[James G. Blaine's] devotion to the public interests, his marked ability, and his exalted patriotism have won for him the gratitud...e and affection of his countrymen and the admiration of the world. In the varied pursuits of legislation, diplomacy, and literature his genius has added new luster to American citizenship.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a... Ph.D.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Warren G. Harding invented the word "normalcy," And the lesser-known "bloviate," meaning, one imagines,... To spout, to spew aimless verbiage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact... that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most literature on the culture of adolescence focuses on peer pressure as a negative force. Warnings about the "wrong crowd" read ...like tornado alerts in parent manuals. . . . It is a relative term that means different things in different places. In Fort Wayne, for example, the wrong crowd meant hanging out with liberal Democrats. In Connecticut, it meant kids who weren't planning to get a Ph.D. from Yale.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A law explains a set of observations; a theory explains a set of laws. The quintessential illustration of this jump in level is th...e way in which Newton's theory of mechanics explained Kepler's law of planetary motion. Basically, a law applies to observed phenomena in one domain (e.g., planetary bodies and their movements), while a theory is intended to unify phenomena in many domains. Thus, Newton's theory of mechanics explained not only Kepler's laws, but also Galileo's findings about the motion of balls rolling down an inclined plane, as well as the pattern of oceanic tides. Unlike laws, theories often postulate unobservable objects as part of their explanatory mechanism. So, for instance, Freud's theory of mind relies upon the unobservable ego, superego, and id, and in modern physics we have theories of elementary particles that postulate various types of quarks, all of which have yet to be observed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I find it profoundly symbolic that I am appearing before a committee of fifteen men who will report to a legislative body of one h...undred men because of a decision handed down by a court comprised of nine men--on an issue that affects millions of women.... I have the feeling that if men could get pregnant, we wouldn't be struggling for this legislation. If men could get pregnant, maternity benefits would be as sacrosanct as the G.I. Bill.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How the devil am I to prove to my counsel that I don't know my murderous impulses through C.G. Jung, jealousy through Marcel Prous...t, Spain through Hemingway ... It's true, you need never have read these authorities, you can absorb them through your friends, who also live all their experiences second-hand. What an age!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »