What makes the race analogy complicated is that gays, as demographic composites, do indeed "have it better" than blacks--and yet i...n many ways contemporary homophobia is more virulent than contemporary racism. According to one monitoring group, one in four gay men has been physically assaulted as a result of his perceived sexual orientation; about fifty percent have been threatened with violence. (For lesbians, the incidence is lower but still disturbing.) A moral consensus now exists in this country that discriminating against blacks as teachers, priests, or tenants is simply wrong. (That doesn't mean it doesn't happen.) For much of the country, however, the moral legitimacy of homosexuals, remains very much in question.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It has been observed that while anti-black racism charges its object with inferiority, anti-Semitism charges its object with iniqu...ity. The racist believes that blacks are incapable of running anything by themselves. The anti-Semite believes (in one popular bit of folklore) that thirteen rabbis rule the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thus I believe that without doing violence to the ancient doctrine of the Chinese, one can say that the Li has been brought by the... perfection of its nature to choose, from several possibilities, the most appropriate; and that by this means it has produced the Ki (Ch'i) or matter with dispositions such that all the rest has come about by natural propensities, in the same way that Monsieur Descartes claims to bring forth the present order of the world as a consequence of a small number of initially generated assumptions. Thus the Chinese, far from being blameworthy, merit praise for their ideas of things being created by their natural propensity and by a pre-established harmony.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Henry B. Adams was the first in an infinite series to discover and admit to himself that he really did not care whether truth was,... or was not, true. He did not even care that it should be proved true, unless the process were new and amusing. He was a Darwinian for fun.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Chief Defect of Henry King Was chewing little bits of String.... At last he swallowed some which tied Itself in ugly Knots inside.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Martin Luther King, Jr., was the conscience of his generation.... He and I grew up in the same South, he the son of a clergyman, I... the son of a farmer. We both knew from opposite sides, the invisible wall of racial segregation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The fox, he felt, had never seen his past disposed of like a fall of water. He had never measured off his day in moments: another-...-another--another. But now, thrown down so deeply in himself, into the darkness of the well, surprised by pain and hunger, might he not revert to an earlier condition, regain capacities which formerly were useless to him, pass from animal to Henry, become human in his prison, X his days, count, wait, listen for another--another--another--another?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...expatriated Americans, even Henry James himself, have always seemed to me somewhat anchorless, rudderless, drifting before the ...wind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Last evening attended Croghan Lodge International Order of Odd Fellows. Election of officers. Chosen Noble Grand. These social org...anizations have a number of good results. All who attend are educated in self-government. This in a marked way. They bind society together. The well-to-do and the poor should be brought together as much as possible. The separation into classes--castes--is our danger. It is the danger of all civilizations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yes, dance. Dance and dream. Dream that you're Mrs. Henry Jekyll of Harley Street, dancing with your own butler and six footmen. D...ream that they've all turned into white mice and crawled into an eternal pumpkin.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »