I will keep America moving forward, always forward--for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand points of l...ight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism's... high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Pessimists say that the family is eroding. Optimists say the family is diversifying. Both points of view are right. Families are m...ore diverse and they are more in trouble--but not because of their diversity. The families of today--whatever their size or shape--are in crisis because our economy is failing, our national resources are shrinking, and our governmental policies to support them are inadequate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If American has points of inferiority to English, they are merely matters of degree; if the Americans are, as Oliver Wendell Holme...s said in 1858, "the Romans of the modern world--the great assimilating people," the English are only to an exceedingly limited degree its Greeks. They are tarred too much with the same brush of pragmatism, democracy, industrialism, and materialism for deep cleavage. Even America is not wholly democratic culturally; there are remarkable enclaves of aristocratic culture in the cosmopolitan and tradition-bound society of the Eastern seaboard, whose members look east toward Europe far more than they look west towards the heartland of Americanism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You haven't weighed the consequences for your love,... nor have you any regard for your friends. Why are you making such a jealous fuss now, prude, when it's too late? With your own hands You've brought down upon yourself these coals, their blazing points of flame as bright as Doomsday Fire. So enough now of your crying in the wilderness. You've erased the tracery on your cheek by covering it with your palm. Your sighs have kissed away the juice of your lower lip, tasty as nectar and at every instant, the tear that's stuck in your throat is making your sloping breasts tremble. Unkind girl, anger has become your lover, not I.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper a...rrangement of the various parts of the speech.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a "suspension of belief." A poet must never make a statement simply because i...t is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Analogies between the stage and the screen assume that they deal with the same material. But they don't. The material of the scree...n is not actual objects but images fixed on the film. And the very fact that they have their being on film endows these images with properties which are never found in actual objects. For instance, on the stage the actor moves in real space and time. He cannot even cross the room without performing a definite number of movements. On the screen an action may be shown only in terminal points with all its intervening moments left out. Similarly, in watching a performance on the stage the spectator is governed by the actual conditions of space and time. Not so in the case of the movie spectator. Thanks to the moving camera he is able to view the scene from all kinds of angles, leaping from a long-distance view to a close-range inspection of every detail. It is obvious that with this extraordinary power of handling space and time--by elimination and emphasis, according to its dramatic needs--the motion picture can never be content with modeling itself after the stage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why do our bodies wear out? Why can't we just go on and on and on, accumulating a potentially infinite number of Frequent Flyer mi...leage points? These are the kinds of questions that philosophers have been asking ever since they realized that being a philosopher did not involve any heavy lifting. And yet the answer is really very simple. Our bodies are mechanical devices, they break down. Some devices, such as battery-operated toys costing $39.95, break down almost instantly upon exposure to the Earth's atmosphere. Other devices, such as stereo systems owned by your next-door neighbor's 13-year-old son who likes to listen to bands with names like "Nerve Damage," at a volume capable of disintegrating limestone, will continue to function perfectly for many years, even if you hit them with an ax. But the fundamental law of physics is that sooner or later every mechanism ceases to function for one reason or another, and it is never covered under the warranty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are two kinds of liberalism. A liberalism which is always, subterraneously authoritative and paternalistic, on the side of o...ne's good conscience. And then there is a liberalism which is more ethical than political; one would have to find another name for this. Something like a profound suspension of judgment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »