...I always said if I lived to get grown and had a chance, I was going to try to get something for my mother and I was going to do... something for the black man of the South if it would cost my life; I was determined to see that things were changed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention--on a landsca...pe, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God--that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying.... The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a sort of myth of History that philosophers have.... History for philosophers is some sort of great, vast continuity in w...hich the freedom of individuals and economic or social determinations come and get entangled. When someone lays a finger on one of those great themes--continuity, the effective exercise of human liberty, how individual liberty is articulated with social determinations--when someone touches one of these three myths, these good people start crying out that History is being raped or murdered.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Swan/Mary Rutledge: Oh no, no. I'm not running away. I came here to get something, and I'm going to get it. Col. Cobb: Yes, b...ut San Francisco is no place for a woman. Swan: Why not? I'm not afraid. I like the fog. I like this new world. I like the noise of something happening.... I'm tired of dreaming, Colonel Cobb. I'm staying. I'm staying and holding out my hands for gold--bright, yellow gold.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ordinary politician has a very low estimate of human nature. In his daily life he comes into contact chiefly with persons who ...want to get something or to avoid something. Beyond this circle of seekers after privileges, individuals and organized minorities, he is aware of a large unorganized, indifferent mass of citizens who ask nothing in particular and rarely complain. The politician comes after a while to think that the art of politics is to satisfy the seekers after favors and to mollify the inchoate mass with noble sentiments and patriotic phrases.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Live in contact with dreams and you will get something of their charm: live in contact with facts and you will get something of th...eir brutality. I wish I could find a country to live in where the facts were not brutal and the dreams not real.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I cannot say that Swedenborg has been directly and practically valuable to me, for I have not been a reader of him, except to a sl...ight extent; but I have the highest regard for him, and trust that I shall read his works in some world or other. He had a wonderful knowledge of our interior and spiritual life, though his illuminations are occasionally blurred by trivialities. He comes nearer to answering, or attempting to answer, literally, your questions concerning man's origin, purpose, and destiny, than any of the worthies I have referred to. But I think that that is not altogether a recommendation; since such an answer to these questions cannot be discovered any more than perpetual motion, for which no reward is now offered. The noblest man it is, methinks, that knows, and by his life suggests, the most about these things. Crack away at these nuts, however, as long as you can,--the very exercise will ennoble you, and you may get something better than the answer you expect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Happiness ain't a thing in itself--it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant.... And so, as soon as the novelty is o...ver and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »