Why runners make lousy communists. In a word, individuality. It's the one characteristic all runners, as different as they are, se...em to share.... Stick with it. Push yourself. Keep running. And you'll never lose that wonderful sense of individuality you now enjoy. Right, comrade?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Miss Dudley ... gives one the idea of a lightly-sparred yacht in mid- ocean; unexpected; you ask yourself what the devil she is d...oing there. She sails gaily along, though there is no land in sight and plenty of rough weather coming. She never read a book, I believe, in her life. She tries to paint, but she is only a second-rate amateur and will never be any thing more, though she has done one or two things which I give you my word I would like to have done myself. She picks up all she knows without an effort and knows nothing well, yet she seems to understand whatever is said. Her mind is as irregular as her face, and both have the same peculiarity. I notice that the lines of her eyebrows, nose and mouth all end with a slight upward curve like a yacht's sails, which gives a kind of hopefulness and self-confidence to her expression. Mind and face have the same curves."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Power corrupts ... when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before. The will to power ... far from being a... characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was characteristic of the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and of the Communist movements in Europe after 1930 that they re...cruited their members from this mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention. The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of people who never before had appeared on the political scene. This permitted the introduction of entirely new methods into political propaganda, and indifference to the arguments of political opponents; these movements not only placed themselves outside and against the party system as a whole, they found a membership that had never been reached, never been "spoiled" by the party system. Therefore they did not need to refute opposing arguments and consistently preferred methods which ended in death rather than persuasion, which spelled terror rather than conviction.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is just a footnote, though a microcosmic one perhaps, to the greater curve Of the elaboration; it asks no place in it, o...nly insertion hors-texte as the invisible notion of how that day grew From planisphere to heaven, and what part in it all the "I" had, the insatiable researcher of learned trivia, bookworm ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then t...he best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...I remembered the rose bush that had reached a thorny branch out through the ragged fence, and caught my dress, detaining me whe...n I would have passed on. And again the symbolism of it all came over me. These memories and visions of the poor--they were the clutch of the thorns. Social workers have all felt it. It holds them to their work, because the thorns curve backward, and one cannot pull away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In philosophical inquiry, the human spirit, imitating the movement of the stars, must follow a curve which brings it back to its p...oint of departure. To conclude is to close a circle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most perfect caricature is that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highes...t point, the peculiarities of a human being, at his most characteristic moment in the most beautiful manner.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The mere fact of leaving ultimate social control in the hands of the people has not guaranteed that men will be able to conduct th...eir lives as free men. Those societies where men know they are free are often democracies, but sometimes they have strong chiefs and kings. ... they have, however, one common characteristic: they are all alike in making certain freedoms common to all citizens, and inalienable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »