The social kiss is an exchange of insincerity between two combatants on the field of social advancement. It places hygiene before ...affection and condescension before all else.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the labor interests, an...d the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mr. Douglass talks about the wrongs of the negro; but with all the outrages that he to-day suffers, he would not exchange his sex ...and take the place of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nor was civil society founded merely to preserve the lives of its members; but that they might live well: for otherwise a state mi...ght be composed of slaves, or the animal creation ... nor is it an alliance mutually to defend each other from injuries, or for a commercial intercourse.... But whosoever endeavors to establish wholesome laws in a state, attends to the virtues and vices of each individual who composes it; from whence it is evident, that the first care of him who would found a city, truly deserving that name, and not nominally so, must be to have his citizens virtuous.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is every reason to rejoice with those self-styled prophets of commercial disaster, those harbingers of gloom, Over the ...imminent lateness of the denouement that, advancing slowly, never arrives, At the same time keeping the door open to a tongue-in-cheek attitude on the part of the perpetrators....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer g...oing to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I wouldn't be above brainwashing your child about which shows you think are good and which you think are just awful. Nor would I h...esitate to enlighten a child about products that are advertised on TV. If you watch a commercial with your child, say to him, "Remember when we saw that toy at the store and it was just a piece of junk? You can't always tell when you see it on TV, because there are ways of filming it at different angles to make it look bigger and more powerful. Keep that in mind when you think you want all those toys they advertise."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that partic...ular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters--there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void.... That's why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The secret affinity between gambling and the desert: the intensity of gambling reinforced by the presence of the desert all around... the town. The air-conditioned freshness of the gaming rooms, as against the radiant heat outside. The challenge of all the artificial lights to the violence of the sun's rays. Night of gambling sunlit on all sides; the glittering darkness of these rooms in the middle of the desert. Gambling itself is a desert form, inhuman, uncultured, initiatory, a challenge to the natural economy of value, a crazed activity on the fringes of exchange. But it too has a strict limit and stops abruptly; its boundaries are exact, its passion knows no confusion. Neither the desert nor gambling are open areas; their spaces are finite and concentric, increasing in intensity toward the interior, toward a central point, be it the spirit of gambling or the heart of the desert--a privileged, immemorial space, where things lose their shadow, where money loses its value, and where the extreme rarity of traces of what signals to us there leads men to seek the instantaneity of wealth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Commerce is so far from being beneficial to arts, or to empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their history shows, for th...e above reason of individual merit being its great hatred. Empires flourish till they become commercial, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »