) posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (10/14/1995)
Sources
[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list [YQ] - The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), Fred R. Shapiro, ed.
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 469 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1441) All so-called revealed religions consist mainly of three portions: a cosmogony more or less mythical, a history more or less falsified, and a moral code more or less pure.
Sir Richard Francis Burton "Terminal Essay: Social Conditions" The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night (1885) posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (10/13/1995)
1442) The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.
Thomas Jefferson letter to John Adams (4/11/1823) posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (10/13/1995)
1443) [Can you really make a living at being a parapsychologist?] Not really, that's why most honest practitioners in the field support their endeavors with another career. It is, however, entirely possible to make a substantial income being a "psychic", although the compromises usually required to do so can be quite corrosive. Of the "psychics", "astrologers", "palmists", "spiritual counselors", etc., that I have investigated, the honesty level is in the neighborhood of 10%, which is a trifle higher than their level of competence. There are a few good ones, but they are rare, and none of them advertise on television.
Ron Robertson personal e-mail (10/13/1995)
1444) I don't have a God complex. I am God. And when you all get this through your heads, the world will be a much happier place.
"sig" (signature) of Kai Harada, seen on the Theatre-Sound mailing list (10/17/1995)
Sources
[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list
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 470 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
1439) The Romance is nearest of all literary forms to the wish-fulfillment dream, and for that reason it has socially a curiously paradoxical role. In every age the ruling social or intellectual class tends to project its ideals in some form of romance, where the virtuous heroes and beautiful heroines represent the ideals and the villains the threats to their ascendancy. This is the general character of chivalric romance in the Middle Ages, aristocratic romance in the Renaissance, bourgeois romance since the eighteenth century, and revolutionary romance in contemporary [c.1957] Russia. Yet there is a genuinely "proletarian" element in romance too which is never satisfied with its various incarnations, and in fact the incarnations themselves indicate that no matter how great a change may take place in society, romance will turn up again, as hungry as ever, looking for new hopes and desires to feed on. ...
The essential element of plot in romance is adventure, which that romance is naturally a sequential and processional form, hence we know it better from fiction than from drama. At its most naive it is an endless form in which a central character who never develops or ages goes through one adventure after another until the author himself collapses. ...
The complete form of the romance is clearly the successful quest, and such a completed form has three main stages: The stage of the perilous journey and the preliminary minor adventures; the crucial struggle, usually some kind of battle in which either the hero or his [sic] foe, or both, must die; and the exaltation of the hero.
Northrop Frye Anatomy of Criticism (1973) posted by Bob Ramsey [SF-LIT] (10/13/1995)
1440) Life is hard and tough as nails That's why we need fairy tales. I'm all through with logical conclusions Why should I deny myself illusions?
Friedrich Hollaender "Munchausen" (1931) recorded by Ute Lemper on Berlin Cabaret Songs (cd, 1997) quoted by P. Jelavich in e-Skeptic (9/18/2002)
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 470 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:
Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.
Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.
Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.
Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.
1495) Telling the future by looking at the past assumes that conditions remain constant. This is like driving a car by looking in the rear view mirror.
1461) Few things are impossible to diligence and skill [...] Great works are performed, not by strength, but perseverance.
1464) If someone says "can't," that shows you what to do.
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1444) I don't have a God complex. I am God. And when you all get this through your heads, the world will be a much happier place.
