It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made... any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although the same exemplary figures are found in both and equally miraculous events occur in both, there is a crucial difference i...n the way these are communicated. Put simply, the dominant feeling a myth conveys is: this is absolutely unique; it could not have happened to any other person, or in any other setting; such events are grandiose, awe-inspiring, and could not possibly happen to an ordinary mortal like you or me. The reason is not so much that what takes place is miraculous, but that it is described as such. By contrast, although the events which occur in fairy tales are often unusual and most improbable, they are always presented as ordinary, something that could happen to you or me or the person next door when out on a walk in the woods. Even the most remarkable encounters are related in casual, everyday ways in fairy tales.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They were two strong men, these oddly different generals, and they represented the strengths of two conflicting currents that, thr...ough them, had come into final collision. Back of Robert E. Lee was the notion that the old aristocratic concept might somehow survive and be dominant in American life. Lee was tidewater Virginia, and in his background were family, culture, and tradition.... Grant, the son of a tanner on the Western frontier, was everything Lee was not. He had come up the hard way and embodied nothing in particular except the eternal toughness and sinewy fiber of the men who grew up beyond the mountains. He was one of a body of men who owed reverence and obeisance to no one, who were self-reliant to a fault, who cared hardly anything for the past but who had a sharp eye for the future.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A child is more than the sum of her parts. So are you What you feel about life, about each other, about being parents--if it's on ...the positive side--is probably transcendent. If you enjoy your daughter, enjoy the whims and fancies, funny quirks, blind spots, and special abilities that define her, and show a decent sensitivity to her needs from year to year, that will compensate for all the inevitable false moves and sins of commission and omission and have a dominant influence on your relationship.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, seems to betray an underlying paradox. Different... points of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparability.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Don't you realize that as long as you have to sit down to pee, you'll never be a dominant force in the world? You'll never be a co...nvincing technocrat or middle manager. Because people will know. She's in there sitting down.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The conflict between the need to belong to a group and the need to be seen as unique and individual is the dominant struggle of ad...olescence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, disputant; skill to get money make...s him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Like other colonial peoples, adolescents are economically dependent on the dominant society, and appear in its accounts as the ben...eficiaries of its philanthropy. Like them also, adolescents are partly dependent because of their immature stage of development, but even more because of restrictions placed upon them by the dominant society.... Nevertheless, "teen-agers" do have money.... They scrounge it from home or earn it at odd times, and this, too, contributes to their colonial status. The "teen-age" market is big business. We all share an economic interest in the dependency of the "teen-ager." The school is interested in keeping him off the streets and in custody. Labor is interested in keeping him off the labor market. Business and industry are interested in seeing that his tastes become fads and in selling him specialized junk that a more mature taste would reject. Like a dependent native, the "teen-ager" is encouraged to be economically irresponsible because his sources of income are undependable and do not derive from his personal qualities.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »