The free man is a warrior.--How is freedom measured among individuals, among peoples? According to the resistance that must be ove...rcome, according to the trouble it takes to stay on top. The highest type of free man must be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps away from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, c...ompetence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs.... He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here lies a man who was killed by lightning; He died when his prospects seemed to be brightening.... He might have cut a flash in this world of trouble, But the flash cut him, and he lies in the stubble.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The restlessness that comes upon girls upon summer evenings results in lasting trouble unless it is speedily controlled. The right... kind of man does not look for a wife on the streets, and the right kind of girl waits till the man comes to her home for her.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The trouble is that the expression 'material thing' is functioning already, from the very beginning, simply as a foil for 'sense-d...atum'; it is not here given, and is never given, any other role to play, and apart from this consideration it would surely never have occurred to anybody to try to represent as some single kind of things the things which the ordinary man says that he 'perceives.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belon...gs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Next we come to the bronchial buster, or the man (it is usually a man) who, being in the throes of a terrific throat and tube trou...ble chooses that night for theater-going.... He will soon learn to pick his pauses with finesse. It does no good to cough while there is a great deal of noise going on on the stage. No one can hear. The time is just as the star is about to do a little low speaking to her dying lover or when the hero, alone in his garret, goes silently over to the fireplace and tears up the letter. There for a good rousing bark, my hearty, followed by a series of short sharp ones like those of a coxswain! If possible the appearance of apoplexy should be simulated.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in the last years. But if that is ...cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him..., what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to the right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There is nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. The jailers are quiet men without animosity or sadism. All this stuff you read about men yelling and screaming, beating against the bars, running spoons along them, guards rushing in with clubs--all that is for the big house. A good jail is one of the quietest places in the world.... Life in jail is in suspension.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Each man must have his "I;" it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing insti...tutions he will be likely to make trouble.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »