The personal touch between the people and the man to whom they temporarily delegated power of course conduces to a better understa...nding between them. Moreover, I ought not to omit to mention as a useful result of my journeying that I am to visit a great many expositions and fairs, and that the curiosity to see the President will certainly increase the box receipts and tend to rescue many commendable enterprises from financial disaster.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The child receives data through the sense organs; the child also has some inborn processing capacities--otherwise it would not be ...able to learn--but in addition, some "information" or "programs" are built-in at birth (for example, the child does not have to learn how to suck, for this is an innate reflex); there is a working memory, in which the child keeps those items of knowledge that are being used at a particular moment; and there is a permanent memory, which is, in Locke's terms, largely a "blank tablet" at birth, but which has a storage capacity that makes a hard disk pale into insignificance. The child gradually builds up a symbolic representation of the world around it, so there must be some inner "language" or medium of representation; even a newborn baby is starting to see and taste and smell and hear and touch, and to remember the more striking of its experiences, so the internal medium by which it represents and stores these impressions cannot be the native language (of which it is still ignorant. Jerry Fodor [in The Language of Thought] has discussed this inbuilt "language of thought," which is similar conceptually to the "machine language" that is built into the personal computer and about which most users remain completely ignorant).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It... makes the meanest of us sacred--it installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death is the greatest assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the drossy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust--the finer and more ethereal part mounts with winged spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Looked upon with historical objectivity, the Catholic Church as a religion has far better prospects. Consider its unified, world-w...ide papal leadership, the methods of Catholic ecclesiastic thought, and the life-pervading sanctification of existence, both in everyday life and at great moments; add the present glory of a thousand years of art, the multitude of religious activities, the impressive power of priests and religious, spiritually rooted celibates whose existence the faith consumes; top it off with Catholic piety, based on the Church but far from its violence and political cunning, and even spreading a touch of philosophy among the populace--compared with all this, Protestantism seems poor. Yet Protestantism, whatever may be held against it, has one virtue that outweighs all flaws. It is the principle of its birth: the chance of breaking through every religious phenomenon to a new original realization. In Catholic eyes, Protestantism is purely negative. It gives up tenet after tenet, ending in what must seem to a Catholic the total disappearance of all religious essentials--the God-man, the Resurrection, the personal God, the sacraments--and it pulverizes itself by endless internal schisms.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The differences between the President and the Prime Minister were at least in one respect something more than the obvious differen...ces of national character, education, and even temperament. For all his sense of history, his large, untroubled, easy-going style of life, his unshakable feeling of personal security, his natural assumption of being at home in the great world far beyond the confines of his own country, Roosevelt was a typical child of the twentieth century and of the New World; while Churchill for all his love of the present hour, his unquenchable appetite for new knowledge, his sense of the technological possibilities of our time, and the restless roaming of his fancy in considering how they might be most imaginatively applied, despite his enthusiasm for Basic English, or the siren suit which so upset his hosts in Moscow--despite all this, Churchill remains a European of the nineteenth century.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The personal things should be left out of platforms at conventions .... You can argue yourself blue in the face, and you're not go...ing to change each other's minds. It's a waste of your time and my time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is one of the most serious intrusions into personal life that I can think of, and it's as bad as anything I've ever experienc...ed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is cowardly to fly from natural duties and take up those that suit our taste or temperament better; but it is also unwise to ta...ke an exaggerated view of personal duties, which shuts out the proper care of the mind and body entrusted to us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »