No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the pun...ishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity. There is not one of us who, given an eternal incognito, a thumbprint nowhere set against ou...r souls, would not commit rape, murder and all abominations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mistakes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe. The crucial thing is that they be made credible, and that the publi...c be made aware of the efforts being expended in that direction. The "marketing" immunity of governments is similar to that of the major brands of washing powder.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fairy tales are loved by the child not because the imagery he finds in them conforms to what goes on within him, but because--desp...ite all the angry, anxious thoughts in his mind to which the fairy tale gives body and specific content--these stories always result in a happy outcome, which the child cannot imagine on his own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction..., to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Five o'clock tea" is a phrase our "rude forefathers," even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely ...is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for "all the ills that flesh is heir to," the glorious Magna Charta.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of of...ficious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defence-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whereas the child is chiefly playful and experimental, the adult focuses on specific and conscious experiences. He practices selec...tive inattention to the objects for which he has no immediate use and develops a kind of tunnel vision that helps him to move toward selected goals. This focusing on a limited range of experiences and goals is largely responsible for one's individual evolution and gives a deep and almost tragic significance to a statement made by Albert Camus in his novel La Chute: "Après un certain âge tout homme est responsable do son visage." An almost identical statement appears as the last entry in George Orwell's notebooks: "At 50, everyone has the face he deserves." There could not any more absolute affirmation of belief in personal responsibility for the quality of one's own life and character.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »