Whenever you pray, make sure you do it at school assemblies and football games, like the demonstrative creatures who pray before l...arge television audiences. That is the real goal of the thing. But do not, I urge you, pray all alone in your home where no one can see. That does not get you ratings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Stevenson had noble ideas--as did the young Franklin for that matter. But Stevenson felt that the way to implement them was to pre...sent himself as a thoughtful idealist and wait for the world to flock to him. He considered it below him, or wrong, to scramble out among the people and ask them what they wanted. Roosevelt grappled voters to him. Stevenson shied off from them. Some thought him too pure to desire power, though he showed ambition when it mattered.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) moved from a legitimate to a charismatic role, reversing the course followed by Washington. Yet there ...were surface similarities in their careers. Both led military rebellions against English monarchs--Cromwell against Charles I, Washington against George III. Each took local militia--the "train bands" of Cromwell, the colonial levies of Washington--and forged professional armies on a national scale. Each infused a new ethos in his troops--a religious spirit in Cromwell's case, a post-colonial American identity in Washington's.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) has often been compared to Socrates, and there are some striking resemblances--the trances of conc...entration they went into, the sharp questioning of those who professed to know, the search for purity of language and life. But the contrast is sharper than any such comparisons. Wittgenstein is a powerful example of the separation of modern philosophy from ordinary life, a separation he deeply regretted but could do little to remedy. Unlike Socrates, who engaged citizens in philosophical self-examination at public meeting places, Wittgenstein could not bring himself, very often, to meet with a small circle of students. He feared that not even those select Cambridge philosophers could understand him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America today is capable of terrific intolerance about smoking, or toxic waste that threatens trout. But only a deeply confused so...ciety is more concerned about protecting lungs than minds, trout than black women.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »