... we have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and pr...oviding for their bundance. Whatever we do, we are supposed to do for the sake of "making a living;" such is the verdict of society, and the number of people, especially in the professions who might challenge it, has decreased rapidly. The only exception society is willing to grant is to the artist, who, strictly speaking, is the only "worker" left in a laboring society.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and provid...ing for their abundance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercia...ls, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator--the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban m...asses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The more I have studied American history and the more clearly I have seen what the problems are. I do believe that the common deno...minator of our great men in public life has not been mere allegiance to one political party but the disinterested devotion with which they have strived to serve the whole country. And the relative unimportance that they have ascribed to politics compared with the paramount importance of Government.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denom...inator.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One thing is plain for all men of common sense and common conscience, that here, here in America, is the home of man. After all th...e deductions which are to be made of for our pitiful politics, which stake every gravest national question on the silly die, whether James or whether Jonathan shall sit in the chair and hold the purse; after all the deduction is made for our frivolities and insanities, there still remains an organic simplicity and liberty, which, when it loses its balance, redresses itself presently, which offers opportunity to the human mind not known in any other region.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To stand on common ground here and there gritty with pebbles... yet elsewhere 'fine and mellow-- uncommon fine for ploughing' there to labor planting the vegetable wordsLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »