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 »
... the attempt to control poetry, to subordinate it to extrapoetic ends, constitutes misuse.... it may be poetry's stubborn quali...ty of rockbottom, intrinsic uselessness which ... constitutes the guarantee of its integrity, and hence of its ultimate value to us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am looking over Self Control again, & my opinion is confirmed of its being an excellently-meant, elegantly-written... Work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To make life more bearable and pleasant for everybody, choose the issues that are significant enough to fight over, and ignore or ...use distraction for those you can let slide that day. Picking your battles will eliminate a number of conflicts, and yet will still leave you feeling in control.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To try to control a nine-month-old's clinginess by forcing him away is a mistake, because it counteracts a normal part of the chil...d's development. To think that the child is clinging to you because he is spoiled is nonsense. Clinginess is not a discipline issue, at least not in the sense of correcting a wrongdoing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't believe there is one woman within the confines of this state who does not believe in birth control. I never met one. That ...is, I never met one who thought that she should be kept in ignorance of contraceptive methods. Many I have met who valued the knowledge they possessed, but thought there were certain other classes who would be better kept in ignorance. The old would protect the young. The rich would keep the poor in ignorance. The good would keep their knowledge from the bad, the strong from the weak.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the black girls didn't get these pills because their black ministers were up on the pulpit saying that birth control pills wer...e black genocide. What I'm saying is that black men have exploited black women.... They didn't want them to have any choice about their reproductive health. And if you can't control your reproduction, you can't control your life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a terrific disadvantage in not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily.... Even though we never lik...e it, and even though we wish they didn't write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn't any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have ... succeeded in enlightening public opinion. We have battered down the prejudice of the press. We have overcome the apath...y and passive indifference of the medical profession. We have awakened the consciousness of the Protestant churches and their ethical leaders to the moral necessity of birth control. Yet this enlightenment, unless directed and applied, will be extinguished by the winds of dogmas unless it is applied like a hydro-electric power to the driving of the machinery of political and legislative action.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't really know how most of my ventures in this work were ever financed. I am of no economical turn of mind. I do things first..., and somehow or another they get paid for. If I had waited to finance my various battles for birth control, I do not suppose they ever would have become realities. I suppose here is the real difference between the idealist--or the "fanatic, as we are called--and the ordinary "normal" human being.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »