“We have to prove to our own people that we are cognizant of the qualities that it will require to meet the future years. The courage, the vision, the imagination, the honesty… I know we need a united [Democratic] party, but it cannot be a united party that gives up its principles. I want unity but above everything else, I want a party that will fight for the things that we know are right home and abroad.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt, responding to Harry S. Truman at a Dec. 1959 dinner
“Every stable society imposes on the majority of its members the social and economic attitudes of its beneficiaries.
“A corollary to this obvious, but seldom applied, law is that a society is constantly evolving a new language of automatic self-justification.
“This language is to be found in its most polished and accomplished form on the leader-pages of all those newspapers which defend the existing social system. ... [It] is by scarcely disguised moral arguments that we are constantly urged to accept the present structure of our society.”
– Philip Toynbee (1965), in Encounter magazine, Stephen Spender & Melvin J. Lasky, eds.
“The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle.
“The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress.
“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. ... Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal.
“We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.“– Frederick Douglass (1857)
Anything can happen in life, especially nothing.
— MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ, IN PLATFORM (2001)
“Developers and other businesses generally say that they want predictability in the regulatory environment so they know what to do, and that time is money so project delays are one of the worst things for them. In the real estate world, using a strategic approach that can get a project to approvals and construction more quickly would seem to be a big advantage.
“Why is it so rare that a developer studies what might work from a community’s perspective and tries to come in with a project proposal that is likely to have more support? If I were in this business, I would try to do my research, perhaps have several ideas in mind, perhaps present one or two concepts, and listen to what the community thinks to shape something that could move to approvals more quickly.”
—Simon Gruber, environmental planner
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.
— THOMAS PAINE, IN THE AGE OF REASON
Show us not the aim without the way:
For ends and means on earth are so entangled
That changing one, you change the other too;
Each different path brings other ends in view.— FERDINAND JOHANN GOTTLIEB LASSALLE (1825–1864), AS QUOTED IN ARTHUR KOESTLER’S DARKNESS AT NOON
The scandal isn’t what's illegal; the scandal is what’s legal.
— MICHAEL KINSLEY (NOVEMBER 15, 1990, ON CROSSFIRE)
Consider what you mean when you tell someone: be realistic. It’s another way to say: lower your expectations. It’s also connected with a view of maturity that holds growing up to be a process of becoming resigned.
— PHILOSOPHER SUSAN NEIMAN (IN THE BOSTON GLOBE, 2008)
There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
— REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU (JOURNAL ENTRY, 1961)
We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. [...N]o official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.
— PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, SPEECH TO AMERICAN NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION (1961)