Social Security is a government program with a constituency made up of the old, the near old and those who hope or fear to grow ol...d. After 215 years of trying, we have finally discovered a special interest that includes 100 percent of the population. Now we can vote ourselves rich.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Oliver North is a] document-shredding, Constitution-trashing, Commander in Chief-bashing, Congress-thrashing, uniform-shaming, Ay...atollah-loving, arms-dealing, criminal-protecting, résumé-enhancing, Noriega-coddling, Social Security-threatening, public school-denigrating, Swiss-banking-law-breaking, letter-faking, self-serving, election-losing, snake-oil salesman who can't tell the difference between the truth and a lie.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Of course we will continue to work for cheaper electricity in the homes and on the farms of America; for better and cheaper transp...ortation; for low interest rates; for sounder home financing; for better banking; for the regulation of security issues; for reciprocal trade among nations and for the wiping out of slums. And my friends, for all of these we have only begun to fight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Can a woman become a genius of the first class? Nobody can know unless women in general shall have equal opportunity with men in e...ducation, in vocational choice, and in social welcome of their best intellectual work for a number of generations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the 'human essence,' the distinctive qualities of mind that ...are, so far as we know, unique to man and that are inseparable from any critical phase of human existence, personal or social. Hence the fascination of this study, and, no less, its frustration. The frustration arises from the coming to grips with the core problem of human language, which I take to be this: having mastered a language, one is able to understand an indefinite number of expressions that are new to one's experience, that bear no simply physical resemblance and are in no simple way analogous to the expressions that constitute one's linguistic experience; and one is able ... to produce such expressions on an appropriate occasion, despite their novelty.... The normal use of language is, in this sense, a creative activity. This creative aspect of normal language use is one fundamental factor that distinguishes human language from any known system of animal communication.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The world of animals in captivity offers us at once a prophetic glimpse and a caricature of the world in which modern man lives ou...t his life. The animal suffers psychologically and his suffering is not unlike that of man himself, since its world is characterized by deterioration of its environment and by its own degradation. The causes are the same in both cases: the increase in the number of individuals occupying a limited amount of space and the necessity for existing in a society in conflict with nature. Just as men occasionally reject society and retreat into a misanthropic solitude which sometimes impels them to murder, so, too, animals in a zoo--baboons, for example--suffer from, and are deformed by, lack of sufficient space for them to lead a harmonious social existence. When captivity has done its work and an animal has become truly dangerous, it then becomes necessary to isolate it in a cage of its own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Caprice, independence and rebellion, which are opposed to the social order, are essential to the good health of an ethnic group. W...e shall measure the good health of this group by the number of its delinquents. Nothing is more immobilizing than the spirit of deference.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The City of New York is currently undergoing a grave experiment that affects the comfort and, on occasion, the safety of even the ...most casual visitor. The experiment consists in seeing whether a city of that size can be operated on a far smaller amount of money than would make its life tolerable and a still smaller amount than would make it agreeable. The richer New Yorkers ... are cooperating with an enthusiasm that the affluent rarely show for social experiment, and at great personal expense. They are paying for private security guards in unprecedented numbers and costly private schooling for their children ... and they are accepting numerous other costs and inconveniences in order to show that private affluence is consistent with public squalor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A convention is a social pattern we have chosen to prefer over whatever the raw world simply proffers. It is a sign of the operati...on of the mind, drawing the assent of a sufficient number of other minds so that the agreement will be widely operative. A convention is not a custom; a custom is a habit in which a sufficient number acquiesce. A custom can appear as a convention, but it is really a lesser act, the result of passive acceptance rather than of the imposition of design. It is the difference between learning to live by the annual flooding of the river or by a calendar.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In many ways, life becomes simpler [for young adults]. . . . We are expected to solve only a finite number of problems within a li...mited range of possible solutions. . . . It's a mental vacation compared with figuring out who we are, what we believe, what we're going to do with our talents, how we're going to solve the social problems of the globe . . .and what the perfect way to raise our children will be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »