|
Post by Tamrin on Feb 23, 2014 8:00:03 GMT 10
No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it
German currency had become completely worthless. Purchasing power of salaries and wages was reduced to zero. The life savings of the middle classes and working classes were wiped out. But something even more important was destroyed: the faith of the people in the economic structure of the German society
The government deliberately let the mark tumble in order to free the State of its public debts, to escape from paying reparations … All [the people] knew was that a large bank account could not buy a straggly bunch of carrots, and half peck of potatoes, and few ounces of sugar, a pound of flour. They knew that as individuals they were bankrupt. And they knew hunger when it gnawed at them, as it did daily. In their misery and hopelessness, they made the Repub- lic the scapegoat for all that had happened. Such times were heaven-sent for Adolph Hitler
Chamberlain's stubborn, fanatical insistence on giving Hitler what he wanted, his trips to Berchtesgaden and Godesberg and finally the fateful journey to Munich rescued Hitler from his limb and strengthened his position in Europe, in Germany, in the Army, beyond anything that could have been imagined a few weeks before. It also added immeasurably to the power of the Third Reich vis-à-vis the Western democracies and the Soviet Union
What the French wanted above all else from the peace settlement was a guarantee of their security, and for reasons difficult now to comprehend their chief allies, Great Britain and the United States, never quite understood this -- perhaps because Woodrow Wilson, the American President, and Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, lacked a sure grasp of European history. The French could not ignore that history. They could not forget that since the days of the Huns, invaders had broken into their fair country some thirty times from across the Rhine
On March 19, 1945 Hitler issued a general order that all military, industrial, trans- portation and communication installations as well as all stores in Germany must be destroyed in order to prevent them from falling intact into the hands of the enemy. The measures were to be carried out by the military with the help of the Nazi gauleiters and "commissars for defense." "All directives opposing this," the order concluded, "are invalid”
Adolf Hitler is probably the last of the great adventurer-conquerors in the tradition of Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon, and the Third Reich the last of the empires which set out on the path taken earlier by France, Rome and Macedonia. The curtain was rung down on that phase of history, at least, by the sudden invention of the hydro- gen bomb, of the ballistic missile and of rockets that can be aimed to hit the moonWilliam L. ShirerAmerican journalist and historian ( The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) (Born this day 1904) In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no con- querors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead on and uninhabited planet
|
|
|
Post by Tamrin on Feb 23, 2014 8:00:54 GMT 10
Every day is ordinary, until it isn't
Life is a jest of the Gods and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh … or else you'll weep yourself to death
Madness ends sometimes. The Gods decree it, not man
Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation... Men die, they said, but reputation does not die
I volunteered for this life, wanted it and am not going to bitch about it now that I've got it
He had always thought there was an answer to all life's mysteries in the stars, yet whenever he stared at them the answer slipped out of his grasp ... But he had to think now, and he stared at the smoke-dimmed stars in the hope that they would help him, but all they did was go on shining
Anyone who claims to have an entirely clear conscience is almost certainly a boreBernard Cornwell, OBEBritish author (historical novels) (Born this day 1944) Fate is inexorable
|
|
|
Post by Tamrin on Feb 23, 2014 8:01:48 GMT 10
Justice is a terrible but necessary thing
I have done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt
A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.
To meet at all, one must open one’s eyes to another; and there is no true conversation no matter how many words are spoken, unless the eye, unveiled and listening, opens itself to the other
The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future
It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own
The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrowJessamyn WestAmerican Quaker and author ( The Friendly Persuasion) (Died this day 1984) We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?
|
|
|
Post by Tamrin on Feb 23, 2014 8:02:46 GMT 10
I love writing about my job because I loved it, and it was a particularly interesting one when I was a young man. It was like holidays with pay to me
I have felt cats rubbing their faces against mine and touching my cheek with claws carefully sheathed. These things, to me, are expressions of love
If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans
If a farmer calls me to a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw
I hope to make people realize how totally helpless animals are, how dependent on us, trusting as a child must that we will be kind and take care of their needs
I could do terrible things to people who dump unwanted animals by the roadside
There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiringJames Herriot (James Alfred Wight, OBE)English veterinary surgeon and author (Died this day 1995) Cats are connoisseurs of comfort
|
|
|
Post by Tamrin on Feb 23, 2014 8:03:36 GMT 10
I wanted and still want to advance sociological theories of social structure and cultural change that will help us understand how social institutions and the character of life in society come to be as they are
Our primary aim is to discover how some social structures exert a definite pressure upon certain persons in the society to engage in non-conforming rather than conforming conduct
No society lacks norms governing conduct. But societies do differ in the degree to which the folkways, mores and institutional controls are effectively integrated with the goals which stand high in the hierarchy of cultural values
Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue
The institutional goal of science is the extension of certified knowledge. The technical methods employed toward this end provide the relevant definition of knowledge: empirically confirmed and logically consistent predictions. The institutional imperatives (mores) derive from the goal and the methods. The entire structure of technical and moral norms implements the final objective. The technical norm of empirical evidence, adequate, valid and reliable, is a prerequisite for sustained true prediction; the technical norm of logical consistency, a prerequisite for systematic and valid prediction. The mores of science possess a methodologic rationale but they are binding, not only because they are procedurally efficient, but because they are believed right and good. They are moral as well as technical prescriptions. Four sets of institutional imperatives — universalism, communism, disinterestedness, organized scepticism — comprise the ethos of modern science
The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true. The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning... Such are the perversities of social logic
Leaders get things wrong when their paramount concern with the foreseen immediate consequences excludes the consideration of further or other consequences of their proposalsRobert King MertonAmerican sociology professor (Columbia University) (Died this day 2003) A cardinal American virtue, 'ambition,' promotes a cardinal American vice, 'deviant behavior’
|
|
|
Post by Tamrin on Feb 24, 2014 8:28:01 GMT 10
Monday’s Quotes:Faith goes out of the window when beauty comes in at the door
A great artist is always before his time or behind it
The mind petrifies if a circle be drawn around it, and it can hardly be denied that dogma draws a circle round the mind
I am filled with pride when I think of the noble and exalted world that must have existed before Christian doctrine caused men to look upon women with suspicion and bade them to think of angels instead
My soul, so far as I understand it, has very kindly taken colour and form from the many various modes of life that self-will and an impetuous temperament have forced me to indulge in. Therefore I may say that I am free from original qualities, defects, tastes, etc. What is mine I have acquired, or, to speak more exactly, chance bestowed, and still bestows, upon me. I came into the world apparently with a nature like a smooth sheet of wax, bearing no impress, but capable of receiving any; of being moulded into all shapes
Terrible is the day when each sees his soul naked, stripped of all veil; that dear soul which he cannot change or discard, and which is so irreparably his
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find itGeorge MooreIrish novelist ( Confessions of a Young Man) (Born this day 1852) After all there is but one race — humanity
|
|
|
Post by Tamrin on Feb 24, 2014 8:33:19 GMT 10
God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless
Sir Walter Raleigh declared in the early 17th century that "whoever commands the sea, commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself." This principle is as true today as when uttered, and its effect will continue as long as ships traverse the seas
The basic objectives and principles of war do not change. The final objective in war is the destruction of the enemy's capacity and will to fight, and thereby force him to accept the imposition of the victor's will
Our armament must be adequate to the needs, but our faith is not primarily in these machines of defense but in ourselves
Our present undisputed control of the sea was achieved primarily through the employ- ment of naval air-sea forces in the destruction of Japanese and German sea power
Pearl Harbor has now been partially avenged. Vengeance will not be complete until Japan- ese sea power has been reduced to impotence. We have made substantial progress in that direction. Perhaps we will be forgiven if we claim we are about midway to our objective!
They fought together as brothers in arms; they died together and now they sleep side by side ...To them, we have a solemn obligation — the obligation to ensure that their sacrifice will help make this a better and safer world in which to live
Chester W. Nimitz US Fleet Admiral & WWII Commander in Chief of Pacific Forces (Born this day 1885)
The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima ... The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan
|
|
|
Post by Tamrin on Feb 24, 2014 8:34:38 GMT 10
That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen
Clothes make the poor invisible. America has the best-dressed poverty the world has ever known
Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than to submit to the desolation of an empty abundance. It is a strange part of the other America that one finds in the intellectual slums
If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery
Managers receiving hundreds of thousands a year — and setting their compensation for themselves — are not being paid wages, they are appropriating surplus value in the guise of wages
It takes a certain level of aspiration before one can take advantage of opportunities that are clearly offered
People who are much too sensitive to demand of cripples that they run races ask of the poor that they get up and act just like everyone else in society Michael HarringtonUS socialist and author ( Fragments of Century) (Born this day 1928) Life is lived in common, but not in community
|
|
|
Post by Tamrin on Feb 24, 2014 8:41:42 GMT 10
We're gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make "me too" products
When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want
We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on
Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking
The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life
I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with SocratesSteve JobsAmerican entrepreneur, marketer, and inventor (Apple Inc.) (Born this day 1955) It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy
|
|
|
Post by Tamrin on Feb 24, 2014 8:46:43 GMT 10
Gender is not something that one is; it is something one does, an act … a "doing" rather than a "being"
That gender is a choice, or that gender is a role, or that gender is a construction that one puts on, as one puts on clothes in the morning, that there is a 'one' who is prior to this gender, a one who goes to the wardrobe of gender and decides with deliberation which gender it will be today
There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results
Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself
Indeed it may be only by risking the incoherence of identity that connection is possible
Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact
I am much more open about categories of gender, and my feminism has been about women's safety from violence, increased literacy, decreased poverty and more equality. I was never against the category of menJudith ButlerAmerican feminist and philosopher (post-structuralism) (Born this day 1956) Whether or not we continue to enforce a universal conception of human rights at moments of outrage and incomprehension, precisely when we think that others have taken themselves out of the human community as we know it, is a test of our very humanity
|
|