I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress ...in philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we eliminated the dog from our lives, nothing much would happen to our ecology. Independent of man, the dog is a vandal. With m...an, he does a little sheep-herding, a little watch-dogging. He helps law enforcement officers control the troublesome ghetto-dwellers and protest marchers. He sniffs out "hash" and "grass." He goes out on weekends and helps man murder other forms of life for pleasure. But mostly he is just an adjunct to man's ego.... The cat owes man nothing. Some experts estimate that there is one homeless cat managing on its own for every one with a home, which makes a total cat population in the U.S. of more than fifty million. That means the largest nonhuman animal population in the nation, short of rodents, whose number is beyond estimate. Eliminate cats from our ecology and, in a matter of weeks, we would be overrun by rodents.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A few years before I lived in the woods there was what was called a "winged cat" in one of the farmhouses.... This would have been... the right kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any; for why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, tha...n what ought to be done against our enemies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Rules and particular inferences alike are justified by being brought into agreement with each other. A rule is amended if it yield...s an inference we are unwilling to accept; an inference is rejected if it violates a rule we are unwilling to amend. The process of justification is the delicate one of making mutual adjustments between rules and accepted inferences; and in the agreement achieved lies the only justification needed for either.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century. Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellec...tual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them--as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not merely for today, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free gov...ernment, which we have enjoyed all our lives.... I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has. It is in order that each of you may have through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »