What if we fail to stop the erosion of cities by automobiles?... In that case America will hardly need to ponder a mystery that ha...s troubled men for millennia: What is the purpose of life? For us, the answer will be clear, established and for all practical purposes indisputable: The purpose of life is to produce and consume automobiles.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most people can swim a narrow river. Water is an alien element, but with labor we can force ourselves through it. A good swimmer c...an cross a wide river, a lake, even the English Channel; no one, as far as we know, has ever swum the Atlantic Ocean, or is likely to do so. Even a champion swimmer, if he had business which required to spend alternate weeks in Paris and London, would not make the trip regularly by swimming the English Channel. Although we can force ourselves through water by skill and main strength, for all practical purposes our ability to traverse water is only as good as our ships or our airplanes. And so with the activities of our brains. Thinking is probably as foreign to human nature as is water; it is an unnatural element into which we throw ourselves with hesitation, and in which we flounder once we are there. We have learned, during the millenniums, to do rather well with thinking, but only if we buoy ourselves up with words. Some thinking of a simple sort we can do without words, but difficult and sustained thinking, presumably, is completely impossible without their aid, as traversing the Atlantic Ocean is presumably impossible without instruments or supramarine transportation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday ...purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not attend his business by candle-light, to plead that he had not ...broad sun-shine. The candle, that is set up in us, shines bright enough for all our purposes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Facts are generally overesteemed. For most practical purposes, a thing is what men think it is. When they judged the earth flat, i...t was flat. As long as men thought slavery tolerable, tolerable it was. We live down here among shadows, shadows among shadows.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his si...lence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For all the saints who from their labors rest, Who, to the world their steadfast faith confessed,... your name, O Jesus, be forever blessed Alleluia!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It should be noted that when he seizes a state the new ruler ought to determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He ...should inflict them once and for all, and not have to renew them every day.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the great triumphs of the nineteenth century was to limit the connotation of the word "immoral" in such a way that, for pra...ctical purposes, only those were immoral who drank too much or made too copious love. Those who indulged in any or all of the other deadly sins could look down in righteous indignation on the lascivious and the gluttonous.... In the name of all lechers and boozers I most solemnly protest against the invidious distinction made to our prejudice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »