Government and legislation! these I thought were respectable professions. We have heard of heaven-born Numas, Lycurguses, and Solo...ns, in the history of the world, whose names at least may stand for ideal legislators; but think of legislating to regulate the breeding of slaves, or the exportation of tobacco! What have divine legislators to do with the exportation or the importation of tobacco? what humane ones with the breeding of slaves? Suppose you were to submit the question to any son of God,--and has He no children in the Nineteenth Century? is it a family which is extinct?--in what condition would you get it again? What shall a state like Virginia say for itself at the last day, in which these have been the principal, the staple productions? What ground is there for patriotism in such a State? I derive my facts from statistical tables which the States themselves have published.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables--meet it is I set it down... That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Pop" Wyman ruled here with a firm but gentle hand; no drunken man was ever served at the bar; no married man was allowed to play ...at the tables; across the face of the large clock was written "Please Don't Swear," and over the orchestra appeared the gentle admonition, "Don't Shoot the Pianist--He's Doing His Damndest."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is no such thing as a value-free concept of deviance; to say homosexuals are deviant because they are a statistical minority... is, in practice, to stigmatize them. Nuns are rarely classed as deviants for the same reason, although if they obey their vows they clearly differ very significantly from the great majority of people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday ...purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
True Civilization does not lie in gas, nor in steam, nor in turn-tables. It lies in the reduction of the traces of original sin.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Predictions usually deal with events--who will win an election, whether or not a country will go to war, the specification of a ne...w invention; they center on decisions. Yet such predictions, while possible, cannot be formalized, i.e. made subject to rules. The prediction of events is inherently difficult. Events are the intersect of social vectors (interests, forces, pressures, and the like). While one can to some extent assess the strength of these vectors individually, one would need a "social physics" to predict the exact crosspoints where decisions and forces combine.... Forecasting is possible where there are regularities and recurrences of phenomena (these are rare), of where there are persisting trends whose direction, if not exact trajectory, can be plotted with statistical time-series or be formulated as historical tendencies. Necessarily, therefore, one deals with probabili ties and an array of possible projections. But the limitations of forecasting are also evident. The further one reaches ahead in time with a set of forecasts, the greater the margin for error, since the fan of the projections widens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune seventy times in succession,... because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The bar ... is an exercise in solitude. Above all else, it must be quiet, dark, very comfortable--and, contrary to modern mores, n...o music of any kind, no matter how faint. In sum, there should be no more than a dozen tables, and a clientele that doesn't like to talk.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »