Stories of law violations are weighed on a different set of scales in the Black mind than in the white. Petty crimes embarrass the... community and many people wistfully wonder why Negroes don't rob more banks, embezzle more funds and employ graft in the unions.... This ... appeals particularly to one who is unable to compete legally with his fellow citizens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that ...in the High School hall.... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn't do if your life depended on it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is hea...vily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity a...nd degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For these have governed in our lives, And see how men have warred.... The Cross, the Crown, the Scales may all As well have been the Sword.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter.... To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram--lecherous do...g, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull--he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins--that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path--he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales--happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are curing the wound, when whang come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and, to wind up, with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This idea is more surely understood by interrogation; WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »