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Post by Tamrin on Mar 15, 2014 6:53:24 GMT 10
One man with courage makes a majority
There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses
The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality
All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes
Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error
Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go inM.W. Bro. Andrew Jackson6th G.M. of Tennessee (1822-24) 7th US President (1829-37) (Born this day 1767) I have always been afraid of banks
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 15, 2014 6:54:10 GMT 10
Anyone who acquires more than the usual amount of knowledge concerning a subject is bound to leave it as his contribution to the knowledge of the world
I do not yet know why plants come out of the land or float in streams, or creep on rocks or roll from the sea. I am entranced by the mystery of them, and absorbed by their variety and kinds. Everywhere they are visible yet everywhere occult
There is no excellence without labor. One cannot dream oneself into either usefulness or happiness
Give the children an opportunity to make garden. Let them grow what they will. It matters less that they grow good plants than that they try for themselves
The true purpose of education is to teach a man to carry himself triumphant to the sunset
We accept it because we have seen the vision. We know that we cannot reap the harvest, but we hope that we may so well prepare the land and so diligently sow the seed that our successors may gather the ripened grain
My life has been a continuous fulfillment of dreams. It appears that everything I saw and did has a new, and perhaps, more significant meaning, every time I see it. The earth is good. It is a privilege to live thereonLiberty Hyde BaileyUS botanist (Plantbreeding) (Born this day 1858)
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 15, 2014 6:55:22 GMT 10
Alone he rides, alone, the fair and fatal king: Dark night is all his own, that strange and solemn thing
Now from the broken tower, what solemn bell still tolls, mourning what piteous death? Answer, O saddened souls! Who mourn the death of beauty and the death of grace
Because of thee, the land of dreams becomes a gathering place of fears
I fight thee, in the Holy Name! Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith: Tempter! should I escape thy flame, thou wilt have helped my soul from Death
Come! our world is done: For all the witchery of the world is fled, and lost all wanton wisdom long since won
While death and darkness girdle me I grope for immortality
Some players upon plaintive strings publish their wistfulness abroad; I have not spoken of these things, save to one man, and unto GodLionel JohnsonEnglish poet, essayist and critic (Born this day 1867) Lonely, unto the Lone I go; Divine, to the Divinity
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 15, 2014 6:56:01 GMT 10
It is not women's liberation, it is women's and men's liberation
Neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with equal protection when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature — equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities
The evolution of voting discrimination into more subtle second generation barriers is powerful evidence that a remedy as effective as preclearance remains vital to protect minority voting rights and prevent backsliding
Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet
Just as buildings in California have a greater need to be earthquake proofed, places where there is greater racial polarization in voting have a greater need for prophylactic measures to prevent purposeful race discrimination
We live in an age in which the fundamental principles to which we subscribe — liberty, equality and justice for all — are encountering extraordinary challenges, ... But it is also an age in which we can join hands with others who hold to those principles and face similar challenges
Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.' But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrowRuth Bader GinsburgAmerican Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (Born this day 1933) Why should elections be decided by how a candidate can spend?
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 15, 2014 6:56:47 GMT 10
Education of the Spirit So how can public policy help? As we have seen, our happiness depends profoundly on our attitudes, and these can be learned and practised. Unless you acquire good attitudes early, you get into situations where it is ever more difficult to learn them. Poverty of spirit is contagious. That is why education of the spirit is a public good. People have never been indifferent to the attitudes that other people’s children acquire — because they affect us all. But in recent decades it has become increasingly difficult for teachers to teach moral values as established truths
External effects are everywhere. Almost every major transaction we make affects other people who are not a party to the transaction. When someone buys a Lexus, he sets a new standard for the street. When a firm advertises a Barbie doll, it creates a want that was not there before
As people get used to higher income levels, their idea of a sufficient income grows with their income. If they fail to anticipate that effect, they will invest more time for work than is good for their happiness
Economists assume that individual preferences are constant, when in fact such pre- ferences are not fixed but increasingly mutable, shifting constantly according to the latest trends and cultural norms. In turn, the relative values of one's accumulated possessions are subject to depreciation, ultimately having a negative effect on happiness
It is actually a rather sorry tale. In the late nineteenth century most English economists thought that economics was about happiness. They thought of a persons happiness as in principle measure- able, like temperature, and they thought we could compare one persons happiness with anothers. They also assumed that extra income brought less and less extra happiness as a person got richer
The more television people watch, the more they overestimate the affluence of other people. And the lower they rate their own relative income. The result is that they are less happy
We need a revolution in academia, with every social science attempting to understand the causes of happinessRichard Layard, Baron Layard, FBABritish economist (Welfare to Work) (Born this day 1934) No society can work unless its members feel responsibilities as well as rights
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 15, 2014 6:57:40 GMT 10
It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism
Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist — that is, I don't make the mistake of thinking that the... cosmos... gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy
If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown
Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities
Among the agonies of these after days is that chief of torments — inarticulateness. What I learned and saw in those hours of impious exploration can never be told — for want of symbols or suggestions in any language
The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankindH. P. LovecraftAmerican author of horror, fantasy and science fiction ( The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories) (Died this day 1937) In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 15, 2014 6:58:21 GMT 10
I'm what's called a transsexual person. That means I was assigned one gender at birth, and I now live my life as something else. I was born male and raised as a boy. I went through both boyhood and adult manhood, went through a gender change, and 'became a woman'
Once upon a time, someone drew a line in the sands of culture and proclaimed with great self-importance, ‘On this side, you are a man; on the other side, you are a woman.’ It’s time for the winds of change to blow that line away. Simple
Gender is not sane. It's not sane to call a rainbow black and white
Sane gender is asking questions about gender — talking to people who do gender, and opening up about our gender histories and our gender desires. Sane gender is probably very, very funny
Safe gender is being who and what we want to be when we want to be that, with no threat of censure or violence. Safe gender is going as far in any direction as we wish, with no threat to our health, or anyone else’s. Safe gender is not being pressured into passing, not having to lie, not having to hide
The first question we usually ask new parents is : “Is it a boy or a girl ?” There is a great answer to that one going around : “We don’t know; it hasn’t told us yet”
I think aspects of gender that are biological are those aspects that can be measured in the physical universe. Everything else is conditioned. Physical manifestations of gender are sex characteristics, hormones, chromosomes or anything you can see, hear, feel, touch, smell, measure — that's all biological. But things like "wants to wear a prom dress" are not biologicalKate BornsteinAmerican author, playwright, performance artist and gender theorist (Born this day 1948) Disney will never make a movie about my life story, and that's a shame — I'd make a really cute animated creature
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 15, 2014 6:59:18 GMT 10
There are idiots in every crowd
The world is not always ours to understand
A man's religious choice didn't matter in the least if it was his path to decency and remembering his fellow man
Each man follows his own path — his own destiny, if you will. And only he is responsible for the choice
Along our chosen paths, we all meet up with demons. We must meet them, and battle them, even when they are nothing but mist in the night
But just as natural disaster brought out the best in some people, it brought out the worst in others
Courage is being afraid — and going ahead, anywayHeather Graham (aka Shannon Drake) American writer ( Krewe of Hunter) (Born this day 1953) Evil is done by the living
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 15, 2014 7:00:11 GMT 10
There is one common condition for the lot of women in Western civilization and all other civil- izations that we know about for certain, and that is, woman as a sex is disliked and persecuted, while as an individual she is liked, loved, and even, with reasonable luck, sometimes worshipped
After any disturbance (such as two world wars coinciding with a period of growing economic and monetary incomprehensibility) we find our old concepts inadequate and look for new ones. But it unfortunately happens that the troubled times which produce an appetite for new ideas are the least propitious for clear thinking
I can't help thinking that the whole of the Vietnam War was the blackest comedy that ever was, because it showed the way you can't teach humanity anything. We'd all learnt in the rest of the world that you can't now go around and put out your hand and, across seas, exercise power; but the poor Americans had not learned that and they tried to do it. The remoteness of Americans from German attack had made them feel confident. They didn't really believe that anything could reach out and kill them. Americans are quite unconscious now that we look on them as just as much beaten as we are. They're quite unconscious of that. They have always talked of Vietnam as if by getting out they were surrendering the prospect of victory, as if they were being noble by renouncing the possibility of victory. But they couldn't have had a victory. They couldn't possibly have won
If there is a God, I don't think He would demand that anyone bow down or stand up to Him. I often have a suspicion that God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished
Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse
There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all
A good cause has to be careful of the company it keepsRebecca West (aka Cecily Isabel Fairfield) Anglo-Irish feminist and author (Died this day 1983) I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 16, 2014 7:36:27 GMT 10
Sunday’s Quotes:A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted
Of all the enemies to public liberty war, is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other
The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge the wants or feelings of the day-laborer
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations... The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home
Religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together
During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecutionJames Madison4th President of the United States (Born this day 1751) If man is not fit to govern himself, how can he be fit to govern someone else?
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