I have seen in my time two enormous extensions of the suffrage to men--one in America and one in England. But neither the negroes ...in the South nor the agricultural laborers in Great Britain had shown before they got the ballot any capacity of government; for they had never had the opportunity to take the first steps of political action. Very different has been the history of the march of women toward a recognized position in the State. We have had to prove our ability at each stage of progress, and have gained nothing without having satisfied a test of capacity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We should not leave Shopping World without questioning our initial assumption, that here we are in the modern agora. The agora of ...the classical Greek city was similar, in being the market-place and yet serving as much more, indeed as the most important public space. When a citizen left the privacy of his home, wishing to engage in public life, most likely he went to the agora. Shopping World at its most general is a public space. It answers to one of the most basic of human needs, that for society in the sense of a defined space among people in which to see and be seen, in which to move and to meet, to linger and to evade, a space at the same time in which to conduct some of life's important business--in this case shopping. The Greek agora, however, was different in one crucial respect, a difference that highlights a momentous development in modern life. It was surrounded by civic buildings and temples; it served as the daily centre not only of commerce, but also of religious, political, judicial, and indeed general social life. To be in public in ancient Athens meant to be a citizen, and likely enough to be engaged in civic duties. In modern life, by contrast, the areas of political action have become so remote that to be in public for a person has lost all connotation of being a responsible citizen with duties to his community.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most Jewish feminists and gays that I know remain angry and frustrated by Jewish progressives. Deeply committed to progressive cau...ses, frequently in the vanguard of political action, Jewish feminist and gays find ourselves fighting for the rights of others without the secure knowledge that others will fight for us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself. Self-transformation and the transformation of others ...have constituted the radical interest of our century, whether in painting, psychiatry, or political action.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Marxist vision of man without God must eventually be seen as an empty and a false faith--the second oldest in the world--first... proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with whispered words of temptation: "Ye shall be as gods."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They are our brothers, these freedom fighters.... They are the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of ...the French Resistance. We cannot turn away from them, for the struggle here is not right versus left; it is right versus wrong.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the... action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In 1872 I received a request like this and I did register and vote, for which I was arrested, convicted and fined $100. Excuse me ...if I decline to repeat the experience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »