From Pine View Farm

QOTD category archive

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James Fallows:

Successful societies — those which progress economically and politically and can control the terms on which they deal with the outside world — succeed because they have found ways to match individual self-interest to the collective good. The behavior that helps each person will, as a cumulative ethos, help the society as a whole.

Aside:

Ironically, we now have an entire political party dedicated to the proposition that there is no such thing as the collective good.

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Kerry Greenwood:

Civilization is as thin as cigarette paper. The Romans knew that, and the Greeks. We have forgotten it.

Greenwood, Kerry, Earthly Delights (Scottsdale: Poisoned Pen Press, 2008) p. 112.

Kerry Greenwood makes words dance.

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Bill Daley, in the voice of Doc:

You missed the whole point about the holidays. Christmas isn’t about eating and singing and watching old movies. It’s about gifts.

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Mitzi Kapture, in the voice of Sgt. Rita Lee Lance:

Once you sell your soul, you can’t get it back.

In case you need one, here’s an example.

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Jane Addams:

Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city’s disinherited.

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Kofi Annan:

As long as inequality and other social problems plague us, populists will try to exploit them.

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Stacy Keach, in the voice of Mike Hammer:

The lion is only the second most dangerous animal. The first is man.

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Extra-Special Bonus QOTD 0

Judge John J. Sirica (Watergate judge):

In all candor, the Court fails to perceive any reason for suspending the power of courts to get evidence and rule on questions of privilege in criminal matters simply because it is the president of the United States who holds the evidence.

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Robert Quillen:

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance.

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Brigitte Bardot:

Only idiots refuse to change their minds.

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Hermann Hess:

Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.

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Robert Staughton Lynd:

Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve.

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Adam Smith:

Labour was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.

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Livy:

Men are only clever at shifting blame from their own shoulders to those of others.

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Stacy Keach, in the voice of Mike Hammer:

The real victims of war are people who live at ground zero, cannon fodder for failed leaders.

Aside:

In normal times, whatever they are, I like would not have cited this, but it seemed somehow quite a propos.

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Joyce Carol Oates:

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

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Michelle Alexander:

The political strategy of divide, demonize and conquer has worked for centuries in the United States — since the days of slavery — to keep poor and working people angry at (and fearful of) one another rather than uniting to challenge unjust political and economic systems.

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Paul Krugman:

. . . you can shop online and find whatever you’re looking for, but bookstores are where you find what you weren’t looking for.

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Blake Edwards:

It’s been my experience that every time I think I know where it’s at, it’s usually somewhere else.

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Bob Cesca:

In the social media age, everything is all about attention.

For example.

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