From a purely external point of view there is no will; and to find will in any phenomenon requires a certain empathy; we observe a... man's actions and place ourselves partly but not wholly in his position; or we act, and place ourselves partly in the position of an outsider.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Schoolchildren make up their own rules and enforce their own conformities. They feel safest when leisure time is rationed and dose...d. They like to wear uniforms, and they frown on personal idiosyncrasies. Deviance is the mark of an outsider.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...I am an outsider, a lesbian, a shikse. The Jewish community is not my community. But as a Jew--as a Jew in a Christian, anti-Se...mitic society--the Jewish community is, and will always remain, my community. Enemy and ally.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Aesthetically at odds, these two genres of mass humor form a Janus face of American culture. Stand-up is a surviving bastion of in...dividual expression. The comedian confronts the audience with his or her personality and wins celebration--the highest form of acceptance--or is scorned and rebuffed as a pitiable outsider. The heckler, the mood of the audience, or the temperature of the room cannot always be handled through quality control. Even when presented electronically, the jokes of a stand-up monologue cannot be underlined by canned laughter without the manipulation thoroughly exposing itself.... The sitcom, by contrast, is the technology of the assembly-line brought to art. Even when live audiences are used, their reactions are "sweetened" with carefully calculated titters, chortles, and guffaws. Large sums of investment capital must be assembled to produce a sitcom; all factors must be controlled by recognized experts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Only by strict specialization can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps never again in his lifetime, ...that he has achieved something that will endure. A really definitive and good accomplishment is today always a specialized accomplishment. And whoever lacks the capacity to put on blinders, so to speak, and to come up to the idea that the fate of his soul depends upon whether or not he makes the correct conjecture at this passage of this manuscript may as well stay away from science. He will never have what one may call the "personal experience" of science. Without this strange intoxication, ridiculed by every outsider; without this passion ... you have no calling for science and you should do something else. For nothing is worthy of man as man unless he can pursue it with passionate devotion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"I'm sure you've often wished there was an after-life." Of course I had, I told him. Everybody has that wish at times. But that ha...d no more importance than wishing to be rich, or to swim very fast, or to have a better-shaped mouth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »