I'm beginning to believe that Killer Illiteracy ought to rank near heart disease and cancer as one of the leading causes of death ...among Americans. What you don't know can indeed hurt you, and so those who can neither read nor write lead miserable lives, like Richard Wright's character, Bigger Thomas, born dead with no past or future.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The existence of pleasure is the first mystery. The existence of pain has prompted far more philosophical speculation. Pleasure an...d pain need to be considered together; they are inseparable. Yet the space filled by each is perhaps different. Pleasure, defined as a sense of gratification, is essential for nature's workings. Otherwise there would be no impulse to satisfy the needs which ensure the body's and the species' survival. And survival--for reasons we do not know--is inwritten, inscribed as nature's only goal. Gratification, or its anticipation, acts as a goad. Pain or the fear of pain acts as a warning. Both are essential. The difference between them, considered as opposites, is that pleasure has a constant tendency to exceed its functional purpose, to not know its place.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America has been a land of dreams. A land where the aspirations of people from countries cluttered with rich, cumbersome, aristocr...atic, ideological pasts can reach for what once seemed unattainable. Here they have tried to make dreams come true.... Yet now ... we are threatened by a new and particularly American menace. It is not the menace of class war, of ideology, of poverty, of disease, of illiteracy, or demagoguery, or of tyranny, though these now plague most of the world. It is the menace of unreality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In short, the building becomes a theatrical demonstration of its functional ideal. In this romanticism, High-Tech architecture is,... of course, no different in spirit--if totally different in form--from all the romantic architecture of the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the quilts I had found good objects--hospitable, warm, with soft edges yet resistant, with boundaries yet suggesting a continuo...us safe expanse, a field that could be bundled, a bundle that could be unfurled, portable equipment, light, washable, long-lasting, colorful, versatile, functional and ornamental, private and universal, mine and thine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Indigenous to Minnesota, and almost completely ignored by its people, are the stark, unornamented, functional clusters of concrete...--Minnesota's grain elevators. These may be said to express unconsciously all the principles of modernism, being built for use only, with little regard for the tenets of esthetic design.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Educational ... legislation nowadays is largely in the hands of illiterate people, and the illiterate will take good care that the...ir illiteracy is not made a reproach on them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Well designed, fully functional infant. Provides someone to live for as well as another mouth to feed. Produces cooing, gurgling a...nd other adorable sounds. May cause similar behavior in nearby adults. Cries when hungry, sleepy or just because. Hand Wash with warm water and mild soap, then pat dry with soft cloth and talc. Internal mechanisms are self-cleaning... Two Genders: Male. Female. Five Colors: White. Black. Yellow. Red. Camouflage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The textile and needlework arts of the world, primarily because they have been the work of women have been especially written out ...of art history. It is a male idea that to be "high" and "fine" both women and art should be beautiful, but not useful or functional.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »