Trent: Let me tell you something Mike you're money, and you know what else, you're a big winner. I'm gonna ask you a simple question and I want you to listen to me: who's the big winner here tonight at the casino? Huh? Mikey, that's who. Mikey's the big winner. Mikey wins.
-
Principal: Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
-
Dr. Evil: The details of my life are quite inconsequential... very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking- I highly suggest you try it.
-
Basil Exposition: Austin, the Cold War is over!
Austin Powers: Finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh comrades? Eh?
Basil Exposition: Austin... we won.
Austin Powers: Oh, smashing, groovy, yay capitalism!
-
Harry: Yeah I called her up, she gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her, or something, I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention.
-
Frank: Jane, since I've met you I've noticed things that I never knew were there before; birds singing, dew glistening on a newly formed leaf, stoplights.
-
Ferris: I do have a test today. that wasn't bull. It's on European socialism. I mean, really, what's the point? I'm not European. I don't plan on being European. So who gives a crap if they're socialists They could be fasict anarcists. It still doesn't change the fact that i don't own a car.
-
Bluto: My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.
Otter: Better listen to him, Flounder, he's in pre-med.
-
Commodus: You wrote to me once, listing the four chief virtues. Wisdom, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. As I read the list I knew I had none of them. But i have other virtues, father. Ambition, that can be a virtue when it drives us to excel. Resourcefulness. Courage. Perhaps not on the battlefield but there are many forms of courage. Devotion, to my family, to you. But none of my virtues were on your list. Even then, it was as if you didn't want me for your son.
-
Obi-Wan: I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade like your father did. It's your father's lightsaber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster, but an elegant weapon for a more civilized age. For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times, before the Empire.
-
Listen, buddy, if I could tell you in a minute what I did, it wouldn't be worth the Nobel Prize.
-Richard Feynman, Joking when asked by news reporters to give a brief summary of his Nobel-winning work on quantum electrodynamics.
... most of all [the actor] will love the boys and girls, the men and women, who sit in the cheapest seats, in the very last row of the top gallery. They have given more than they can afford to come. In the most self-effacing spirit of fellowship they are listening to catch every word, watching to miss no slightest gesture or expression. To save his life the actor cannot help feeling these nearest and dearest. He cannot help wishing to do his best for them. He cannot help loving them best of all.
-Minnie Maddern Fiske, Mrs. Fiske: Her Views on Actors, Acting and the Problems of Production, ch. 3, by Alexander Woollcott (1917)
If we didn't live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I've no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged.
-Virginia Woolf
“Dali and other surrealists manipulate and distort the mundane actuality of the world we live in to reveal the imagined world of our hidden desires. With different goals and different motives, this is exactly the conceptual space where advertising is most often at home.”
-Barry Hoffman, quoted in "The Fine Art of Advertising" (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2002)
Walk in the rain, jump in mud puddles, collect rocks, rainbows and roses, smell flowers, blow bubbles, stop along the way, build sandcastles, say hello to everyone, go barefoot, go on adventures, act silly, fly kites, have a merry heart, talk with animals, sing in the shower, read childrens' books, take bubble baths, get new sneakers, hold hands and hug and kiss, dance, laugh and cry for the health of it, wonder and wander around, feel happy and precious and innocent, feel scared, feel sad, feel mad, give up worry and guilt and shame, say yes, say no, say the magic words, ask lots of questions, ride bicycles, draw and paint, see things differently, fall down and get up again, look at the sky, watch the sun rise and sun set, watch clouds and name their shapes, watch the moon and stars come out, trust the universe, stay up late, climb trees, daydream, do nothing and do it very well, learn new stuff, be excited about everything, be a clown, enjoy having a body, listen to music, find out how things work, make up new rules, tell stories, save the world, make friends with the other kids on the block, and do anything else that brings more happiness, celebration, health, love, joy, creativity, pleasure, abundance, grace, self-esteem, courage, balance, spontaneity, passion, beauty, peace, relaxation, communication and life energy to...all living beings on this planet.
-Bruce Williamson, It's Never Too Late To Have A Happy Childhood, 1987
I sometimes think we ought to bring a bill before Congress changing our national symbol from the eagle to the buffalo, because we are more like the buffalo than the eagle. The eagle is a powerful bird. It flies alone. It rises up into the sky with authority. It is master of all it surveys. The eagle is an individualist and was selected from among the rest of the birds to be our symbol. But the buffalo was never alone. It always ran in a herd with other buffaloes. And, friends, I call your attention that the buffaloes are gone from the open range, but the eagles are still soaring.
-Norman Vincent Peale
It was at a particular moment in the history of my own rages that I saw the Western world conditioned by the images of Marx, Darwin and Freud; and Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western world. The simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.
-William Golding
I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities; but this is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defence of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity.
When this debate is concluded, a motion will be made to lay upon the table the resolution offered in commendation of the administration... We object to bringing this question down to the level of persons. The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies; but principles are eternal; and this has been a contest over a principle.
-William Jennings Bryan, "Cross of Gold", Speech concluding debate on the Chicago Platform at the Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois, July 9, 1896
The monopoly capitalists - even while employing purely empirical methods - weave around art a complicated web which converts it into a willing tool. The superstructure of society ordains the type of art in which the artist has to be educated. Rebels are subdued by its machinery and only rare talents may create their own work. The rest become shameless hacks or are crushed.
-Ernesto "Che" Guevara
What I so like about Poussin and Cezanne is their sense of organization. Ilike the way in which they develop space and shape in architecturalcontinuity - the rhythm across their paintings. When I paint a landscape, Iget the greatest pleasure out of composing it. As I paint, I try to work outa visual sonata form or a fugue, with realistic images.
-Ian Hornak, SneedGallery Catalogue (circulated) 1976
My idea of a perfect surrealist painting is one in which every detail is perfectly realistic, yet filled with a surrealistic, dreamlike mood. And the viewer himself can't understand why that mood exists, because there are no dripping watches or grotesque shapes as reference points. That is what I'm after: that mood which is apart from everyday life, the type of mood that one experiences at very special moments.
-Ian Hornak, "The 57th Street Review", January, 1976
Generalists, people with moderately strong attachments to many ideas, should be hard to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have weaker, shorter negative reactions since they have alternative paths to realize their plans. Specialists, people with stronger attachments to fewer ideas, should be easier to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have stronger, more sustained negative reactions because they have fewer alternative pathways to realize their plans. Generalists should be the upbeat, positive people in the profession while specialists should be their grouchy, negative counterparts.
-Karl Weick, "Theory Building as Disciplined Imagination [Academy of Management Review - 1989] (page 526)"
No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.
-W. H. Auden
"[I]t is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing."
-Jorge Luis Borges, cited in "A biographical study of a poet of Buenos Aires" by Evaristo Carriego, 1930
Be born anywhere, little embryo novelist, but do not be born under the shadow of a great creed, not under the burden of original sin, not under the doom of Salvation.
-Pearl Buck
The hunt for young authors who, while maintaining a prestige value (with a rôle for Ingrid Bergman), may yet somehow win the coveted jackpot, is feverish and incessant. Last year's authors (most of the names that have just reached England) are pushed aside and this year's—the novelist Jean Stafford, her poet husband Robert Lowell, or the dark horse, Truman Capote—are invariably mentioned. They may be quite unread, but their names, like a new issue on the market, are constantly on the lips of those in the know. "Get Capote"—at this minute the words are resounding on many a sixtieth floor, and "get him" of course means make him and break him, smother him with laurels and then vent on him the obscure hatred inherent in the notion of another's superiority.
-Cyril Connolly, Blueprint for a Silver Age: Notes On a Visit to America, "Harper's Magazine", December, 1947
"I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel & story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, &, for them, my corpus is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an integration & presentation, analysis & response & personal history."
-Philip K. Dick, Exegesis [Philip K. Dick's journal], 1981
Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.
-William Golding, "Rough Magic" [Lecture], February 16, 1977
It isn't easy, it does take an incredible amount of discipline, you don't just write just when you feel like it or you're not going to build up much of a body of work. Inspiration comes to you while you're writing rather than before....For me the discipline of writing and the discipline of prayer are identical, in that I have to let myself be got out of the way because that's not a do-it-yourself activity, and listen....When you write, don't think, write. You think before, you think after, you don't think during. When I'm praying, when I'm truly praying, I'm not thinking, I'm not speaking, I'm shutting up, so perhaps if God has something to say I can hear it. So writing too is an act of listening, listening to what has to be said.
-Madeleine L'Engle, Perkins Lecture Series, Wichita Falls, 1996
"Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it."
-J. Russel Lynes
Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives.
-Vladimir Nabokov
I am a writer, a professional journalist with serious credentials in Crime, Craziness, and Politics. I have mingled with dangerous criminals and attended many trials . . . from Hell's Angels, Black Panthers and Chicano street fighters to Roxanne Pulitzer and even Richard Nixon, back in the good old days before he was run out of the White House for fraud, perjury, graft, and criminal negligence.
-Hunter S. Thompson, Songs Of The Doomed - More Notes On The Death Of The American Dream (page 296)
My father was a scared man. And he communicated his anxiety to me, so that perhaps more than most writers I wanted to make a practical go of it. And my career was eminently practical. I fastened on to this magazine, the New Yorker, that seemed to me to be the top of its class and I tried to get into it, and I did get into it. It was kind of calculating. Kind of crass.
But I framed it to myself as a kind of altruistic ambition. Most jobs in the world were competitive, you had to push someone aside, but writing and art I thought weren't like that. You brought something new into the world without displacing anything else. To entertain people, or to hold out a standard of beauty or to even inform them seemed so self-evidently out of what my father called the rat race. Dog eat dog, in his phrase. He had a despairing picture of the capitalist world, as losers in that system tend to do.
-John Updike
Listen, I was the first black manager in baseball and there was incredible pressure. I don't blame anyone else. I was too tough . . . I lack patience. I probably got on guys a little too hard, with the wrong tone of voice.
-Frank Robinson, In "Sports" magazine, August, 1981
The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life which does not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest.
-Robert Benchley
Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.
-George Carlin
Our alternative is either to stick to a moral tradition which we haven’t invented, which most people cannot explain, and which economists can only retrospectively account for, in order to maintain the present four billion people living on this world, or to give up and allow a large part of this population to die of starvation. I very seriously believe that capitalism is not only a better form of organizing human activity than any deliberate design, any attempt to organize it to satisfy particular preferences, to aim at what people regard as beautiful or pleasant order, but it is also the indispensable condition for just keeping that population alive which exists already in the world. I regard the preservation of what is known as the capitalist system, of the system of free markets and the private ownership of the means of production, as an essential condition of the very survival of mankind.
-Friedrich A. Hayek
"When all the world is socialist, Switzerland will have to remain capitalist, so that it can tell us the price of everything."
-Nikita Khrushchev
The capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably also means production for the masses. . . . It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within reach of factory girls.
-Joseph Schumpeter
Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being "somebody," to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. One can either see or be seen.
-John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs, ch. 6, 1989
In describing today’s accelerating changes, the media fire blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic, even lunatic.
-Alvin Toffler
No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian, his true meannesses, his true imbecilities, to his friends, or even to his wife. Honest autobiography is therefore a contradiction in terms: the moment a man considers himself, even in petto, he tries to gild and fresco himself. Thus a man's wife, however realistic her view of him, always flatters him in the end, for the worst she sees in him is appreciably better, by the time she sees it, than what is actually there.
-H. L. Mencken, "The Art Eternal", "New York Evening Mail, 1918"
"It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depends. Historically this has been achieved by the influence of the various religious creeds and by traditions and superstitions which made man submit to those forces by an appeal to his emotions rather than to his reason. The most dangerous stage in the growth of civilization may well be that in which man has come to regard all these beliefs as superstitions and refuses to accept or to submit to anything which he does not rationally understand. The rationalist whose reason is not sufficient to teach him those limitations of the powers of conscious reason, and who despises all the institutions and customs which have not been consciously designed, would thus become the destroyer of the civilization built upon them. This may well prove a hurdle which man will repeatedly reach, only to be thrown back into barbarism."
-Friedrich A. Hayek
It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability. Robinson Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilised mind striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
“I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and out of all of this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can.”
-Marquis de Lafayette, Marquis de Lafayette
It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of supersophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.
-Erma Bombeck, "If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries...", 1971
The confusion is not my invention. We cannot listen to a conversation for five minutes without being aware of the confusion. It is all around us and our only chance now is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess. It is not a mess you can make sense of.
-Samuel Beckett, [interview], Tom F. Driver, “Beckett by the Medeleine” p. 22, Columbia University Forum IV (Summer, 1961)
Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that. If a businessman does not strictly obey the orders of the public as they are conveyed to him by the structure of market prices, he suffers losses, he goes bankrupt, and is thus removed from his eminent position at the helm. Other men who did better in satisfying the demand of the consumers replace him.
The consumers patronize those shops in which they can buy what they want at the cheapest price. Their buying and their abstention from buying decides who should own and run the plants and the farms. They make poor people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities. They are merciless bosses, full of whims and fancies, changeable and unpredictable. For them nothing counts other than their own satisfaction. They do not care a whit for past merit and vested interests. If something is offered to them that they like better or that is cheaper, they desert their old purveyors. In their capacity as buyers and consumers they are hard-hearted and callous, without consideration for other people.
http://www.mises.org/humanaction.asp
-Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, XV. THE MARKET, 4. The Sovereignty of the Consumers
A lion is much more dreadful to him that never saw him, than he is to his keeper who feedeth him every day. A pitched battle is more frightful and scaring to a new-listed soldier, that never took his place in the field before, nor saw the dreadful countenance of an army ready to engage, nor heard the thundering noise of cannon, and volleys of shot, the shouts of armies, and groans of dying men on every side, than it is to an old soldier who has been used to such things. The like we may observe in seamen, who it may be trembled at first, and now can sing in a storm.
Scarce any thing is more necessary for weak and timorous believers to meditate on, than the time of their separation. Our hearts will be apt to start and boggle at the first view of death; but it is good to do by them as men use to do by young colts; ride them up to that which they fright at, and make them smell to it, which is the way to cure them. "Look, as bread, says one, is more necessary than other food, so the meditation of death is more necessary than many other meditations." Every time we change our habitations, we should realise therein our great change: our souls must shortly leave this, and be lodged for a longer season in another mansion. When we put off our clothes at night, we have a fit occasion to consider, that we must strip nearer one of these days, and put off, not our clothes only, but the body that wears them too.
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/ipb-e/epl-10/web/flavel-pneumatologia07.html
-John Flavel, "A Treatise of the Soul of Man"
I take great comfort in having people around who can walk in my office and tell me what's on their mind. Part of my job is -- they say, "what's your job?" My job is decision-maker. I make a lot of decisions. Obviously, some of which you've seen, and a lot of them you don't. And they're big ones and little ones. But you make a lot of decisions. And if you don't -- if you're uncertain about all the facts surrounding a decision, you've got to rely upon people. And you've then got to create an environment in which people are willing to come in and say, "here's what's on my mind."
It's important at the presidential level. It's important in business. You've got to have people comfortable about saying, "Here's what I think you ought to do, Mr. CEO." You've got to listen and have a -- I've always believed in a flat organizational chart. I think the worst thing that can happen for decision-makers is to get a filtered point of view.
-George W. Bush, "Importance of Small Business in Economic Growth", [answering the question: How do you remain upbeat when you're surrounded by the burdens of leadership?], January 19, 2006
"I don't want any promises, I won't have false hopes, I won't be romantic about myself. I can't live in their world any longer, she told herself, listening to the voices back of her. Let them tell their stories to each other. Let them go on explaining how things happened. I don't care. At least I can know the truth about what happens to me, she assured herself silently, making a promise to herself, in her hopefulness, her ignorance."
-Katherine Anne Porter
One of the saddest lines in the world is, 'Oh come now - be realistic.' The best parts of this world were not fashioned by those who were realistic. They were fashioned by those who dared to look hard at their wishes and gave them horses to ride.
-Richard Nelson Bolles
"The history of the twentieth century - America's century! - has been pretty much a history of rising prices... inflation is itself a problem. But the legitimate and hysterical fears of inflation are - quite aside from the evil of inflation itself - likely, in their own right, to be problems. In short, I fear inflation. And I fear the fear of inflation. Avoiding inflation is not an absolute imperative, but rather is one of a number of conflicting goals that we must pursue and that we may often have to compromise. Even if the military outlook were serene - and it is not - modern democracies must expect in the future to be much of the time at, or near, the point where inflation is a concern. Our greatest economic problem will be to face that concern realistically, to weigh inflation's quantitative evil against the evils of actions taken against it, to develop methods of adjusting to the residue of inflation which attainment of the 'golden mean' might involve. The challenge is great but the prognosis is cheerful."
[Responding to the question: "What is the most important economic problem to be faced by the United States in the next twenty years?"]
-Paul A. Samuelson, 1958
"I think, without question, that unemployment of more than 6 per cent is something to be concerned about. You don't push the panic button, but you don't relax and enjoy it either... I myself don't believe in a numbers game in which you give a maximum tolerable percentage, because I think, truly, it does vary with the times... I would hesitate to specify the figure today, but I will say this: it would be, in my mind, less than a 4 per cent figure - that is, for the period ahead. I would not, realistically, think we could hope for a 2 per cent figure in the near future, as certain European countries have been able to do. But I do think that if we are pretty zealous in this matter and insist upon getting low figures - say, 3.5 per cent - then our very success in accomplishing that may lead to a new epoch just beyond when we could hope to go below 3 per cent... "
-Paul A. Samuelson, (interview), "U.S. News World Report", December, 1960
Essentialists hope that when students leave school, they will possess not only basic skills and an extensive body of knowledge, but also disciplined, practical minds, capable of applying schoolhouse lessons in the real world.
-William C. Bagley
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
-Robert Frost
When [the moral sense] is wanting, we endeavor to supply the defect by education, by appeals to reason and calculation, by presenting to the being so unhappily conformed, other motives to do good and to eschew evil, such as the love, or the hatred, or the rejection of those among whom he lives, and whose society is necessary to his happiness and even existence; demonstrations by sound calculation that honesty promotes interest in the long run; the rewards and penalties established by the laws; and ultimately the prospects of a future state of retribution for the evil as well as the good done while here. These are the correctives which are supplied by education, and which exercise the functions of the moralist, the preacher, and legislator; and they lead into a course of correct action all those whose depravity is not too profound to be eradicated.
-Thomas Jefferson, [to Thomas Law, 1814]
If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society. Its art is the art of social life, and its end is fitness for the world. It neither confines its views to particular professions on the one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius on the other. Works indeed of genius fall under no art; heroic minds come under no rule; a University is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not promise a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons or Washingtons, of Raphaels or Shakespeares, though such miracles of nature it has before now contained within its precincts. Nor is it content on the other hand with forming the critic or the experimentalist, the economist or the engineer, though such too it includes within its scope. But a University training is the great ordinary means to an great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life. It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them.
-John Henry Newman, Idea of a University, 1852
The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.
-Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
"The idea that positive illusions are in the service of sef-esteem virtually requires that they stay in check. If one develops substantially unrealistic expectations regarding the future that greatly exceed what one is actually able to accomplish, then one is set up for failure and disappointment, leading to lower self-esteem."
-Shelley E. Taylor, "Positive Illusions: Creative Self-Deception and the Healthy Mind" (describing "illusion of control" bias), 1989
One of the things that my parents have taught me is never listen to other people's expectations. You should live your own life and live up to your own expectations, and those are the only things I really care about it.
-Tiger Woods, "An interview with Tiger Woods," www.golf.com
A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms agains himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.
-Alexander Dumas
"Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever."
-Kahlil Gibran, "The Voice of the Poet"
I have thought this way several times in my life but only when circumstances have led me to a bad pass. No man who has chosen well and wisely will ever credit it to fate; the only real fatalist is a man on his way down the pipe. There is no solace in fatalism.
-Hunter S. Thompson, Songs Of The Doomed - More Notes On The Death Of The American Dream (page 93)
When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.
-Buddha
YER OF THE VIGILE DEL FUOCO
Lord who light the skyes and fill up the abysses,
burn in our breast the flame of sacrifice.
Strenghten the spirit of service that burn in us,
make safe our eye, steady our foot,
to make effective the rescue that in your name we bring
to brothers in danger.
When the siren shrieks in the streets of the town,
listen the throb of our earths devoted to renounce.
When in competition with eagles we climb to You,
support us Your sored hand.
When the fire irresistible flares up,
burns the evil nestled in the houses of men,
not the life and affections of Your sons.
Lord, we are the bearer of Your Cross,
and risk is our daily bread.
A day without risk is not lived,
because for we believers death is life,
is light: in the dread of collapses, in the fury of waters,
in the hell of fires.
Our life is the fire, our faith is God.
For Saint Barbara martyr.
AMEN
-Anon., "The prayer of italian firefighters"
"Eat not garlic nor onions, lest they find out thy boorish origin by the smell; walk slowly and speak deliberately, but not in such a way as to make it seem thou art listening to thyself, for all affectation is bad. Dine sparingly and sup more sparingly still; for the health of the whole body is forged in the workshop of the stomach. Be temperate in drinking, bearing in mind that wine in excess keeps neither secrets nor promises. Take care, Sancho, not to chew on both sides, and not to eruct in anybody's presence."
"Eruct!" said Sancho; "I don't know what that means."
"To eruct, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "means to belch, and that is one of the filthiest words in the Spanish language, though a very expressive one; and therefore nice folk have had recourse to the Latin, and instead of belch say eruct, and instead of belches say eructations; and if some do not understand these terms it matters little, for custom will bring them into use in the course of time, so that they will be readily understood; this is the way a language is enriched; custom and the public are all-powerful there."
"In truth, senor," said Sancho, "one of the counsels and cautions I mean to bear in mind shall be this, not to belch, for I'm constantly doing it."
"Eruct, Sancho, not belch," said Don Quixote.
"Eruct, I shall say henceforth, and I swear not to forget it," said Sancho.
-Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Let’s have a merry journey, and shout about how light is good and dark is not. What we should do is not future ourselves so much. We should now ourselves. “Now thyself” is more important than “know thyself.” Reason is what tells us to ignore the present and live in the future. So all we do is make plans. We think that somewhere there are going to be green pastures. It’s crazy. Heaven is nothing but a grand, monumental instance of future. Listen, now is good. Now is wonderful.
-Mel Brooks
When the great white silence comes and fills the boughs of the trees with a thickening, glistening brilliance, and all is cold and barren, where be the blossom? It is in the memory. It is in the wisdom. It is in the growth of last spring, and it is coming forth again. For when the season has turned and winter is gone, the buds come again, and behold, there is another blossom.
If the ongoingeness of life is beheld in a single blossom, why do you think that you are less that its life? Do you think that you only bloom in sping, produce your fruit in summer, drop your leaves in autumn and then die in winter? But are you not greater than the greatest blossom? Is not your life more important? Indeed it is. And as the blossoms continue to bloom every spring, so will you live, life after life.
What a story your blossoms could tell of all the seasons you've seen.
-J. Z. Knight, -- Ramtha, from Ramtha
The existentialist…finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote "if God did not exist, everything would be permitted"; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. For if indeed existence precedes essence, one will never be able to explain one’s action by reference to a given and specific human nature; in other words, there is no determinism — man is free, man is freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. — We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.
-Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism", 1946
"Golf is not, on the whole, a game for realists. By its exactitudes of measurement it invites the attention of perfectionists."
-Heywood Hale Broun, Tumultuous Merriment, 1979
You can talk to a fade but a hook won't listen.
-Lee Trevino
"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."
-Leo Buscaglia
Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.
-Pau (Pablo) Casals
To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit.
To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves.
When we listen to "the better angels of our nature," we find that they celebrate the simple things, the basic things--such as goodness, decency, love, kindness.
Greatness comes in simple trappings.
-Richard Milhous Nixon, First Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969
Dear Friend,
Please be patient with me; I need to grieve in my own way and in my own time.
Please don't take away my grief or try to fix my pain. The best thing you can do is listen to me and let me cry on your shoulder. Don't be afraid to cry with me. Your tears will tell me how much you care.
Please forgive me if I seem insensitive to your problems. I feel depleted and drained, like an empty vessel, with nothing left to give.
Please let me express my feelings and talk about my memories. Feel free to share your own stories of my loved one with me. I need to hear them.
Please understand why I must turn a deaf ear to criticism or tired clichés. I can't handle another person telling me that time heals all wounds.
Please don't try to find the "right" words to say to me. There's nothing you can say to take away the hurt. What I need are hugs, not words.
Please don't push me to do things I'm not ready to do, or feel hurt if I seem withdrawn. This is a necessary part of my recovery.
Please don't stop calling me. You might think you're respecting my privacy, but to me it feels like abandonment.
Please don't expect me to be the same as I was before. I've been through a traumatic experience and I'm a different person.
Please accept me for who I am today. Pray with me and for me. Should I falter in my own faith, let me lean on yours.
In return for your loving support I promise that, after I've worked through my grief, I will be a more loving, caring, sensitive, and compassionate friend-becauseI have learned from the best.
Love,
(Your name)
If I be the first of us to die,
Let grief not blacken long your sky.
Be bold yet modest in your grieving.
There is a change but not a leaving.
For just as death is part of life,
The dead live on forever in the living.
And all the gathered riches of our journey,
The moments shared, the mysteries explored,
The steady layering of intimacy stored,
The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,
The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,
The wordless language of look and touch,
The knowing,
Each giving and each taking,
These are not flowers that fade,
Nor trees that fall and crumble,
Nor are they stone,
For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand
And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.
What we were, we are.
What we had, we have.
A conjoined past imperishably present.
So when you walk the wood where once we walked
together
And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,
Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land,
And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,
And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,
Be still.
Close your eyes.
Breathe.
Listen for my footfall in your heart.
I am not gone but merely walk within you.
-Nicholas Evans, from "The Smoke Jumper" copyright Nicholas Evans, 2001
I used to issue leaflets asking people to enlist as recruits. One of the arguments I had used was distasteful to the Commissioner: 'Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.' The Commissioner referred to this and said that he appreciated my presence in the conference in spite of the differences between us. And I had to justify my standpoint as courteously as I could.
N.B.: This quote refers to the British disarmament of the Indian Army. Gandhi never advocated the individual right to bear arms.
-Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi, An Autobiography, "The story of my experiments with truth" (Chapter XXVII, Recruiting Campaign, pg 446-447, Beacon Press, 1957)
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.
-William Faulkner, Nobel Acceptance Speech
Do not consider Collectivists as "sincere but deluded idealists". The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not "idealistic," no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
-Ayn Rand
Great ideas come into the world as quietly as doves. Perhaps then , if we listen attentively we shall hear, among the uproar of empires and nations, the faint fluttering of wings, the gentle stirrings of life and hope. Some will say this hope lies in a nation; others in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. Each and every one, on the foundations of their own suffering and joy builds for all.
-Albert Camus
The human imagination...has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.
-John Berger, "The Soul and the Operator," in "Expressen" (Stockholm), March 19, 1990
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
-Franz Kafka
By measuring individual human worth, the novelist reveals the full enormity of the State’s crime when it sets out to crush that individuality.
-Ian McEwan, A Move Abroad, preface (1989)
Queer little twists go into the making of an individual. To supress them all and follow clock and calendar and creed until the individual is lost in the neutral grey of the host is to be less than true to our inheritance.... Life, that gorgeous quality of life, is not accomplished by following another man's rules. It is true we have the same hungers and same thirsts, but they are for different things and in different ways and in different seasons.... Lay down your own day, follow it to its noon, your own noon, or you will sit in an outer hall listening to the chimes but never reaching high enough to strike your own.
-Angelo Patri
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
To see life from the perspective of intuition is to have vision. To see life from the perspective of intuition is to see life from the perspective of wholeness. It is to understand that life is basically one and that we are part of life. While the intellect can only see the details, intuition sees the whole. To see life from the perspective of intuition is like looking at life from the summit of the mountain, whereas seeing life only from the perspective of intellect is like looking at life from the foot of the mountain. Through learning to listen to our intuition, we learn to be in contact with the Whole.
-Swami Dhyan Giten
"Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war.... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest...."
-C.S. Lewis, attributed
Intellectuals incline to be individualists, or even independents, are not team conscious and tend to regard obedience as a surrender of personality.
-Harold Nicolson
A journalist is basically a chronicler, not an interpreter of events. Where else in society do you have the license to eavesdrop on so many different conversations as you have in journalism? Where else can you delve into the life of our times?
-Bill Moyers, "Channel Maker", February 29, 1979
The richness of the human journey is here. Listen. Pass it on. So that there will not pass from our future the enchantment that begins with the honored words, Once upon a time, long ago and far away, in a deep forest, there lived a child - much like you.
-Anon.
The omission of an expected conjunction is called an asyndeton. Caesar is supposed to have said about Gaul: "I came, I saw, I conquered." Lincoln concluded the Gettysburg Address, "That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Caesar seems to have omitted his conjunction to speed things up; he is emphasizing how quickly the conquest of a place follows from its being sighted by a great and ambitious general. Lincoln's omission is more subtle—or so it seems to me. Usually the items on a list are different but related things: eggs, butter, cheese. Sometimes they achieve a unity in which their distinctiveness is lost to all but the analytic mind, a good cheese omelet. Or perhaps we might even decide that they are but manifestations or expressions of the same thing. Lincoln would have us see these three aspects of government as constituting an inseparable whole. The asyndeton helps him do this.
Of course, these two distinguishable usages of asyndeton are not mutually exclusive. Lincoln's asyndeton contributes to the striking brevity of his address. And the psychoanalytically subtle among us will point out that at some level seeing is organically connected with conquering (and many other things as well).
-Arthur Quinn, Figures of Speech, 1982
Students are extraordinary teachers. They speak. They constantly tell us how our expectations, objectives, curriculums, and instructional strategies affect them. We need to look to our students to tell us why learning takes place—and why it doesn't. Our students are key sources for helping us identify what needs to be done. . . . Often we forget to ask them, and we forget to listen to the important messages they bring.
-Anthony Gregorc, Interview (1998)
He learned by sight, scent, and hearing. He heard all that was said, and talked over and over the questions heard; wore them slick, greasy, and threadbare. He went to political and other speeches and gatherings; he would hear all sides and opinions, talk them over and discuss them, agreeing or disagreeing. Abe, as I said before, was originally a Democrat after the order of Jackson, so was his father, so we all were. He preached, made speeches, read for us, explained to us, etc. … Abe was a cheerful boy, a witty boy, was humorous always; sometimes would get sad, not very often. … He would frequently make political and other speeches to the boys; he was calm, logical, and clear always. He attended trials, went to court always, read the Revised Statutes of Indiana, dated 1827, heard law speeches, and listened to law trials, etc. He was always reading, scribbling, writing, ciphering, writing poetry, and the like. … In Gentryville, about one mile west of Thomas Lincoln’s farm, Lincoln would go and tell his jokes and stories, and was so odd, original, humorous, and witty, that all the people in town would gather around him. He would keep them there till midnight. Abe was a good talker, a good reader, and was a kind of newsboy.
(remarks attributed to Abraham Lincoln's cousin, Dennis Hanks)
-William M. Thayer, "Life of Lincoln" ch. 13 “Sundry Incidents”
"In this age of specialization, I sometimes think of myself as the last 'generalist' in economics, with interests that range from mathematical economics down to current financial journalism. My real interests are research and teaching..."
-Paul A. Samuelson
When the time for recognition of service to the nation in wartime comes to be considered, Bob Hope should be high on the list. This man drives himself and is driven. It is impossible to see how he can do so much, can cover so much ground, can work so hard, and can be so effective. He works month after month at a pace that would kill most people.
-John Steinbeck, Once There Was A War, New York: Bantam, p.65., 1958
The hard-core "intentionalist" expresses only the most remote concern for consequences - usually, some vague, distant utopia. But this is, in most cases, a rationalization. His real satisfaction comes from a sense of "doing the right thing" - even when "right" has, in his mind, no clear connection with reality.
http://www.libertyhaven.com/theoreticalorphilosophicalissues/ethics/moralityofgood.html
-Robert James Bidinotto, essay: The Morality of Good Intentions, "The Freeman, A publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.", March, 1987
You just stood there screaming
Fearing no one was listening to you
They say the empty can rattles the most
The sound of your own voice must soothe you
Hearing only what you want to hear
And knowing only what you've heard
You, you're smothered in tragedy
And you're out to save the world.
-James Hetfield
The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program until one day America will be a Socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.
-Norman Thomas
Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud—and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word.
But in the night of Death
Hope sees a star and listening
Love can hear the rustling of a wing.
-Robert G. Ingersoll, [from a eulogy Ingersoll wrote for his brother, Ebon, that was delivered in Washington, D.C. on May 31, 1879]
Dance like there's nobody watching
Love like you'll never get hurt
Sing like there's nobody listening
Live like it's heaven on earth
And speak from the heart to be heard.
Purkey is the source of this quotation that is attributed to many others: it was made popular in the song "Come From The Heart" written by Susannah Clark and Richard Leigh. Purkey closed his speeches with this poem and it has now made it into the public domain.
-William W. Purkey
"To talk to someone who does not listen is enough to tense the devil."
-Pearl Bailey, Talking to Myself
You need to become a good listener. VERY VERY important. As you're working, you hear someone else's lines and how you absorb them becomes your acting.
-Jacqueline Bisset, Interview on "Chats from the Past"
"It takes a great man to be a good listener."
-Calvin Coolidge
"A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him."
-Brendan Francis
"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."
-Ernest Hemingway
"Sometimes it is a great joy just to listen to someone we love talking to."
-Vincent McNabb, God's Way of Mercy
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention... A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.
-Rachel Naomi Remen
When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. I have deeply appreciated the times that I have experienced this sensitive, empathic, concentrated listening.
-Carl R. Rogers, Experiences in Communication
"Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him."
-Simone Weil, Waiting for God
"A good listener tries to understand thoroughly what the other person is saying. In the end he may disagree sharply, but before he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with."
-Kenneth A. Wells, Guide to Good Leadership
"Son, I'd say you were going at it the wrong end first," said the Judge, turning up his coat-collar. "How could you care about one girl? Have you ever cared about one leaf?"
Riley, listening to the wildcat with an itchy hunter's look, snatched at the leaves blowing about us like midnight butterflies; alive, fluttering as though to escape and fly, one stayed trapped between his fingers. The Judge, too: he caught a leaf; and it was worth more in his hand than in Riley's. Pressing it mildly against his cheek, he distantly said, "We are speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed--begin with these, learn a little what it is to love. First, a leaf, a fall of rain, then someone to receive what a leaf has taught you, what a fall of rain has ripened. No easy process, understand; it could take a lifetime, it has mine, and still I've never mastered it--I only know how true it is: that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life."
-Truman Capote, The Glass Harp
It's been suggested that if the supernaturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science. Either way, why are they wasting their talents doing party turns on television?
-Richard Dawkins, Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dimbleby Lecture, BBC1, November 12, 1996
I don't believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have rebelled long ago! There's a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder, and kill. And until all of humanity, without exception, undergoes a metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged, and everything that has been carefully built up, cultivated and grown will be cut down and destroyed, only to start all over again!
-Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl: the Definitive Edition (1952)
Our generation is realistic for we have come to know man as he really is.
After all, man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or Shema Yisrael on his lips.
-Victor Frankl
Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.
-H. L. Mencken
...by association with natures enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also. There is a way of looking upon a landscape as a moving picture and being satisfied with nothing less big as a moving picture, a way of looking upon tropic clouds over the horizon as the backdrop of a stage and being satisfied with nothing less big as a backdrop, a way of looking upon the mountain forests as a private garden and being satisfied with nothing less as a private garden, a way of listening to the roaring waves as a concert and being satisfied with nothing less as a concert, and a way of looking upon the mountain breeze as an air-cooling system and being satisfied with nothing less as an air-cooling system. So do we become big, even as the earth and firmaments are big. Like the 'Big Man' described by Yuan Tsi (A.D. 210-263), one of China's first romanticists, we 'live in heaven and earth as our house.'
-Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, 1937
It is well within the order of things
That man should listen when his mate sings;
But the true male never yet walked
Who liked to listen when his mate talked.
-Anna Wickham, The Affinity in the Contemplative Quarry
It's no mystery why many of us in the media can't get enough of the fabricators Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, the latter of whom concocted more than a score of bogus feature stories for the New Republic (and who wrote for other magazines, including this one, once) in the mid-1990s. Anyone--journalist, student, academic--who has ever stared at a blank screen, their brains grinding emptiness, and thought, "How can I fill this hole?" knows that in those desperate moments before a deadline, almost anyone can do almost anything: make stuff up, plagiarize, scribble senseless half-truths.
-David Edelstein, "Slate magazine"
"The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration; but the honing is uniform."
-George Steiner, Real Presences, 1989
There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
-John Swinton, a toast before the New York Press Club
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.
-William Butler Yeats
“Feminist separation is…separation of various sorts or modes from men and from institutions, relationships, roles and activities which are male-defined, male-dominated and operating for the benefit of males and the maintenance of male privilege – this separation being initiated or maintained, at will, by women. (Masculist separatism is the partial segregation of women from men and male domains at the will of men. This difference is crucial.)”
-Marilyn Frye, "Some Reflections on Separatism and Power"
A true gentleman is at a disadvantage in dealing with women. Women are realist, and their tactics are realistic, so no man should be a gentleman where women are concerned unless the women are very, very young. Women admire gentlemen, and sleep with cads.
-Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum
That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.
-Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1790
I think it is time we learned the lesson of our century: that the progress of the human spirit must keep pace with technological and scientific progress, or that spirit will die. It is incumbent on our educators to remember this; and music is at the top of the spiritual must list. When the study of the arts leads to the adoration of the formula (heaven forbid), we shall be lost. But as long as we insist on maintaining artistic vitality, we are able to hope in man’s future.
-Leonard Bernstein
We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.
-John Milton Cage, An Autobiographical Statement
"There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law. I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth, an open-air art boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art."
-Claude Debussy
"For a long time I wasn't listening to music, to the rock and roll stuff on the radio, because it would cause me to get sweaty--it would bring back memories I didn't want to know about, or I would get that feeling that I'm not alive 'cause I'm not making it. And if it was good, I hated it 'cause I wasn't doing it. And if it was bad, I was furious 'cause I could've done it better..."
-John Lennon
He had always wanted to write Music and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikowsky's First Concerto, or the last movement of Rachmaninoff's Second. Men have not found the words for it nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the Music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that Music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers - Show me yours - show me that it is possible - show me your achievement - and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.
-Ayn Rand
"For example, there is a species of butterfly, a night-moth, in which the females are much less common than the males. The moths breed exactly like all animals, the male fertilizes the female and the female lays the eggs. Now, if you take a female night moth----many naturalists have tried this experiment---the male moths will visit this female at night and they will come from hours away. From hours away! Just think! From a distance of several miles all these males sense the only female in the region. One looks for an explanation for this phenomenon but it is not easy. You must assume that they have a sense of smell of some sort like a hunting dog that can pick up and follow a semmingly imperceptible scent. Do you see? Nature abounds with such inexplicable things. But my argument is: if the female moths were as abundant as the males, the latter would not have such a highly developed sense of smell. They've acquired it only because they had to train themseleves to to have it. If a person were to concentrate all his will power on a certain end, then he would achieve it. That's all. And that also answers your question. Examine a person closely enough and you know more about him than he does himself."
-Hermann Hesse, Demian, 1919
Listen to the mustn'ts child.
Listen to the don'ts.
Listen to the shouldn't haves, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me.
Anything can happen child.
Anything can be.
-Shel Silverstein
I certainly do not consider myself permanently dedicated to a crusade for peace and I am beginning to see the uselessness and absurdity of getting too involved in a 'peace movement.' The chief reason why I have spoken out was that I felt I owed it to my conscience to do so. There are certain things that have to be clearly stated. I had in mind particularly the danger arising from the fact that some of the most belligerent people in this country are Christians, on the one hand fundamentalist Protestants and on the other certain Catholics. They both tend to appeal to the bomb to do a 'holy' work of destruction in the name of Christ and Christian truth. This is completely intolerable and the truth has to be stated. I cannot in conscience remain indifferent.
-Thomas Merton, letter to Czeslaw Milosz [collected in Courage For Truth: The Letters Of Thomas Merton To Writers (1993)], March, 1962
The adherents of the old order have a powerful ally in the natural law of inertia inherent in humanity which is, as it were, a natural defense against change. Thus pacifism faces no easy struggle. The question of whether violence or law shall prevail between states is the most vital of the problems of our eventful era, and the most serious in its repercussions. The beneficial results of a secure world peace are almost inconceivable, but even more inconceivable are the consequences of the threatening world war which many misguided people are prepared to precipitate. The advocates of pacifism are well aware how meager are their resources of personal influence and power. They know that they are still few in number and weak in authority, but when they realistically consider themselves and the ideal they serve, they see themselves as the servants of the greatest of all causes.
-Bertha von Suttner, 1905
"What do the nationalists say about killers punishing murderers and thieves sentencing looters?"
-Kahlil Gibran, "The Voice of the Poet"
It is an obscene comparison - you know I am not sure I like it - but you know there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck," he said. "Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions...
...It starts with a feeling of patriotism within oneself. It carries through with a certain knowledge that the country as a whole - and for all the right reasons - felt and continues to feel this surge of patriotism within themselves. And one finds oneself saying: 'I know the right question, but you know what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it.'
-Dan Rather, [admitting, that "patriotism run amok" was in danger of trampling the freedom of American journalists to ask tough questions]
"'Exactly,' he said, while he leant forward excitedly, for all the world like a Jack-in-the-box let loose. 'Precisely; and you are a journalist - call yourself one, at least - and it should be part of your business to notice and describe people. I don't mean only the wonderful personage with the clear Saxon features, the fine blue eyes, the noble brow and classic face, but the ordinary person - the person who represents ninety out of every hundred of his own kind - the average Englishman, say, of the middle classes, who is neither very tall nor very short, who wears a moustache which is neither fair nor dark, but which masks his mouth, and a top hat which hides the shape of his head and brow, a man, in fact, who dresses like hundreds of his fellow-creatures, moves like them, speaks like them, has no peculiarity.'"
-Baroness Emmuska Orczy, from 'The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway'
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.
-H. L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major, p. 16, 1916
The pessimist sees only the tunnel; the optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel; the realist sees the tunnel and the light - and the next tunnel.
-Sydney J. Harris
When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from the clouds, whom none have seen and none are ready to name, I lapse into a dream... I see children playing on the grass, ...they are restive and quarrelsome; they cannot agree to any common plan; their play annoys them; it goes poorly. And one says, let us make Jack the master; Jack knows all about it; Jack will tell us what each is to do and we shall all agree. But Jack is like all the rest; Helen is discontented with her part and Henry with his, and soon they fall again into their old state. No, the children must learn to play by themselves; there is no Jack the master. And in the end slowly and with infinite disappointment they do learn a little; they learn to forbear, to reckon with anther, accept a little where they wanted much, to live and let live, to yield when they must yield; perhaps, we may hope, not to take all they can. But the condition is that they shall be willing at least to listen to one another, to get the habit of pooling their wishes. Somehow or other they must do this, if the play is to go on; maybe it will not, but there is no Jack, in or out of the box, who can come to straighten the game.
-Judge Learned Hand
"Bush Sr. was a jerk, Quayle an idiot, Clinton was atrocious and disgusting, most of those who persecuted him were hypocritical, Gore is shallow and weak, Bradley is an idealist, Bush Jr. a fool, and all of the independent candidates act like they're on drugs."
-David Borenstein, On the politics of the 1990's
Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.
-Bertrand Russell
Authority and power are two different things: power is the force by means of which you can oblige others to obey you. Authority is the right to direct and command, to be listened to or obeyed by others. Authority requests power. Power without authority is tyranny.
-Jacques Maritain, “The Democratic Charter,” Man and the State, University of Chicago Press (1951)
They tell me, Lord, that when I seem
To be in speech with you.
Since but one voice is heard, it’s all a dream
One talker aping two.
Sometimes it is, yet not as they
Conceive it. Rather, I
Seek in myself the things I hoped to say,
But lo!, my wells are dry.
Then, seeing me empty, you forsake
The listener’s role and through
My dumb lips breathe and into utterance wake
The thoughts I never knew.
And thus you neither need reply
Nor can; thus, while we seem
Two talkers, thou art One forever, and I
No dreamer, but thy dream.
-C.S. Lewis
Prayer is first of all listening to God. It's openness. God is always speaking; he's always doing something. Prayer is to enter into that activity. ... Convert your thoughts into prayer. As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. The difference is not that prayer is thinking about other things, but that prayer is thinking in dialogue, ... a conversation with God.
-Henri Nouwen
My own participation [in the campaign] was delayed by the death of my son Calvin, which occurred on the seventh of July. He was a boy of much promise, proficient in his studies, with a scholarly mind, who had just turned sixteen.
He had a remarkable insight into things.
The day I became President he had just started to work in a tobacco field. When one of his fellow laborers said to him, "if my father was President I would not work in a tobacco field," Calvin replied, "If my father were your father, you would."...
We do not know what might have happened to him under other circumstances, but if I had not been President, he would not have raised a blister on his toe, which resulted in blood poisoning, playing lawn tennis in the South Grounds.
In his suffering he was asking me to make him well. I could not.
When he went the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him.
The ways of Providence are often beyond our understanding. It seemed to me that the world had need of the work that it was probable he could do.
I do not know why such a price was exacted for occupying the White House.
-Calvin Coolidge, (autobiography)
Having been blacklisted from working in television during the McCarthy era, I know the harm of government using private corporations to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans. When government uses the telephone companies to create massive databases of all our phone calls it has gone too far.
[note: "May 22, 2006, Terkel, along with other plaintiffs, filed a suit in federal district court against AT&T to stop them from giving customer phone records to the National Security Agency without a court order."]
-Studs Terkel
When Hitler attacked the Jews … I was not a Jew, therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church—and there was nobody left to be concerned.
There are other versions. There is no definitive wording or verified source.
-Martin Niemöller, Attributed: Congressional Record, vol. 114, p. 31636, October 14, 1968
The bookful blockhead ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head,
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always list'ning to himself appears.
All books he reads, and all he reads assails.
-Alexander Pope
The various problems the addict describes may sound like too much for anyone to bear. On closer analysis, though, an addict's problems are not that different from the nonaddict's problems. But the addictive thinker's perception is that they are radically different: Other people get a break once in a while, but not me. Never.
Recovering addicts may bring their unrealistic expectations into sobriety. They may believe that other people in recovery have had an easier time. My problems are the worst, they think. My spouse used to complain when I drank, and now I hear about my going to meetings every night. The supervisor watches me like a hawk. My oldfriends don't call anymore.... As recovering addicts come into regular contact with others in recovery, however, they begin to see that everyone else doesn't have it better and, in fact, other people are a lot like they are.
Every aspect of recovery is subject to growth. Accepting life on its own terms, accepting powerlessness, surrendering to a Higher Power, taking and sharing a moral inventory, making amends—all these take place gradually. A person who has been recovering for several years may look back on early recovery and see how much there was to learn, how far he or she has come.
-Abraham J. Twerski, Addictive Thinking: Understanding Self-Deception
Radiant Day is slowly fading;
and the evening calm and still.
Gazing through the oak and willow;
stoop to kiss the ancient mill.
Listen to the damsel dancing;
to the jig of feed and flower.
And the water wheel revolving;
with the dashing constant power.
There is music in the rattle;
of the tinkling wheat that falls.
In the hopper, as the miller;
stops to hear the gristmens calls.
Yes, I love this shaded building;
love the flowing streams and flowers.
Love to hear the busy clatter;
of the lingering summer hours.
More of all, I love the miller;
For his sake I love the rest.
Of this world and its enchantments,
I adore him as the best.
Of these twilights I would weary,
If his voice came not to cheer,
And this mill life would grow dreary;
If my darling were not here.
[this poem may be copyrighted, so it is not for sale from Quoteland or Gifts of Wisdom]
-Sara Lousisa Oberholtzer
Strife -- in philosophy, religion, and politics -- has certainly gained so much ground that it is impossible for us to reconcile with one another. But it is possible to find reconciliation ... by means of the foundation of all things, which is God. For he does not cease to be the same for all ... irrespective of our differences, and his earth bears us all, even if we preferred to see that the ground would cleave asunder beneath our enemies.
The sun sends his rays upon us directly, paying no heed that we look askance at one another. The rose smells sweetly to both the Jew and the Christian -- and to the Muslim too. And so God is God of all, and whatever he says, he says in the same manner to all that are ready to listen. If then we look to our own rules, books, and works, which we have made ourselves and which differ in many thousands of ways, we are irreconcilable. But if with due attention and honor we accept God's ideas regarding our lives ... reconciliation is easy.
-Jan Amos Comenius, A Perfect Reformation
Don't try to tear down other people's religion about their ears. Build up your own perfect structure of truth, and invite your listeners to enter in and enjoy its glories.
-Brigham Young
Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death--of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets, sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice...
-George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive. … Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. … Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies.
-Ursula K. LeGuin, from The Introduction to "The Left Hand of Darkness"
What we call personality (...) has become the most impersonal thing in the world. Its pale and featureless face appears like a ghost at every corner and in every crowd. ... Individualism kills individuality, precisely because individualism has to be an 'ism' quite as much as Communism or Calvinism. The economic and ethical school which calls itself individualist ended by threatening the world with the flattest and dullest spread of the commonplace. Men, instead of being themselves, set out to find a self to be: a sort of abstract economic self identified with self-interest. But while the self was that of a man, the self-interest was generally that of a class or a trade or even an empire. So far from really remaining a separate self, the man became part of a communal mass of selfishness.
-G. K. Chesterton, February 25, 1928
Perhaps, after all, our best thoughts come when we are alone. It is good to listen, not to voices but to the wind blowing, to the brook running cool over polished stones, to bees drowsy with the weight of pollen. If we attend to the music of the earth, we reach serenity. And then, in some unexplained way, we share it with others.
-Gladys Taber
"Volunteers"
Many will be shocked to find,
When the day of judgement nears,
That there's a special place in Heaven
Set aside for volunteers.
Furnished with big recliners,
Satin Couches and footstools,
Where ther are no committee chairmen,
Nor yard sale or rest area coffee to serve.
No library duty or bulletin assembly,
There will be nothing to print and staple.
Not one thing to fold and mail,
Telephone lists will be outlawed.
But a finger snap will bring
Cool drinks and gourmet dinners
And rare treats fit for a king.
You ask,
"Who'll serve these privileged few
And work for all the're worth?"
Why, all those who reaped the benifits,
And not once volunteered on Earth.
-Anon., source unknown
Though most of us don't hunt, our eyes are still the great monopolists of our senses. To taste or touch your enemy or your food, you have to be unnervingly close to it. To smell or hear it, you can risk being further off. But vision can rush through the fields and up the mountains, travel across time, country, and parsecs of outer space, and collect bushel baskets of information as it goes. Animals that hear high frequencies better than we do—bats and dolphins, for instance—seem to see richly with their ears, hearing geographically, but for us the world becomes most densely informative, most luscious, when we take it in through our eyes. It may even be that abstract thinking evolved from our eyes' elaborate struggle to make sense of what they saw. Seventy percent of the body's sense receptors cluster in the eyes, and it is mainly through seeing the world that we appraise and understand it.
-Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses
Do you remember how slowly the days passed when you were a child? An 80-mile car trip seemed endless. It took forever for summer to come. When it finally did, by late-July, summer seemed interminable.
Basic arithmetic reveals that for a two-year old, the next year will represent 33% of her life thus far, whereas for a 19-year old, the next year represents 5%, and for a 39 year-old, only 2.5%...
More than anything else, the young child's perceptions influence how she experiences life. She has few markers that delineate the passage of time. On the first of each month, she pays no rent or mortgage. She has no job, and does not commute. She is likely to be regularly clothed, bathed, and cared for. The child arises each day with no agenda, no "to do" list. She experiences hunger, irritation, and sleepiness. She has some favorite activities -- her major activity is play. Each day brings new wonders... Meanwhile, she has no report to finish, no checkbook to balance, no across-town meetings. She does not even wear a watch.
Your life is a bit more complicated, and is related increasingly to how society has become more complex. Independent of who you are or what you do for a living, chances are that you're busy, perhaps extremely busy, and are a part of our active, generally hard-working population.
If you continually feel pressured, don't take it personally. You are experiencing the same dilemma as millions of other people, and you are part of the most time-pressed society of over-information and communication in history… Few people have what they consider to be breathing space in which to reflect,…truly relax, or simply be.
At this moment you are being bombarded on all sides. The "intake overglut" wreaks havoc on the receptive capacities of the unwary. Yet you can break away from the pack that idly ingests the information, noise and garbage that comes its way. Despite the ever-escalating array of obstacles, you can attain breathing space.
http://www.breathingspace.com/
-Jeff Davidson, [edited passage from] Breathing Space: Living and Working at a Comfortable Pace in a Sped-Up Society
So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men.
-Charles Lamb
After about three lessons [my] voice teacher said, 'Don't take voice lessons. Do it your way. You're a song stylist. Always do it your way.'
-Johnny Cash
The thing that influenced me most was the way Tommy played his trombone. . . . It was my idea to make my voice work in the same way as a trombone or violin not sounding like them, but "playing" the voice like those instrumentalists.
-Frank Sinatra, In "Frank Sinatra" by Nancy Sinatra, 1985
True Socialism, in which everyone is truly equal, does not just resemble a prison - it is a prison. It can not exist unless it is surrounded by high walls, by watchtowers and by guard-dogs, for people always want to escape from any socialist regime, just as they do from a prison. If you continue your attempts to establish a model society you will need to build walls around it. You will be forced to do so sooner or later by the flood of refugees..
-Viktor Suvorov, Inside The Soviet Army
I was sat at the bottom of the garden a week ago, smoking a reflective cheroot, thinking about this and that - mostly that, and I just happened to glance at the night sky and I marvelled at the millions of stars glistening like pieces of quicksilver thrown carelessly onto black velvet. In awe I watched the waxen moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an amber chariot towards the void of infinite space wherein the tethered bolts of Jupiter and Mars hang forever in their orbital majesty; and as I looked at all this, I thought, 'I must put a roof on this lavatory.'
-Les Dawson
Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.
-Warren Earl Burger, [Majority opinion in 7-1 ruling that prohibited the closing of courtrooms to the press], July 2, 1980
"In 1883 while I was working at the London Hospital I chanced to turn in to one of D. L. Moody’s great tent meetings in the slums of East London. I was amazed to see on the platform with him several men whose athletic prowess was world-famous. That was a credential to me that it was worth stopping to listen to what was going to be said. I still believe athletic success is an invaluable asset to a preacher. Christ, I am sure, wants football, baseball, and track-team men in an age when theological expositions, however deep and learned, when orthodoxy, conventionality, or even correct vestments and ritual, have so little attraction for the young men who will be leaders tomorrow."
-Sir Wilfred T. Grenfell
We are lonesome animals. We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say-and to feel- ‘Yes, that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it.’ You’re not as alone as you thought.
-John Steinbeck
I’m so obsessed with this theme that I actually keep a “failure file.” What stands out for me in the biographies of Faulkner and Fitzgerald are the months and years they wasted out in Hollywood, getting sodden over their squandered gifts. Cyril Connolly, one of the most distinguished critics of his day, made his name with a book, Enemies of Promise, that elegiacally bemoaned his lack of distinction. And the novelist Paul Auster writes in his memoir, Hand to Mouth, “In my late twenties and early thirties, I went through a period of several years when everything I touched turned to failure.” Ah!
-James Atlas, My Life in the Middle Ages: A Survivor’s Tale
Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
Idealistic producing is safe. Sensibly projected in the theater, the fine thing always does pay and always will.
-Minnie Maddern Fiske, Mrs. Fiske: Her Views on Actors, Acting and the Problems of Production, ch. 4, by Alexander Woollcott (1917)
"Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. Or something. I dunno, I was only half listening. Becca said it, anyway. Ask her."
[http://www.beliefnet.com/story/159/story_15928_1.html]
-M Scott Peck
Once I traveled about in an old bakery wagon, double-doored rattler with a mattress on the floor, I stopped where people stopped or gathered, I listened and looked and felt, and in the process had a picture of my country the accuracy of which was impaired only by my own shortcomings.
-John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--diliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
-John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"The only reason one will respect you as a journalist is because of your integrity. Your integrity is based on your credibility. Your credibility comes from your truthfulness. All these come from you submitting yourself as a servant of the truth, a servant of issues."
-Shaka Ssali, interview
Vices are character traits. Sins are specific acts of commission or omission. Once Judaism and Christianity adopted the concepts of vice and virtue from the Greek and Roman moralists, vices were often called sins and sins vices. The seven deadly “sins” are also called the deadly “vices,” which is more accurate. They are basic, perhaps universal human tendencies, from which sins result. The vice of anger spawns the sin of violence against others and the vice of greed gives birth to the sin of theft.
-Solomon Schimmel, The Seven Deadly Sins, ch. 1, Free Press (1992)
Today's younger generation is no worse than my own. We were just as ignorant and repulsive as they are, but nobody listened to us.
-Al Capp
The desire of advising has a very extensive prevalence; and, since advice cannot be given but to those that will hear it, a patient listener is necessary to the accommodation of all those who desire to be confirmed in the opinion of their own wisdom: a patient listener, however, is not always to be had; the present age, whatever age is present, is so vitiated and disordered, that young people are readier to talk than to attend, and good counsel is only thrown away upon those who are full of their own perfections.
-Samuel Johnson, July 21, 1753
