A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, ...thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have never understood why they tried to start the revolution by taking over the universities. It should have been self-evident t...hat the net result of success would be to close the universities but leave the nation unaffected--at least, for quite a long time. Nor do I find it easy to believe that the rebels, as intelligent as most of them were, seriously expected that they could keep the universities alive as corporate bodies, once they had control of them, if they made the fundamental alterations in organization and role that they proposed to.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People having speech defects sometimes learn part of the practice by laborious study, but good speech is always mainly unconscious... speech. Any tennis player, even if he could not explain this enigma, could provide an analogy for it. When he sees a rapidly flying tennis ball coming toward him, he knows what he must do. He must maneuver himself into the proper position, be poised with his weight properly distributed, meet the ball with the proper sweep of his arm and with his racket held at just the right pitch, and all this must be timed to stop the flying ball at a precise point. But if the tennis player pauses to think of all these actions and how he will perform them, he is lost. The ball will not skim back over the net, building air pressure as it goes until it buzzes down into the opponent's corner. If the tennis player thinks about anything except where he wants the ball to go and what he plans for the next stroke, he will probably become so awkward that he will be lucky to hit the ball at all. Rapid, precise muscular actions can be successfully carried out only by the unconscious part of the brain. And so with the speaker. He cannot speak well unless he speaks unconsciously, for his movements are as precise, as complicated, and as exactly timed as those of the tennis player.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Afraid lest he be caught up in a net of words, tripped up, bewildered and so defeated--thrown aside--a man hesitates to write down... his innermost convictions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.... Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I had a consuming ambition to possess a miller's thumb. I believe I have never since wanted anything more desperately than I wante...d my right thumb to be flattened as my father's had become, during his earlier years of a miller's life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If all be true that I do think, There are five reasons we should drink:... Good wine, a friend, or being dry, Or lest we should be by and by, Or any other reason why.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are told it will be of no use for us to ask this measure of justice--that the ballot be given to the women of our new possessio...ns upon the same terms as to the men--because we shall not get it. It is not our business whether we are going to get it; our business is to make the demand.... Ask for the whole loaf and take what you can get.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »