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Savitri

IN CHAPTERS TITLE

01.02_-_The_Issue

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01.02_-_The_Issue

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SIMILAR TITLES

KEYS (10k)

   21 Sri Aurobindo
   1 Theodore Dalrymple
   1 James S A Corey
   1 Sri Ramakrishna

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   26 Anonymous
   25 Barack Obama
   18 Sri Aurobindo
   9 Vladimir Putin
   7 Stephen R Covey
   7 R C Sproul
   7 Noam Chomsky
   7 Michelle Obama
   7 John McCain
   6 Marco Rubio
   5 Wendell Berry
   5 Wangari Maathai
   5 Thomas Jefferson
   5 Philip Yancey
   5 Nicholas D Kristof
   5 Martin Luther King Jr
   5 Marianne Williamson
   5 George W Bush
   5 Frederick Lenz
   5 Edward Snowden

1:A Godhead stands behind the brute machine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

2:Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

3:On the bare peak where Self is alone with Nought ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

4:This world of fragile forms Carried on canvas-strips of shimmering Time, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

5:A once living story has prepared and made Our present fate, child of past energies. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

6:A magic leverage suddenly is caught That moves the veiled Ineffable's timeless will: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

7:Pain with its lash, joy with its silver bribe Guard the Wheel's circling immobility. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

8:There is a darkness in terrestrial things That will not suffer long too glad a note. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

9:After realization, should one dance with joy or take up his former work? Go on with your work, leaving the issue with the Lord. ~ Sri Ramakrishna,

10:A prayer, a master act, a king idea    Can link man's strength to a transcendent Force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue, [T5],

11:A point she had reached where life must be in vain    Or, in her unborn element awake,    ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue, [T5],

12:Love in her was wider than the universe, The whole world could take refuge in her single heart. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

13:A magnanimity as of sea or sky Enveloped with its greatness all that came And gave a sense as of a greatened world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

14:Joy cannot endure until the end: There is a darkness in terrestrial things That will not suffer long too glad a note. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

15:Her will must cancel her body's destiny. For only the unborn spirit's timeless power Can lift the yoke imposed by birth in Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

16:A gaol is this immense material world: Across each road stands armed a stone-eyed Law, At every gate the huge dim sentinels pace. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

17:He too is a machine amid machines; A piston brain pumps out the shapes of thought, A beating heart cuts out emotion's modes; An insentient energy fabricates a soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

18:An absolute supernatural darkness falls On man sometimes when he draws near to God: An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means; Forced out from the protecting Ignorance And flung back on his naked primal need, He at length must cast from him his surface ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

19:An absolute supernatural darkness falls    On man sometimes when he draws near to God:    An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means;    Forced out from the protecting Ignorance    And flung back on his naked primal need,    He at length must cast from him his surface soul    And be the ungarbed entity within:    That hour had fallen now on Savitri.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

20:As in a mystic and dynamic dance    A priestess of immaculate ecstasies    Inspired and ruled from Truth's revealing vault    Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods    A heart of silence in the hands of joy    Inhabited with rich creative beats    A body like a parable of dawn    That seemed a niche for veiled divinity    Or golden temple-door to things beyond.    Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;    Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense    Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight    Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

21:Then miracle is made the common rule,    One mighty deed can change the course of things;    A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.    All now seems Nature's massed machinery;    An endless servitude to material rule    And long determination's rigid chain,    Her firm and changeless habits aping Law,    Her empire of unconscious deft device    Annul the claim of man's free human will.    He too is a machine amid machines;    A piston brain pumps out the shapes of thought,    A beating heart cuts out emotion's modes;    An insentient energy fabricates a soul.    Or the figure of the world reveals the signs    Of a tied Chance repeating her old steps    In circles around Matter's binding-posts.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

22:If the doctor has a duty to relieve the suffering of his patients, he must have some idea where that suffering comes from, and this involves the retention of judgment, including moral judgment.And if, as far as he can tell in good faith, the misery of his patients derives from the way they live, he has a duty to tell them so—which often involves a more or less explicit condemnation of their way of life as completely incompatible with a satisfying existence. By avoiding the issue, the doctor is not being kind to his patients; he is being cowardly. Moreover, by refusing to place the onus on the patients to improve their lot, he is likely to mislead them into supposing that he has some purely technical or pharmacological answer to their problems, thus helping to perpetuate them. ~ Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom,

23:And the mighty wildness of the primitive earth And the brooding multitude of patient trees And the musing sapphire leisure of the sky And the solemn weight of the slowly-passing months Had left in her deep room for thought and God. There was her drama's radiant prologue lived. A spot for the eternal's tread on earth Set in the cloistral yearning of the woods And watched by the aspiration of the peaks Appeared through an aureate opening in Time, Where stillness listening felt the unspoken word And the hours forgot to pass towards grief and change. Here with the suddenness divine advents have, Repeating the marvel of the first descent, Changing to rapture the dull earthly round, Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death. Well might he find in her his perfect shrine. Since first the earth-being's heavenward growth began, Through all the long ordeal of the race, Never a rarer creature bore his shaft, That burning test of the godhead in our parts, A lightning from the heights on our abyss. All in her pointed to a nobler kind. Near to earth's wideness, intimate with heaven, Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

24:So," she said. "I've been thinking of it as a computing problem. If the virus or nanomachine or protomolecule or whatever was designed, it has a purpose, right?" "Definitely," Holden said. "And it seems like it's trying to do something-something complex. It doesn't make sense to go to all that trouble just to kill people. Those changes it makes look intentional, just... not complete, to me." "I can see that," Holden said. Alex and Amos nodded along with him but stayed quiet. "So maybe the issue is that the protomolecule isn't smart enough yet. You can compress a lot of data down pretty small, but unless it's a quantum computer, processing takes space. The easiest way to get that processing in tiny machines is through distribution. Maybe the protomolecule isn't finishing its job because it just isn't smart enough to. Yet." "Not enough of them," Alex said. "Right," Naomi said, dropping the towel into a bin under the sink. "So you give them a lot of biomass to work with, and see what it is they are ultimately made to do." "According to that guy in the video, they were made to hijack life on Earth and wipe us out," Miller said. "And that," Holden said, "is why Eros is perfect. Lots of biomass in a vacuum-sealed test tube. And if it gets out of hand, there's already a war going on. A lot of ships and missiles can be used for nuking Eros into glass if the threat seems real. Nothing to make us forget our differences like a new player butting in." ~ James S A Corey, Leviathan Wakes,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:TRUST, not technology, is the issue of the decade. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove

2:Designedly God covers in dark night the issue of futurity. ~ horace, @wisdomtrove

3:When you realize what you are now, the issue of death will solve itself. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove

4:The size of the problem is never the issue - what matters is the size of you! ~ t-harv-eker, @wisdomtrove

5:If you can't summarize an issue on one page, you don't understand the issue well enough. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove

6:The issue is not what you're doing with your body; it's what you're doing with your mind. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove

7:The issue of spiritual power is to meet the limited mortal circumstance with unlimited thought. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove

8:Sometimes the issue isn't that your problems are so big, it's that you see yourself as being so small. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove

9:The great benefit of computer sequencers is that they remove the issue of skill, and replace it with the issue of judgement ~ brian-eno, @wisdomtrove

10:You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself. ~ epictetus, @wisdomtrove

11:Either a species learns to control its own population, or something like disease, famine, war, will take care of the issue. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove

12:The issue is whether man is to be regarded as a sacrificial animal. Any man of self-esteem will answer: "No." Altruism says: "Yes." ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove

13:Given how deeply the ways of war have penetrated our collective consciousness, it will take spiritual power to turn the issue around. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove

14:So I think that the issue of how consciousness relates to the physical world is all tied up with morality but we have a lot to learn on that one. ~ roger-penrose, @wisdomtrove

15:The issue isn't the accuracy of the bombs you have, it's how you use the bombs you have - and more importantly, whether you ought to use bombs at all. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove

16:Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. ~ paul-davies, @wisdomtrove

17:Personal power is really the issue. It is only through tremendous attention to detail that you will be able to gain personal power and searing self-honesty. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove

18:If my aim is to prove I am &

19:There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that, whatever the outcome, there will always be people to say: &

20:If you have more personal power and you are in higher states of mind, then naturally you can see things and adhere to them or avoid them. Personal power is really the issue. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove

21:Even to me the issue of "stay small, sweet, quiet, and modest" sounds like an outdated problem, but the truth is that women still run into those demands whenever we find and use our voices. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove

22:Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove

23:The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism. The issue truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove

24:The issue is that we, with our fears, our attacks, our judgments, our blame, and our constant emphasis on the realm of the body rather than the realm of love, eclipse the experience of true love. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove

25:Observe, in politics, that the term extremism has become a synonym of "evil," regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are extreme about, but that you are "extreme"—i.e., consistent). ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove

26:Once you know that every moment and every person and every situation has something to teach you, you're a student all day. You know it's the depth of your observation that is the issue - not how much the world has to show you. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove

27:Peter must have thought, "Who am I compared to Mr. Faithfulness (John)?" But Jesus clarified the issue. John was responsible for John. Peter was responsible for Peter. And each had only one command to heed: "Follow Me." (John 21:20-22) ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove

28:Whenever the issue can be distinctly made, and all extraneous matter thrown out, so that men can fairly see the real difference between the parties, this controversy will soon be settled, and it will be done peaceably too. There will be no war, no violence. ~ abraham-lincoln, @wisdomtrove

29:Sometimes a single battle decides everything and sometimes, too, the slightest circumstance decides the issue of a battle. There is a moment in every battle at which the least manoeuvre is decisive and gives superiority, as one drop of water causes overflow. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove

30:War is the sure result of the existence of armed men. That country which maintains a large standing army will sooner or later have a war. The man who prides himself on fisticuffs is going, someday, to meet a man who considers himself the better man, and they will test the issue. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove

31:Forget all the conventional &

32:No matter what the issue is, don't try to justify why you don't feel good. And don't try to justify why you should feel differently. Don't try to blame whatever it is you think the reason is that's keeping you from feeling good. All of that is wasted effort. Just try to feel better right now. ~ esther-hicks, @wisdomtrove

33:I've always wanted to be part of something that would radically change the world. . . . People forget the power of inspiration. All of humanity went to the moon with the Apollo missions. The issue was cost. There was no chance to build a base and create frequent flights. That's the problem I would like to solve. ~ elon-musk, @wisdomtrove

34:The tragedy and opportunity of this moment in history are exactly the same: the natural and technical resources needed to pull us back from the brink already exist. The issue is not a lack of resources. It is a lack of will and restraint, of attention to what's truly happening, and of enlightened self-interest[.] ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove

35:As a culture, we believe that if we kill something, we've killed the issue. That's why so many books end with death, why so many plays end with death, because it's full resolution. I'm always curious to know what happens after Romeo and Juliet die. In a way, that's the beginning of the story. Maybe beyond the story is even better. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove

36:What we need to know about loving is no great mystery. We all know what constitutes loving behavior; we need but act upon it, not continually question it. Over-analysis often confuses the issue and in the end brings us no closer to insight. We sometimes become too busy classifying, separating, and examining, to remember that love is easy. It's we who make it complicated. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove

37:Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored... I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, and there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove

38:There is such a thing as righteous judgment, but it seems that lately the word &

39:I have been one who believes that abortion is the taking of a human life . . . . The fact that they could not resolve the issue of when life begins was a finding in and of itself. If we don't know, then shouldn't we morally opt on the side that it is life? If you came upon an immobile body and you yourself could not determine whether it was dead or alive, I think that you would decide to consider it alive until somebody could prove it was dead. You wouldn't get a shovel and start covering it up. And I think we should do the same thing with regard to abortion. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove

40:Our conflict is not likely to cease so soon as every good man would wish. The measure of iniquity is not yet filled; and unless we can return a little more to first principles, and act a little more upon patriotic ground, I do not know when it will-or-what may be the issue of the contest. Speculation-peculation-engrossing-forestalling-with all their concomitants, afford too many melancholy proofs of the decay of public virtue; and too glaring instances of its being the interest and desire of too many, who would wish to be thought friends, to continue the war. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove

41:Stage one—you’re caught in a second-dart reaction and don’t even realize it: your partner forgets to bring milk home and you complain angrily without seeing that your reaction is over the top. Stage two—you realize you’ve been hijacked by greed or hatred (in the broadest sense), but cannot help yourself: internally you’re squirming, but you can’t stop grumbling bitterly about the milk. Stage three—some aspect of the reaction arises, but you don’t act it out: you feel irritated but remind yourself that your partner does a lot for you already and getting cranky will just make things worse. Stage four—the reaction doesn’t even come up, and sometimes you forget you ever had the issue: you understand that there’s no milk, and you calmly figure out what to do now with your partner. In education, these are known succinctly as unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. They’re useful ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:Cake is not the issue here. ~ Terry Pratchett,

2:hard on the issue, soft on the person. ~ Henry Cloud,

3:Be Hard on the issue, Soft on the person. ~ Henry Cloud,

4:Fate was the issue, if anything; not guilt. ~ Paul Monette,

5:The issue is that [Saddam] has chemical weapons. ~ Dick Cheney,

6:TRUST, not technology, is the issue of the decade. ~ Tom Peters,

7:Ripping up carpet is easy, tiling is the issue. ~ Douglas Wilson,

8:Obama does not like the issue of where he was born. ~ Donald Trump,

9:Designedly God covers in dark night the issue of futurity. ~ Horace,

10:In fact, his deafening silence on the issue and failure ~ Anonymous,

11:The issue I highlight in the book is welfare reform. ~ Robert Scheer,

12:I guess the issue for me is to keep things dynamic. ~ Robert Downey Jr,

13:But the issue has to do with land, which is our land. ~ Bashar al Assad,

14:The issue of fracking is a stick in the hornet's nest. ~ Titus Welliver,

15:America has not led but fled on the issue of global warming. ~ John F Kerry,

16:Every repetition of the choice only hardened the issue. ~ Barbara W Tuchman,

17:The only solution to the issue of human rights is oblivion. ~ Augusto Pinochet,

18:A Godhead stands behind the brute machine. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

19:Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

20:The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril ~ Barack Obama,

21:My film is intentionally political. And I think that's really the issue. ~ Alex Cox,

22:Profundity often goes past the issue to some deep but useless truth. ~ Mason Cooley,

23:Reconciliation means you bury the hatchet, not necessarily the issue. ~ Rick Warren,

24:I think by laying it out for the viewer I'm avoiding the issue of bias. ~ Dan Abrams,

25:It's two people that are in love with one another. What's the issue? ~ Janet Jackson,

26:The issue isn't just jobs. Even slaves had jobs. The issue is wages. ~ Jim Hightower,

27:How delicately language skirts the issue. How meaningless it is. ~ Audrey Niffenegger,

28:Nobody is talking about the different - until you raised the issue. ~ Andrea Mitchell,

29:On the bare peak where Self is alone with Nought ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

30:When you realize what you are now, the issue of death will solve itself. ~ Adyashanti,

31:Making a mistake isn’t the issue. It’s how you handle it that defines you. ~ R J Lewis,

32:Marx rejects his friend’s treatment of the issue as a question of religion. ~ Anonymous,

33:The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel,

34:The size of the problem is never the issue—what matters is the size of you! ~ T Harv Eker,

35:it’s a Shit Creek tsunami, is what it is. Paddles are no longer the issue. ~ Nick Harkaway,

36:There’s my gut instinct: Don’t rush. Don’t force the issue. Let it play out. ~ Rick Yancey,

37:Get busy with the issue! In this regard, time is not friendly…nor should it be. ~ T F Hodge,

38:I am not second-guessing or questioning my understanding of the issue. ~ Christine Maggiore,

39:In truth the issue is that we are so powerful what we believe becomes our reality. ~ Poppet,

40:The size of the problem is never the issue -- what matters is the size of you! ~ T Harv Eker,

41:We will see how the issue will turn out when they come to Baghdad. ~ Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf,

42:Whatever the issue was, it’d had the chance to ferment for a few days already. ~ Thea Harrison,

43:Anyone who makes up their mind about an issue before they hear the issue is a fool. ~ Chris Rock,

44:Loving you was never the issue. It's keeping you when you're not mine to have. ~ Corinne Michaels,

45:Loving you was never the issue. It’s keeping you when you’re not mine to have. ~ Corinne Michaels,

46:On the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth. ~ George W Bush,

47:I would argue that the issue of God and the issue of science have the same roots. ~ Dinesh D Souza,

48:Immigration comes up, but the issue that is on everybody's mind is the economy. ~ Mario Diaz Balart,

49:My administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change. ~ George W Bush,

50:On the issue of inflation, I think I could solve it no matter how much money it took. ~ Pat Paulsen,

51:No one is more sensitive to the issue of overeating than the creator of Stuart Smalley. ~ Al Franken,

52:Transitions themselves are not the issue, but how well you respond to their challenges! ~ Jim George,

53:My works are the issue of simple and plain experience which is the true mistress. ~ Leonardo da Vinci,

54:But the heart of the issue is that semantics, meaning, is more than the meaning of words. ~ D A Carson,

55:It’s the game of seeing all but reacting to nothing. Until necessity forces the issue. ~ Steven Erikson,

56:If you can't summarize an issue on one page, you don't understand the issue well enough. ~ Ronald Reagan,

57:I'm proud of the fact that the Republican Party is the pro-life party on the issue of life. ~ Marco Rubio,

58:Money is not the issue. Having the courage to give your highest gift is the issue. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,

59:The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution. ~ Ludwig von Mises,

60:The issue is not what you're doing with your body; it's what you're doing with your mind. ~ Frederick Lenz,

61:Science simply cannot adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. ~ Stephen Jay Gould,

62:The issue here isn't whether every student is brainwashed, it's whether it is appropriate. ~ David Horowitz,

63:The issue isn't-nor should it ever be-how weak our child is, but rather how strong our God is. ~ Tim Kimmel,

64:Astonishingly, at least to a non-German, the issue arose again at the reunification of 1990. ~ Neil MacGregor,

65:I'm not going to blow up just for the sake of it, because it's on TV. That's not the issue. ~ Chelsea Handler,

66:On the issue of abortion, I'm ever on the fence, or, at most, an inch or two to either side. ~ Victoria Moran,

67:The Glory is the issue to me. Money comes and goes, but a legacy stays forever. I hate to lose ~ Shane Mosley,

68:The issue isn't--nor should it ever be--how weak our child is, but rather how strong our God is. ~ Tim Kimmel,

69:The issue isn’t whether someone is good or bad, but whether he is repentant or unrepentant. ~ Jefferson Bethke,

70:Crimes are not to be measured by the issue of events, but by the bad intentions of men. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero,

71:Like other revolutionaries I can thank God for the reactionaries. They clarify the issue. ~ Robin G Collingwood,

72:The issue I have always felt most strongly about is hunger in America, in particular the children. ~ Sandra Lee,

73:Do that thing you do where you use too many words to say something simple and confuse the issue. ~ Leigh Bardugo,

74:God owns the truth. The issue is our ability to derive truth apart from God's sufficient Word. ~ James MacDonald,

75:The issue for patents for new discovers has given a spring to invention beyond my conception. ~ Thomas Jefferson,

76:The issue of transsexualism is an ethical one that has profound social and moral ramifications. ~ Janice Raymond,

77:This world of fragile forms Carried on canvas-strips of shimmering Time, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

78:Enough, you’re testing my patience now, and I’ve not got time to stand around debating the issue. ~ Kathryn Hughes,

79:The issue is not whether or not you have that power, the issue is whether or not you use it. ~ Marianne Williamson,

80:The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,

81:What I know about street outreach is that it is essential to dealing with the issue of youth homelessness. ~ Jewel,

82:The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness and every one must choose his side. ~ G K Chesterton,

83:The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should. I've got Greenspan's book. ~ John McCain,

84:The issue of spiritual power is to meet the limited mortal circumstance with unlimited thought. ~ Marianne Williamson,

85:We also intend to deal with the issue of incorporating basic human rights into our new constitution. ~ Chen Shui bian,

86:You have to be interested in inequality. The issue of inequality and that of poverty are not separable. ~ Amartya Sen,

87:We know the problems, and we know the solution: sustainable development. The issue is the political will. ~ Tony Blair,

88:On the issue of drugs, we wir classical liberals, vehemently opposed tae state intervention in any form. ~ Irvine Welsh,

89:Sometimes the issue isn't that your problems are so big, it's that you see yourself as being so small. ~ Steve Maraboli,

90:The issue of faith is not so much whether we believe in God, but whether we believe the God we believe in. ~ R C Sproul,

91:At a certain level of learning and understanding, right or wrong ain't the issue, but different interest. ~ Toba Beta,

92:By dedicating so much concentration to the issue of security, bilateral matters pass to a secondary level. ~ Vicente Fox,

93:The issue I brought forward most clearly was that of mass surveillance, not of surveillance in general. ~ Edward Snowden,

94:The issue on which everything hangs is not whether you like His teaching but if He ‪rose from the dead. ~ Timothy Keller,

95:If we studied the issue of forgiveness with a wider perspective, we are bound to opt for it after all. ~ Stephen Richards,

96:The issue is not that you are wearing buckets of make up. The real problem is how does the inside look ~ Sahndra Fon Dufe,

97:The issue is that we have to start where the child is, not with where we believe the child ought to be. ~ Shefali Tsabary,

98:Kushner saw the chance to convert the issue of the wall into a bilateral agreement addressing immigration— ~ Michael Wolff,

99:One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue. ~ Saul Alinsky,

100:A once living story has prepared and made Our present fate, child of past energies. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

101:In fact, an information theory that leaves out the issue of noise turns out to have no content. ~ Hans Christian von Baeyer,

102:A magic leverage suddenly is caught That moves the veiled Ineffable’s timeless will: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

103:And in my mind, this settles the issue. I would never drink cologne, and am therefore not an alcoholic. ~ Augusten Burroughs,

104:Bigamy thrice over is the issue of Alice LaPlante’s second thriller A Circle of Wives (Atlantic Monthly, March), ~ Anonymous,

105:I don't think the current regime of South Korea will deal actively with the issue of North Korean defectors. ~ Kim Young sam,

106:Pain with its lash, joy with its silver bribe Guard the Wheel’s circling immobility. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

107:Sexual difference is probably the issue in our time which could be our 'salvation' if we thought it through. ~ Luce Irigaray,

108:There is a connection between the issue of refugees and the battle against the so-called Islamic State. ~ Thomas de Maiziere,

109:There is a darkness in terrestrial things That will not suffer long too glad a note. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

110:You can go one block to the next in San Francisco and get a completely different opinion of what the issue is. ~ Don Johnson,

111:the issue is not whether I agree with someone but rather how I treat someone with whom I profoundly disagree. ~ Philip Yancey,

112:Futurists don't consider overpopulation one of the issues of the future. They consider it the issue of the future. ~ Dan Brown,

113:It is often possible to decide the issue of a battle merely by making an unexpected shift of one's main weight. ~ Erwin Rommel,

114:Quentin finishes with the limb and sits up. “Who wears the pants in your family, man?” “That depends on the issue. ~ Greg Iles,

115:The issue of childcare is the missing link in the full contribution of women to our society and to our economy. ~ Nancy Pelosi,

116:The issue of faith is not so much whether we believe in God, but whether we believe the God we believe in. (p.35) ~ R C Sproul,

117:The issue of managing through a crisis is you have to be decisive even if you don't have perfect information. ~ Howard Schultz,

118:Jim Williams’s guilt or innocence is no longer the issue,” he said. “Spencer Lawton’s incompetence is the issue. ~ John Berendt,

119:Anyone who doesn't think the government killed my father either hasn't given the issue much thought, or is insane. ~ Sean Lennon,

120:A prayer, a master act, a king idea    Can link man's strength to a transcendent Force. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue, [T5],

121:I think the real place where most evangelicals have trouble with the Democratic Party is on the issue of abortion. ~ Tony Campolo,

122:I wasn’t an expert on immigration, but anyone living in Southern California becomes conversant with the issue. “Do ~ Robert Crais,

123:Poor villager comes and throws a plastic bag; that’s not the main issue now. The issue is with the affluent, isn’t it? ~ Sadhguru,

124:To heal physically, one must heal the emotional aspect of the issue first or it will resurface in another way. ~ Stephen Richards,

125:Whether the person should then be called "an intellectual" seems to reduce the issue to a question of terminology. ~ Noam Chomsky,

126:I'd love to do a movie where the monster is human, where the issue is not otherworldly, or horror or science fiction. ~ J J Abrams,

127:Personal purity isn’t really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse – and persuading others not to support it – is. ~ Peter Singer,

128:The fallout from slavery is ongoing. I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved. ~ Colson Whitehead,

129:The issue is jobs. You can't get away from it: jobs. Having a buck or two in your pocket and feeling like somebody. ~ Studs Terkel,

130:A point she had reached where life must be in vain    Or, in her unborn element awake,    ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue, [T5],

131:Fault isn’t the issue. A tree doesn’t make a thunderstorm, but any fool knows where lightning’s going to strike. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,

132:She'd approached the issue of social interaction like it was another puzzle to be solved, another prize to be won. ~ Seanan McGuire,

133:his thoughts had drifted, as they always did when he was upset, like a curlicue of smoke, away from the issue at hand. ~ Kate Morton,

134:The equivalent of five jumbo jets' worth of women die in labor each day, but the issue is almost never covered. ~ Nicholas D Kristof,

135:The issue is complex, but like many matters in Sudan, it is not as complex as Khartoum would want the west to believe. ~ Dave Eggers,

136:The more that we choose not to talk about domestic violence, the more we shy away from the issue, the more we lose. ~ Russell Wilson,

137:To be concerned with the issue; soul versus non-soul, is to be in bondage to craving for becoming and non-becoming. ~ Gautama Buddha,

138:I think the issue of North Korea is one where the international community as a whole has to work to resolve the crisis. ~ Helen Clark,

139:The issue wasn’t that I didn’t know who I was; the problem was that I didn’t know who I had allowed myself to become. ~ Rachel Hollis,

140:The main dividing line is still race. This is the issue that must be focused upon in all working class organizations. ~ Michael Yates,

141:We would remind you that it is not the length of Caesar's life that is the issue, but rather, the briefness of his reign. ~ Anonymous,

142:In April 2012, Greenpeace spotlighted the issue of power demand in data centers in the report “How Clean Is Your Cloud? ~ Robert Bryce,

143:It’s not that we don’t know the principles of righteousness. The issue is whether we have the courage to act on them. ~ Brother Andrew,

144:The issue that a political campaign would make a human life into - you know - a political football, is unsettling. ~ John Hickenlooper,

145:Kung asks the right question. The issue is not why does God punish sin but why does He permit the ongoing human rebellion? ~ R C Sproul,

146:Love in her was wider than the universe, The whole world could take refuge in her single heart. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

147:The great benefit of computer sequencers is that they remove the issue of skill, and replace it with the issue of judgement ~ Brian Eno,

148:You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself. ~ Epictetus,

149:I believe that great weirdness stalks the universe. That's not the issue with me, but it is not tacky. It is not tacky. ~ Terence McKenna,

150:Right now, with terrorism and poverty and Wall Street and Social Security having problems, nudity should not be the issue. ~ Robin Thicke,

151:The 8 key words that will move practically anyone to your side of the issue: 'If you can't do it, I'll definitely understand.' ~ Bob Burg,

152:The source and root of all monetary evil [is] the government monopoly on the issue and control of money. —Friedrich Hayek ~ George Gilder,

153:While most people can talk rationally about kernel design and portability, the issue of free-ness is 100% emotional. ~ Andrew S Tanenbaum,

154:The issue of human rights is one of the most fundamental human issues and also one of the most sensitive and controversial. ~ Ali Khamenei,

155:The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks. ~ Lord Acton,

156:A lot of men in politics suddenly woke up to the issue of women in politics when they realised: hey, there are votes in this! ~ Theresa May,

157:In blaming another, we give away our power. Understanding enables us to rise above the issue and take control of our future. ~ Louise L Hay,

158:The issue of innovation never interested me personally, since I believe it may lead to a place where people don't paint anymore. ~ Ed Askew,

159:It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled. ~ B F Skinner,

160:Either a species learns to control its own population, or something like disease, famine, war, will take care of the issue. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,

161:I'm going to spend a lot of time on Social Security. I enjoy it. I enjoy taking on the issue. I guess, it's the mother in me. ~ George W Bush,

162:I'm really proud of this Supreme Court and the way they've been dealing with the issue of First Amendment political speech. ~ Mitch McConnell,

163:Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is as important as the one we pass on ourselves. I recall discussing the issue ~ Nathaniel Branden,

164:Revolutions invariably don't solve the issue of justice, and in its place, suppression and limiting freedom replaces that idea. ~ Akbar Ganji,

165:Sometimes presenting the most ignorant point of view can be the best way to satirize the issue and highlight that ignorance. ~ Glenn Howerton,

166:This [the earthquake] was a very big influence on me, and the issue of life and death from then on does recur in my films. ~ Abbas Kiarostami,

167:To look at the issue of life and abortion, actually we're moving in that direction where most Americans oppose most abortions. ~ Barack Obama,

168:Even on Ben Carson, he's not exactly steeped in housing policy, but his statements on the issue have also been very conservative. ~ Amy Walter,

169:If someone were crushed to death trying to get a frosty can of Diet Coke, it wouldn't be my fault. I'd tried to raise the issue. ~ Eileen Cook,

170:In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue.” —Thomas L. Friedman ~ Timothy Ferriss,

171:Only fifty-nine percent of our voters demonstrated a level of comprehension high enough to vote on the issue,” Iloona said. ~ Randolph Lalonde,

172:(Obama) really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time. ~ John McCain,

173:My natural inclination is to think in scenes. So that's how I write, and the issue for me is usually: what to compress for speed. ~ Leigh Newman,

174:The issue that you may be facing or struggling with today may be an issue of the covenant. If it is, you are free to appeal to God. ~ Tony Evans,

175:Time has driven out sex and money as the central issues. Now if it could only drive out the issue of power we would be somewhere! ~ Jean Houston,

176:He that stands still and suffers his enemies to double blows upon him without resistance, will undoubtedly be conquered in the issue. ~ John Owen,

177:People don't see hunger in front of them so they are not directly affected. What I am doing is connecting young people to the issue ~ Lauren Bush,

178:The issue with international institutions is that there is a crisis of legitimacy. Trust in these institutions is a serious problem. ~ Mo Ibrahim,

179:Young people should investigate where the filmmaker stands on the issue of file sharing, before they spend money on them at all. ~ Lexi Alexander,

180:A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue. ~ Richard M Nixon,

181:Bringing democratic control to the conduct of foreign policy requires a struggle merely to force the issue onto the public agenda. ~ Eric Alterman,

182:Everything that liberals want they call a civil right. This avoids them having to argue about it and puts the halo around the issue. ~ Ann Coulter,

183:I grew up as a discriminated minority in a dictatorship, so obviously the issue of human rights is a matter of concern for me. ~ Henry A Kissinger,

184:Science is and should be seen as "completely neutral" on the issue of the theistic or atheistic implications of scientific results. ~ George Coyne,

185:I am resolved, to go and plant myself in Holland or in Zeeland, and there await the issue which it shall please Him to ordain. ~ William the Silent,

186:An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation. ~ Joseph Conrad,

187:I cannot stand people who disagree with me on the issue of Roe v. Wade... which I believe is about the proper way to cross a lake. ~ Stephen Colbert,

188:Looking to Donald Trump`s immigration speech can he hang onto his base if he softens his stance on the issue that got him this far? ~ Steve Kornacki,

189:There is no right or wrong reading of Naked Lunch, though some readings are more common, and thus Burroughs commercial is not the issue. ~ Rick Moody,

190:war, the issue doesn’t matter anymore, because now it’s about one thing and one thing only: how much each side hates the other.” The ~ Neal Shusterman,

191:Without an understanding of the issue of race and a willingness to confront it head on, the working class will not build its strength. ~ Michael Yates,

192:It is not enough to fight. It is the spirit which we bring to the fight that decides the issue. It is morale that wins the victory. ~ George C Marshall,

193:the issue of war or peace is an issue that concerns not only experts on Foreign Affairs but every citizen of the United States. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh,

194:Even now, after overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, we are still discussing the issue as if it were a belief, not a fact. ~ Mary Pipher,

195:I never doubted the issue from the beginning. I knew I was too good for Burns. I have forgotten more about fighting than Burns ever knew. ~ Jack Johnson,

196:We are two messed-up people destined to destroy each other, but I can't walk away. No. Can't isn't the issue. I simply don't want to. ~ Lisa Renee Jones,

197:...when it comes to the issue of life and death I have no authority. Only God can give life and only He has the right to take it away. ~ Christine Caine,

198:It was only after the earthquake that the health minister said mental health should be a priority and that the issue was talked about. ~ Reggie Fils Aime,

199:The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? ~ Thomas Jefferson,

200:If we are to be biblical, then, the issue is not whether we should have a doctrine of predestination or not, but what kind we should embrace. ~ R C Sproul,

201:There are many who would much prefer that the word 'climate' never be mentioned and that the issue be eliminated from our national conversation. ~ Al Gore,

202:Given how deeply the ways of war have penetrated our collective consciousness, it will take spiritual power to turn the issue around. ~ Marianne Williamson,

203:The dreaded cry of “reboot,” which is to say we have no clue and hopefully the issue will sort itself if we start over, if we clear the cache. ~ Hugh Howey,

204:Today, the issue isn’t quantity of food as much as it is quality-whether kids are getting enough protein and other nutrients to fully develop. ~ Bill Gates,

205:You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants some magical solution to their problem and everyone refuses to believe in magic. ~ Lewis Carroll,

206:It's not enough for women to speak out on the issue - for the message to be strong and consistent, women's voices must be backed up by men's. ~ John Conyers,

207:Once you think bigger than yourself then the cause becomes the issue if you think on a higher plain you can come together to work on our problems. ~ Chuck D,

208:You know what the issue is with this world? Everyone wants some magical solution to their problem and everyone refuses to believe in magic. ~ Sebastian Stan,

209:I consider abortion to be a deeply personal and intimate issue for women and I don't believe male legislators should even vote on the issue. ~ Alan K Simpson,

210:The issue that we are raising is not whether Trump is mentally ill. It is whether he is dangerous. Dangerousness is not a psychiatric diagnosis ~ Bandy X Lee,

211:A magnanimity as of sea or sky Enveloped with its greatness all that came And gave a sense as of a greatened world. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

212:We are trying to get marijuana reclassified medically. If we do that, we'll be using the issue as a red herring to give marijuana a good name. ~ Keith Stroup,

213:The issue is whether the orders are morally acceptable or not, and that question is not answered by anti-intellectual demands of obedience. ~ Thomas E Woods Jr,

214:What is at stake in the debate over health care is more than the mere crafting of policy. The issue is now the identity of the Democratic Party. ~ Thomas Frank,

215:I ask the vice president to stop dodging the issue with legalese, and acknowledge his continued ties with Halliburton to the American people. ~ Frank Lautenberg,

216:I can tell when an actor's forcing tears, and it's tricky because you then have to film it and edit in a certain way to skirt around the issue. ~ Drew Barrymore,

217:Joy cannot endure until the end: There is a darkness in terrestrial things That will not suffer long too glad a note. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

218:Donald Trump is the first president in more than 40 years not to make his tax returns public. The president says only reporters care about the issue. ~ John Yang,

219:I think the issue is that Americans traveling abroad if gotten into legal problems should have access to a fair trial and an impartial tribunal. ~ Maria Cantwell,

220:The issue of how to cede to seduction is tortuous: too soon and one may appear unworthy, too slow and one may lose the interest of the partner. ~ Alain de Botton,

221:Christians lost the battle in the public square over gay marriage because, frankly, we were outthought, outfought, and outmarketed on the issue. ~ Robert Jeffress,

222:The issue of xenotransplantation - such as transplanting animal organs into humans - is fraught with risks for animals, naturally, and for people. ~ Wayne Pacelle,

223:The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite. ~ Thomas Jefferson,

224:There is no alternative to action, and that requires faith. The issue is how we are to mold for ourselves a belief system that is worthy of life. ~ Naguib Mahfouz,

225:While the morality of slavery alone might have eventually led to a showdown, it was America’s sprawling growth that made the issue explosive. ~ Robert L O Connell,

226:As I say the UK's position on the issue of torture and the use of torture has not changed. Our policy is the same as it has been. We condemn torture. ~ Theresa May,

227:That’s it. When things are going bad: Don’t get all bummed out, don’t get startled, don’t get frustrated. No. Just look at the issue and say: “Good. ~ Jocko Willink,

228:I think the issue to bring progressives together should be this most central of all issues—raising children to become responsible, empathetic adults. ~ George Lakoff,

229:There is no doubt that if young white people were incarcerated at the same rates as young black people, the issue would be a national emergency. ~ Michelle Alexander,

230:The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,

231:Today, as never before, the issue is clearly defined-liberty and freedom of choice, or oppression and subjugation for the individual and for nations. ~ David O McKay,

232:Yet how strong was friendship? Could it banish disagreement over a fundamental issue of human liberty—as if the issue and the disagreement didn’t exist? ~ John Jakes,

233:I believe that sensitivity to issues of race and ethnicity is important, and nuanced, even more so when it intersects with the issue of free speech. ~ Gene Weingarten,

234:It's really important that people know about it and the issue in schools because it happens every day to people and it really hurts when people get bullied. ~ Kaitlyn,

235:The issue of God’s sovereignty likely was a hot-button topic in Isaiah’s day, since that was one of the more chaotic times in the history of God’s people. ~ Anonymous,

236:Attain and maintain a reputation, for it is the usufruct of fame. A stiff climb, for it is the issue of excellence, as rare as mediocrity is common. ~ Baltasar Gracian,

237:But the issue of sexual harassment is not the end of it. There are other issues - political issues, gender issues - that people need to be educated about. ~ Anita Hill,

238:It all comes down to Roger (Goodell) having the final say, ultimately. And that’s been the issue from the beginning. That’s our issue. It’s still the same. ~ Anonymous,

239:The issue is not that morals be applied to public policy, it's that conservatives bring public policy to spheres of our lives where it should not enter. ~ Barney Frank,

240:The issue of motherhood is no longer salient. In fact, the very first female bomber for Hamas posed in her last will and testament video with her two kids. ~ Mia Bloom,

241:The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men. ~ B H Liddell Hart,

242:I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people, and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. ~ Coretta Scott King,

243:Well, I was already so happy being chosen to do the issue itself, that when I got on the cover, it was even more of a surprise and even more amazing to me. ~ Heidi Klum,

244:We need to start by having a conversation about climate change. It would be irresponsible to avoid the issue just because it's uncomfortable to talk about. ~ Al Franken,

245:For me, the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept... Whenever people bring up feminism, I’m like, god. I’m just not really that interested. ~ Lana Del Rey,

246:I remember the first time I complained about somebody in an email and my manager promptly copied that person, which forced us to quickly resolve the issue. ~ Laszlo Bock,

247:The issue isn't the accuracy of the bombs you have, it's how you use the bombs you have - and more importantly, whether you ought to use bombs at all. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,

248:To take an unequivocal stand, it seems to me, is of greater heuristic value and far more likely to stimulate constructive criticism than to evade the issue. ~ Ernst Mayr,

249:When an argument is about an issue, keep it about the issue. Personalizing unnecessarily will only make the issue harder to resolve. The phrase “don’t ~ Kim Malone Scott,

250:My feeling about executive bonuses is that any candidate for a chief executive job who even raises the issue of bonuses should be dismissed out of hand. ~ Henry Mintzberg,

251:My government has the challenge of addressing the issue of gas. The issue of gas cannot be addressed today without the participation of all Bolivians alike. ~ Carlos Mesa,

252:Her will must cancel her body’s destiny. For only the unborn spirit’s timeless power Can lift the yoke imposed by birth in Time. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

253:If my aim is to prove I am 'enough,' the project goes on to infinity-because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable. ~ Nathaniel Branden,

254:If my aim is to prove I am “enough,” the project goes on to infinity—because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable. ~ Nathaniel Branden,

255:It’s not what they’re not doing or should be doing that’s the issue. The issue is your own chosen response to the situation and what you should be doing. ~ Stephen R Covey,

256:Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. ~ Paul Davies,

257:A gaol is this immense material world: Across each road stands armed a stone-eyed Law, At every gate the huge dim sentinels pace. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

258:If, hypothetically, Western Catholicism were to review the issue of celibacy, I think it would do so for cultural reasons, not so much as a universal option. ~ Pope Francis,

259:The issue of finding the best possible answer or achieving maximum efficiency usually arises in industry only after serious performance or legal troubles. ~ Steven S Skiena,

260:If we continue to address the issue of the environment where we live as though we're the only species that lives here, we'll create a disaster for ourselves ~ Gaylord Nelson,

261:It's not surprising to me that in a country born of racial genocide, the issue of race is still an open wound on the American soul. We haven't dealt with it. ~ Michael Moore,

262:Personal power is really the issue. It is only through tremendous attention to detail that you will be able to gain personal power and searing self-honesty. ~ Frederick Lenz,

263:As you interact with others, remember this: anytime a person's response is larger than the issue at hand, the response is almost always about something else. ~ John C Maxwell,

264:My 12-year-old daughter said to me, "Enough with the subtitles, Daddy, for crying out loud." Because they always seem to cloud the issue rather than clarify it. ~ Martin Amis,

265:Once you start to look into the guts of climate change you find that just about every scientific institution in the world is conducting research on the issue. ~ Peter Garrett,

266:When it comes to the issue of background checks, let's be honest - background checks will never be 'universal' - because criminals will never submit to them. ~ Wayne LaPierre,

267:Not only did I feel hurt that she [Sarah Palin] sort of misdiagnosed all of these veterans, but I think she sort of was wrong in the way she talked about the issue. ~ Jon Soltz,

268:So you can't demand the broken to live as if they were whole. Discipline is not the issue; apply discipline and you'll make it worse. What is needed is healing. ~ John Eldredge,

269:There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that, whatever the outcome, there will always be people to say: 'I said then that it would be so' ~ Leo Tolstoy,

270:Framing the issue of work-life balance - as if the two were dramatically opposed - practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life? ~ Sheryl Sandberg,

271:I'm always talking about the issue of Puerto Rico.I also spoke about it on the Senate floor, and I think it should be given the importance, the priority it deserves. ~ Marco Rubio,

272:I am of the firm belief that the nation should progress on the issue of development. And it is necessary that the country moves forward on the issue of development. ~ Narendra Modi,

273:A rhetorician is capable of speaking effectively against all comers, whatever the issue, and can consequently be more persuasive in front of crowds about… anything he likes. ~ Plato,

274:...the issue becomes not whether a person has experience with a stigma of his own, because he has, but rather how many varieties he has had his own experience with. ~ Erving Goffman,

275:The issue is not abortion. The issue is whether women can make up their own mind instead of some right-wing pastor, some right-wing politician telling them what to do. ~ Howard Dean,

276:There's a certain elitism that has crept into the attitudes of some in journalism, and it played out perfectly over the issue of these little [American flag] lapel pins. ~ Brit Hume,

277:It’s not as hard to get in as I thought it’d be, but I suppose there’s something to the old saying that getting into a prison isn’t the issue so much as getting out. All ~ Lyla Payne,

278:That could be the issue that the party - that the party faces as we get ready to potentially nominate someone who`s utterly unelectable in a general election contest. ~ Steve Schmidt,

279:If I want my daughter to try something, I eat it in front of her repeatedly without forcing the issue and, with some trial and error, the world is our oyster! ~ Alexandra Guarnaschelli,

280:The issue of power is not bound to power per se, but often depends on the people themselves, to what extent they unconsciously encourage this power and its structures. ~ Mitra Farahani,

281:You have to talk about the issue of race, but I can talk to white constituents about racism, if I at least acknowledge that life is not a crystal stair for them either. ~ Keith Ellison,

282:But the issue is not only life and death but our existence before God and our being judged by him. All of us were sinners before him and worthy of condemnation. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar,

283:What I'd say about that is that we must respect homosexuals in the church. I've got many homosexual friends, the issue is not in any way a homophobic reaction on my part. ~ George Carey,

284:The issue for us is trusting God enough to trust also His timing. If we can truly believe He has our welfare at heart, may we not let His plans unfold as He thinks best? ~ Neal A Maxwell,

285:Consciously sending a mental “message received, safe to proceed” signal to your brain is a simple and surprisingly effective way to make yourself stop fixating on the issue ~ Josh Kaufman,

286:Especially for fostering creative, conceptual work, the best way to use money as a motivator is to take the issue of money off the table so people concentrate on the work. ~ Daniel H Pink,

287:…The story of the Pledge of Allegiance and its National Socialist roots is a fascinating one. Dr. Rex Curry, a passionate libertarian, has made the issue his white whale. ~ Jonah Goldberg,

288:What is true, though, is now we've got a bunch of videos that whatever side of the issue you're on, raises the temperature on these issues and makes people really focused . ~ Barack Obama,

289:Recent presidents have gone off on ad hoc adventures. They have set unattainable goal because they have framed the issue incorrectly, as they believed their own rhetoric. ~ George Friedman,

290:Regardless of my feelings on the issue with Taryn, I know it won’t bode well for me if I let Cash train me. I just don’t trust myself around him. Not completely anyway. ~ Michelle Leighton,

291:The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. One cannot pray unless he has faith in his own ability to accost the infinite, merciful, eternal God. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel,

292:the more one delves into Rumi's life and his mystical poetry it becomes clear that for him, the issue of faith and reason is incomplete unless one includes the central theme of love. ~ Rumi,

293:Whether or not any of us become racists is a choice we make. And we are called to choose again and again where we stand on the issue of racism at different moments in our life. ~ bell hooks,

294:If you have more personal power and you are in higher states of mind, then naturally you can see things and adhere to them or avoid them. Personal power is really the issue. ~ Frederick Lenz,

295:It was not just time, however, that healed partisan wounds. Mutual toleration was established only after the issue of racial equality was removed from the political agenda. ~ Steven Levitsky,

296:The issue isn't, Am I good enough? No. The issue is, Do I not have any other choice? Will and desire don't matter. Ability doesn't matter. Need is the only thing that matters. ~ Dana Spiotta,

297:A lot of people criticized me for speaking out, not long ago, about gay marriage. I could not remain silent any longer. It's the civil rights of our day. It's the issue of our day. ~ Joe Biden,

298:Blame is one of the surest ways to stay in a problem. In blaming another, we give away our power. Understanding enables us to rise above the issue and take control of our future. ~ Louise L Hay,

299:I seemed to have only two speeds on problems that hit me emotionally, either putting my fingers in my ears and going la-la-la, or picking up an axe and attacking the issue. ~ Laurell K Hamilton,

300:My entry into the environmental arena was through the issue that so dramatically - and destructively - demonstrates the link between science and social action: nuclear weapons. ~ Barry Commoner,

301:Part of the issue around communal land, which became a matter of controversy, is that we are saying that this land must go back to communities. Not chiefs and traditional leaders. ~ Thabo Mbeki,

302:So viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the war power of the Government; and so to resist force, employed for its destruction, by force, for its preservation. ~ Abraham Lincoln,

303:The vast difference between starting a train of events, and directing into a particular groove a series already started, is rarely apparent to the person confounded by the issue. ~ Thomas Hardy,

304:We found that when people put this issue on the table, it turns out that men acknowledge the issue, and employers and employees can work out solutions just as working mothers do. ~ James Levine,

305:if the issue were presented to the British as a naked trading away of British possessions for sake of the fifty destroyers it would certainly encounter vehement opposition. ~ Winston S Churchill,

306:Let me frame the issue for you—does the active sex life of an unmarried federal judge qualify as impeachable conduct within the meaning of Article III of the U.S. Constitution? ~ Lisa Scottoline,

307:How true it is that without the guidance of the Holy Spirit intellect not only is undependable but also extremely dangerous, because it often confuses the issue of right and wrong. ~ Watchman Nee,

308:I pretty much read reviews and comments only looking for the negative. Literally, when I read positive comments, it's like a zero. I think the issue is if you agree with it or not. ~ Bob Odenkirk,

309:I think the issue of female friendship really resonates well with women, ... So many women have a friend like Darcy or can relate to the feeling of being second-fiddle to a friend. ~ Emily Giffin,

310:He can get aroused from riding a motorcycle or from sleeping. The issue is not whether you turn him on; it’s whether he stays turned on after he has been satisfied. This is the key. ~ Sherry Argov,

311:I believe that the issue of mental health services for our troops deploying or returning from combat is one that demands the attention of this body, if only for a few minutes today. ~ Rosa DeLauro,

312:I have so much confidence in the good sense of man, and his qualifications for self-government, that I am never afraid of the issue where reason is left free to exert her force. ~ Thomas Jefferson,

313:I would say the issue for the labor movement in the United States is not structural... there is no correlation between the success of workers and how the labor movement is structured. ~ Andy Stern,

314:Money was not the issue - Kunwer says he’s been a generous employer. But an entrepreneur expecting everyone to feel as much for the company as he does is - a bit idealistic. Things ~ Rashmi Bansal,

315:The issue of carbon is one area where we really need to work together and if people don't have the technology they need, that technology needs to be made available and affordable. ~ Wangari Maathai,

316:He was rigidly truthful, where the issue concerned only himself. Where it was a case of saving a friend, he was prepared to act in a manner reminiscent of an American expert witness. ~ P G Wodehouse,

317:It’s very dear to me, the issue of gay marriage. Or as I like to call it: 'marriage.' You know, because I had lunch this afternoon, not gay lunch. I parked my car; I didn’t gay park it. ~ Liz Feldman,

318:The issue is that my book, and so many others, are not available for pre-order from Amazon. I hadn't realized how much that mattered for new authors. And how much Amazon is hurting us. ~ Edan Lepucki,

319:The world has changed from when I was a young teen feeling ashamed for being gay. The issue of gay marriage is now a political issue. That would have been unthinkable when I was young. ~ George Takei,

320:Folk music has a sort of a bubbling-under quality. The stream runs through the cultural consciousness, and whether or not it's on the radio is not the issue. Folk music is always there. ~ Mary Travers,

321:Hillary Clinton is for sanctuary cities. She's for catch and release. She's for open borders. She's actually considerably to the left of President Obama on the issue of immigration. ~ Kellyanne Conway,

322:Is that really the issue [of bathrooms and gender] we want to be pushing leading up to a momentous election like this one? It's that shortsightedness that comes from identity politics. ~ Steve Inskeep,

323:Poets often have a conscious awareness that they are struggling with the daimonic, and that the issue is their working something through from the depths which push the self to a new plane. ~ Rollo May,

324:So what I truly believe is that along with more money and police and prisons, what we most need more of is love. This is not being simplistic; it’s at the very heart of the issue. ~ John Edward Douglas,

325:The issue isn’t whether we’ve experienced pain. All people have, even those who seem to have it all together. God is bigger than people’s pain, and he can heal it. God’s love heals all. ~ David Gregory,

326:And I think for some - not all - but for some Democrats, the issue of immigration is better politically if they just leave it the way it is now because they can use it against Republicans. ~ Marco Rubio,

327:Even to me the issue of "stay small, sweet, quiet, and modest" sounds like an outdated problem, but the truth is that women still run into those demands whenever we find and use our voices. ~ Bren Brown,

328:Great is the issue at stake, greater than appears, whether a man is to be good or bad. And what will any one be profited if, under the influence of money or power, he neglect justice and virtue? ~ Plato,

329:The Civil War was started over economic issues, not slavery. The War was not popular in the North until the issue of slavery was added at a later time to turn it into a moral crusade. ~ G Edward Griffin,

330:The issue is we're losing leverage. Governments are increasingly getting more power and we are increasingly losing our ability to control that power, and even to be aware of that power. ~ Edward Snowden,

331:Today, scientists sound the alarm on other environmental dangers. Vested interests still hire their own scientists to confuse the issue. But in the end, nature, will not be fooled. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson,

332:By spotlighting the issue of intent, Hamilton identified the criteria for libel that still hold sway in America today: that the writing in question must be false, defamatory, and malicious. ~ Ron Chernow,

333:Even to me the issue of "stay small, sweet, quiet, and modest" sounds like an outdated problem, but the truth is that women still run into those demands whenever we find and use our voices. ~ Brene Brown,

334:The issue, then, is that we are interpreting a global world with a system built for local landscapes. And because we’ve never seen it before, exponential change makes even less sense. ~ Peter H Diamandis,

335:Every story I write starts with a dilemma or a theme. Once I am convinced that this is the issue that is perturbing my thoughts, I start to look for characters capable of representing it. ~ Siegfried Lenz,

336:I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20. ~ Neil Jordan,

337:I think the pursuit of trying to understand things is really a critical issue. I see the issue of life and death in everything I do. I'm trying to find answers. It can be quite frustrating. ~ Robert Longo,

338:Never use damaging personal information to invalidate your adversary and, by implication, his contentions. ... If you watch your words when you fight, the issue can usually be resolved. ~ Joseph Telushkin,

339:The ideal form of common stock analysis leads to a valuation of the issue which can be compared with the current price to determine whether or not the security is an attractive purchase. ~ Benjamin Graham,

340:We will not accept any...coexistence with Israel...Today the issue is not the establishment of peace between the Arab states and Israel....The war with Israel is in effect since 1948. ~ Gamal Abdel Nasser,

341:Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals, but that's one of the hardest things to do because you don't always know exactly where you're going, and you shouldn't. ~ George Lucas,

342:they kept asking him about immigration. That opened his eyes.” The issue also dovetailed with Trump’s long-held view that the United States was being taken advantage of by hostile foreigners. ~ Joshua Green,

343:Yesterday was not only daylight saving time, but also International Women's Day. What better way to address the issue of inequality for women than giving them a day that's missing an hour. ~ David Letterman,

344:In my address last year, I spoke on the issue of gaming. My preference then is my preference now: to keep gaming within its existing contours, but to explore a better deal for all Minnesotans. ~ Tim Pawlenty,

345:Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,

346:The study of consciousness that can extend beyond the body is extremely important for the issue of survival, since it is this part of human personality that would be likely to survive death. ~ Stanislav Grof,

347:Trust me when I say this: the issue isn’t whether your life is going well or falling apart; the question is, what makes you so sure you can tell the difference? Things are seldom as they appear. ~ Levi Lusko,

348:We're constantly making choices about the way we spend our time. The issue is not between the good and the bad, but between the good and the best. So often, the enemy of the best is the good. ~ Stephen Covey,

349:I blew my girlfriend a kiss. I hope she was watching. Oh, she was. Great game! I write, stepping right around the issue of the kiss. J and I had a lot of fun watching you guys mow down Chicago. ~ Sarina Bowen,

350:The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism. The issue truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background. ~ George Orwell,

351:The issue of civil rights was too much for the establishment to handle. One of the chapters of history thats least studied by historians is the 300 to 500 riots in the U.S. between 1965 and 1970. ~ Tom Hayden,

352:I'm a firm believer in denial. My reasoning is why deal with unpleasantness today when you could get hit by a bus tomorrow. And if you procrastinate long enough, maybe the issue will go away. ~ Janet Evanovich,

353:Unfortunately, very few people in America know the real name of Hurricane Katrina because the coal and oil industries have spent millions of dollars to keep the public in doubt about the issue. ~ Ross Gelbspan,

354:He too is a machine amid machines; A piston brain pumps out the shapes of thought, A beating heart cuts out emotion’s modes; An insentient energy fabricates a soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

355:Realism in foreign policy means careful consideration of all aspects pertinent to the issue, before taking a decision. This is the only way you can move from where you are to someplace else. ~ Henry A Kissinger,

356:when you talk about the issue of murder, I believe that if an individual had a small alternative, a moment to think, a person to lean on, in that split second, it probably never would’ve happened. ~ Laura Bates,

357:The issue for us is rebuilding a governing majority that is comfortable with differences that can transcend the divisiveness and unify behind the principles that we know our party has succeeded on. ~ Eric Cantor,

358:When you are consumed with the rightness or wrongness of a given issue—whether it’s fracking or gun control or genetically engineered food—it’s easy to lose track of what the issue actually is. ~ Steven D Levitt,

359:The issue is not what part of speech people happen to express a concept in, but whether their language “feels” it. Well, on babies’ fat, English feels it, as do quite certainly all languages on earth. ~ Anonymous,

360:I don't want to get in a big, long discussion about right and wrong, but our company has been working on the issue of underage drinking and alcohol abuse for a long time. I've been outspoken about it. ~ Pete Coors,

361:I mean five thousand years ago people emerge out of nowhere -sproing!- with brains and everything and begin wrecking the planet. You'd think we'd give the issue a little more thought than we do. ~ Douglas Coupland,

362:Made from divinity must mean mindstate to create is intrinsic - no fiction. Stop playin' with your power, your inner 'G', and build on purpose - accordingly. Being free is for free, so force the issue. ~ T F Hodge,

363:I'm a storyteller. I feel like the issue of discourse is an important one because there's a lot of political and ideological discourse that goes around, and we relate to that on an intellectual level. ~ Ayad Akhtar,

364:That's the problem in my industry. Anyone can go and open a f - ing hotel. Anyone can go and buy a restaurant. It's not like a doctor or a lawyer, you need certain qualifications. That's the issue. ~ Chelsea Handler,

365:I believe it is the best method to get the buy-in for the road we have to travel. I believe it is a problem-solving process about how we collectively come forward with a strategy to deal with the issue. ~ Brian Cowen,

366:So the issue is not character flaws among the elites. The issue, rather, is a system in which some people sleep on beds made of ivory while others end up being sold for the price of a pair of sandals. ~ Marcus J Borg,

367:The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man; and the answer to the question is decisive for one’s view of the nature and destiny of man. ~ Richard M Weaver,

368:There are five steps to correctly performing a Walking Your Blues Away session. They are: Define the issue. Bring up the story. Walk with the issue. Notice how the issue changes. Anchor the new state. ~ Thom Hartmann,

369:So here’s the issue,” said Adara briskly. “Mr Fleetwood—” “Was his first name Mac?” asked Elliot. “No, why would you ask that?” Adara snapped. “No reason,” Elliot told her, disappointed. “Continue ~ Sarah Rees Brennan,

370:The issue is that we, with our fears, our attacks, our judgments, our blame, and our constant emphasis on the realm of the body rather than the realm of love, eclipse the experience of true love. ~ Marianne Williamson,

371:The issue of racism happens all over the world. Granted, people - especially Americans - don't know the the Canadian culture. But if you look outside this country, it's a problem all around the planet. ~ Stephan James,

372:We, the present generation, have the responsibility to act as a trustee of the rich natural wealth for the future generations. The issue is not merely about climate change; it is about climate justice. ~ Narendra Modi,

373:If only women are talking about women's rights, then the issue has failed from the start. If you think about the Holocaust, that wasn't just a Jewish issue. Civil rights weren't just a black issue. ~ Nicholas D Kristof,

374:The issue of the Betrayal was so central to that, I felt the need to comment upon it. My choices were to ignore the games and put them 'outside' of continuity or to integrate them. I chose the latter. ~ Raymond E Feist,

375:There is something beyond the natural chaos that is woman or the chaos with implied order that is man, and that's the totality. To stay as we are, is not the issue, but to awake from the dream of life. ~ Frederick Lenz,

376:ho'oponopono (Hawaiian): Solving a problem by talking it out. After an invocation of the gods, the aggrieved parties sit down and discuss the issue until it is set right (pono means righteousness). ~ Howard Rheingold,

377:I'm not a politician. I'm not a policy wonk. I was a political reporter, but that's not really what turns me on. What turns me on is how people perceive the issue and how people see people like me. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas,

378:When the question arose whether I, as a member of the royal family, should take part in active combat in the Falklands, there was no question in her mind, and it only took her two days to sort the issue. ~ Prince Andrew,

379:Observe, in politics, that the term extremism has become a synonym of "evil," regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are extreme about, but that you are "extreme" - i.e., consistent). ~ Ayn Rand,

380:These kids are already hard. They don't need to be made harder. The issue is softening them up. They need to learn how to care about life again. They've lost that. That's what we need to give back to them. ~ Edward Humes,

381:It's very important to understand that climate change is not just another issue in this complicated world of proliferating issues. Climate change is THE issue which, unchecked, will swamp all other issues. ~ Ross Gelbspan,

382:Remember: It doesn’t matter if you never do what you’re describing on these pages, because finishing a project is not the issue here. This is about your vision and the free play of ideas for pure enjoyment. ~ Barbara Sher,

383:There is the issue of security. Countless innocent American lives have been stolen because our politicians have failed in their duty to secure our borders and enforce our laws like they have to be enforced. ~ Donald Trump,

384:I have lived too long to cherish many illusions about the essential high-mindedness of men when brought into stark confrontation with the issue of control over their security, and their property interests. ~ Haile Selassie,

385:Though the issue of collaboration, whether active or passive, remains a highly emotive matter in France, the fact was that, in the summer of 1940, most people in the unoccupied zone accepted the armistice. ~ Jonathan Fenby,

386:For Trump and his most dedicated confederates there was only one truly reliable issue: illegal immigration. In Trump’s short political history, the issue had never failed to inspire and activate core voters. ~ Michael Wolff,

387:Our ties are deep and long-standing. We are dependent on each other. And no matter what the issue of the day, whether it be softwood lumber, whether it be a war in Iraq, we need to continue to work together. ~ Paul Cellucci,

388:The failure so far of the governments of so many of the worlds most powerful countries in the face of such egregious unfairness ... to make the slightest progress on the issue of fair trade is hard to explain. ~ Colin Firth,

389:I am a Republican. I'm loyal to the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. And I believe that my party, in some ways, has strayed from those principles, particularly on the issue of fiscal discipline. ~ John McCain,

390:In more than 20 years I've spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics. ~ Buzz Bissinger,

391:Obviously, if I'm reading in Vienna or Venezuela or Italy, there's the issue of language, and I will make choices that are more sound oriented. Or I'll try to incorporate those languages and occasions somehow. ~ Anne Waldman,

392:Taiwan will probably not declare independence. The question isn't independence. The issue is whether Taiwan will declare itself as a sovereign separate state. That will start a huge crisis if that happens. ~ Henry A Kissinger,

393:It would be bypassing the issue to say that the artist's business is to work with this and that material or manipulate the findings of perceptual psychology, and that the rest should be left to other professions. ~ Hans Haacke,

394:My mother has often said that the issue of women is the unfinished business of the 21st century. That is certainly true. But so, too, are the issues of LGBT rights the unfinished business of the 21st century. ~ Chelsea Clinton,

395:The issue, then, is not, What is the best way to teach? but, What is mathematics really all about?... Controversies about…teaching cannot be resolved without confronting problems about the nature of mathematics. ~ Reuben Hersh,

396:And that, quite simply, is the issue. We live in a finite world with finite resources. Although it may sometimes seem quite big, earth is really very small - a tiny blue and green oasis of life in a cold universe. ~ David Suzuki,

397:I made 'Bowling for Columbine' in the hope the school shootings would stop and that we would address the issue of how easy it is to get a gun in the United States, and tragically, those school shootings continue. ~ Michael Moore,

398:In combating prejudice, then, the issue is not simply how we might teach the majority to be less judgmental, but also how we might all learn to value a “disabled” or “deviant” person’s more creative perceptions. ~ Ellen J Langer,

399:Senator Biden was correct by calling for more to look into Governor Cuomo's defense policy. It is clear to me, by researching the governor's record on the issue, that he would be a wildcard on national defense issues. ~ Sam Nunn,

400:We've got a cultural issue in America. We've got to change the whole way the issue is looked at. That's the mission. Some in the political process don't have enough patience for that, and I probably don't either. ~ George W Bush,

401:Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his Cabinet because, whatever personal feelings there were, the issue was 'How can we get this country through this time of crisis?'  ~ Barack Obama,

402:Status, prestige, authority, degree, licence, credential, badge of office, reputation, manners — all of these marks of social approval mean nothing to the NTs when the issue is the utility of goal-directed action. ~ David Keirsey,

403:The issue is that if you hold onto the resentment against yourself, you're just going to recreate that destructive pattern in different forms because unconsciously it's still a belief system that limits you. ~ Gabrielle Bernstein,

404:Throughout this book, we’ve referred to the balance between the benefits and dark sides of the Age of Context. Perhaps the most complex, controversial and sometimes volatile dark side is the issue of user privacy. ~ Robert Scoble,

405:"We have been trying to address the issue that Nietszche brought up, which is something like the reunification of the spirit of mankind. It's something like that. Well, we're slogging through it. That's the aim." ~ Jordan Peterson,

406:The issue [Israeli-Palestinian conflict], already lasting more than half a century, has brought deep suffering to the Palestinian people and remains an important reason of extended turbulence in the Middle East region. ~ Xi Jinping,

407:The reality is that everybody makes mistakes. The issue isn't whether you will make them, it's what you will do about them. It's whether you will choose the path of humility and courage or the path of ego and pride. ~ Stephen Covey,

408:Whatever you focus on during meditation, you psychically travel to and touch. In meditation, when you think of somebody, you actually go into their aura. That is the issue. Keep your meditation pristine, unalloyed. ~ Frederick Lenz,

409:What we've begun to do is discuss the issue, the constitutional issues around that idea, again the privacy issue, which may not be unconstitutional but may pertain to our unique sense of privacy in the United States. ~ Chris Asplen,

410:It's forcing the issue of perception by rendering an image that is just at the edge of perception, which in someway forces you to look more closely and for you to adjust your vision so you can see in the dark. ~ Kerry James Marshall,

411:To me, when there's movies that are about, you know, guys named Hell Boy, and you know, the issue that they have with our movie that she doesn't get an abortion, I mean, I think there's greater suspensions of disbelief. ~ Seth Rogen,

412:"We have been trying to address the issue that Nietszche brought up, which is something like the reunification of the spirit of mankind. It's something like that. Well, we're slogging through it. That's the aim." ~ Jordan B Peterson,

413:Addressing the economic plight of women may ultimately be the feminist platform that draws a collective response. It may well become the place of collective organizing, the common ground, the issue that unites all women. ~ bell hooks,

414:I won't lie—I don't care. And you should quit trying to deceive yourself because I can tell by the way you show no desire to do anything but complain about the issue that you don't honestly care either. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,

415:There is a culture among academics to be obscure. If you're too clear, you can't be saying anything interesting. The issue isn't word length. The issue is a commitment to speaking in a way an audience can understand. ~ Lawrence Lessig,

416:As Sister Joan Chittister, a direct descendant of Hildegard in the Benedictine tradition, says, the issue today is not “radical feminism,” which the Vatican accuses Catholic sisters in America of, but “radical patriarchy. ~ Matthew Fox,

417:I am sure that long after the beta site is fully populated, that committee will still have a generous budget to ‘study’ the issue, and much of that money will be stolen by officials in tiny countries you never heard of. ~ Craig Alanson,

418:Net neutrality would require that every search engine produce an equal number of results that satisfy every disagreement about the issue... Just think of it as Fairness Doctrine for the Internet. I'm not making this up. ~ Rush Limbaugh,

419:No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian has a theology. The issue, then, is not, dowe want to have a theology? That's a given. The real issue is, do we have a sound theology.? Do we embrace true or false doctrine? ~ R C Sproul,

420:But, Sire, the curse which shall ruin you eventually is the selfsame which ruins all men, irrespective of their actions good or evil, and that is Time, which is the issue of an incestuous act performed by God on reality. ~ Thomas Berger,

421:How we come to have the world-views we do is an interesting question. No doubt reason plays a part, but human needs for meaning and purpose are usually more important. At times personal taste may be what decides the issue. ~ John N Gray,

422:The issue is not about having a small church or a big one. It is about how to keep the great commission at the forefront of every believer’s mind. It is about helping the church go beyond “come and listen” to “go and tell. ~ David Platt,

423:The issue of gender was never my biggest concern; my biggest concern was doing good work. When the feminist movement really got going, I wasn't an active part of it because I was more concerned with my own mental pursuits. ~ Patti Smith,

424:We have to have better intelligence. We have to have better interdiction capabilities. And so the issue is not how much we spend or how hard we try; the issue is are we doing it the right way? Are we being smart about it? ~ Barack Obama,

425:It meant different things to different people, but somehow it meant them all intensely. Shostakovich's words just confuse the issue. His symphony itself is what remains. Listen to it. It is your symphony to write with him. ~ M T Anderson,

426:The most critical step for solving any problem is to first fully understand the problem; sugar coating the issue, denying what is really there, declining to accept the facts, is a sure path to disaster. “Get Real! ~ Robert Louis Stevenson,

427:They try to strike terror in Southern mothers, lest their children grow up to fall in love with Negroes. If they didn’t make an issue of it, the issue would rarely arise. If the issue arose, it would be met on private ground. ~ Harper Lee,

428:A lot of us will be able to show how God’s gifts benefited us. But that’s not the question. The issue with a steward is, how did the King’s business fare under your management? Is the King better off? Was His agenda furthered? ~ Tony Evans,

429:break with the Crown, even though he seemed to consider himself middle of the road on the issue. His stances and politicking gradually got the better of him and again landed him in hot water with the local authorities more ~ Brian Kilmeade,

430:I think it's really important to enlarge the issue behind abortion. I have been serving for over two decades and I have seen year in and year out largely the Republicans voting against women's contraception, family planning. ~ Barack Obama,

431:A lot of time we don't get into politics because we don't believe anything you're saying and we can't understand what you're saying because we ask you question and you tap dance around the issue so much that we forget what we asked. ~ Ne Yo,

432:If we are addressing the issue of weapons of mass destruction, we need to send a uniform, consistent message that there is zero tolerance to any country who is developing weapons of mass destruction, North Korea included. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei,

433:The issue of providing women all forms of preventative health care has been and remains very important. The, the importance of protecting religious liberties in this country has been important to the president and will always be. ~ Jacob Lew,

434:In fact, the family as an institution is both oppressive and protective and, depending on the issue, is experienced sometimes one way, sometimes the other - often in some mix of the two - by most people who live in families. ~ Lillian B Rubin,

435:On the issue of Iraq, it is my hope, and my challenge to my colleagues, that our debate will be based on what is best for the future of our nation and for Iraq, not what's best for a political party or presidential campaign. ~ Mitch McConnell,

436:Barriers to accumulation are perpetually dissolving and re-forming around the issue of so-called natural scarcities and on occasion, as Marx might put it, these barriers can be transformed into absolute contradictions and crises. ~ David Harvey,

437:I don't want anybody to be confused that the issue of police and community is one part of a broader set of issues. Our children need to be properly educated. They need to be trained so that they can get jobs and be functional. ~ Elijah Cummings,

438:the issue is not whether I agree with someone but rather how I treat someone with whom I profoundly disagree. We Christians are called to use the “weapons of grace,” which means treating even our opponents with love and respect. ~ Philip Yancey,

439:Go back to the school in which you will make progress in being a Christian. Study your lessons, settle the issue of ambition, make Christ your preoccupation-and you will learn to enjoy the privileges of being truly content. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson,

440:Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force? ~ Ayn Rand,

441:I definitely write from a need to try, in my own two hours, to right a wrong. My little play is inconsequential in terms of whether or not we have health care, but it may affect the way people who see the play think about the issue. ~ Lisa Loomer,

442:The issue of environmental quality is one which transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a cause which can attract, and very sincerely, liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, freaks, and middle-class straights. ~ Russell Kirk,

443:In any Christian view of life, self-fulfillment must never be permitted to become the controlling issue. The issue is service, the service of real people. The question is, 'How can I be most useful?', not, 'How can I feel most useful?' ~ D A Carson,

444:Mitch, it is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that. This is your time to be in your thirties. I had my time to be in my thirties, and now is my time to be seventy-eight. ~ Mitch Albom,

445:Once you know that every moment and every person and every situation has something to teach you, you're a student all day. You know it's the depth of your observation that is the issue - not how much the world has to show you. ~ Marianne Williamson,

446:When I wake up, I'll read something and I'll feel angry. And then I'll calm down a little bit. I'll think about it. And then I'll tweet something that talks about the issue, and if I can inject some satire and humor, I'll try to do that. ~ Ted Lieu,

447:The issue is whether the ultimate civil authority of the United States can tolerate actions in contempt of constitutional lines of authority. Any lessening of civil power over military power must inevitably lead away from democracy. ~ Harold Russell,

448:For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its annihilation, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes not the improvement of the existing society but the foundation of a new one. ~ Karl Marx,

449:Policy makers and business leaders take note: money matters. But often the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table—so that people can focus on the work rather than on the cash. ~ Daniel H Pink,

450:The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution. This Marxist-Leninist principle of revolution holds well universally, for China and for all other countries. ~ Mao Zedong,

451:Even today we don't pay serious attention to the issue of poverty, because the powerful remain relatively untouched by it. Most people distance themselves from the issue by saying that if the poor worked harder, they wouldn't be poor. ~ Muhammad Yunus,

452:This is a deeply spiritual issue...Do we want to spend more time trying to care for our fellow man or do we want to just pursue more virtual reality? That's the issue before us.. and it's being played out in the world of the environment. ~ Ed Begley Jr,

453:Well, I have a message for the nameless , gutless whimperers out there. Quit whining. Unlike some other shows, we here at CROSSFIRE actually present both sides of the issue. ... Look, if you want namby-pamby one-sided arguments go to Fox. ~ Paul Begala,

454:I actually took them all on quite handily, although I learned when I came to study the issue that I was completely wrong. I also came to believe that the war on drugs is one of the last vestiges of institutionalized racism in our society. ~ Harvey Pekar,

455:For a novelist, it’s kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture. That said, I’m in a unique position to speak on behalf of Afghanistan on certain issues that I feel are important, particularly the issue of Afghan refugees. ~ Khaled Hosseini,

456:The issue isn't gun control but state control -- obtuse and arbitrary state control, state control run amok. ... Forget guns. If Dr. Hudson, Mr. Turnbull, Dr. Gingrich and others end up in jail it won't be for their guns but our liberties. ~ George Jonas,

457:Obviously, the issue for the Left isn't aging white males; it is conservatives, whether they are young or old, white or nonwhite, male or female. If female aborigines were conservative, the Left would have a problem with female aborigines. ~ Dennis Prager,

458:Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talks of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile. ~ William Lyon Mackenzie King,

459:Whether the issue was black political power or nuclear power, Scott-Heron didn't mince words. His comeback record, "I'm New Here," doesn't mince words either, but instead of political battles, these songs suggest he's fighting personal ones. ~ Will Hermes,

460:People love to hear music on their personal devices, but the issue really becomes, if you're able to download music, you should know this download and the quality of it is going to be of the highest, and that it has a value to it and on it. ~ Stevie Wonder,

461:Peter must have thought, "Who am I compared to Mr. Faithfulness (John)?" But Jesus clarified the issue. John was responsible for John. Peter was responsible for Peter. And each had only one command to heed: "Follow Me." (John 21:20-22) ~ Charles R Swindoll,

462:With automobile accidents, mechanical failure is seldom the cause; and most often, operator error. I find the same to be true with corporate failings…. the people are rarely the issue… the shortcoming is most often found in the leadership. ~ Steve Maraboli,

463:I think the issue of women's choice is essential for a woman being able to have their lives - if they cannot control their own bodies by choosing if or when to have a child, then they cannot control their working life or anything around them. ~ Tavis Smiley,

464:Over the centures many, including Aristotle, believed that the universe must have always existed in order to avoid the issue of how it was set up. Others believed the universe had a beginning, and used it as an argument for the existence of God. ~ Anonymous,

465:I think conventional wisdom is that time is not on our side. But there are a number of members of Congress who have primaries and when those primaries are done, they may be more inclined to address the issue of comprehensive immigration reform. ~ John McCain,

466:Psychedelics can carry you farther and faster than most people care to go. Once you get to psychedelics, it's no longer a matter of seeking the answer, you have found the answer. Now the issue changes dramatically, you must face the answer. ~ Terence McKenna,

467:We need to ask the moral questions: Do I have a right to be rich? And do I have a right to be content living in a world with so much poverty and inequality? These questions motivate us to view the issue of inequality as central to human living. ~ Amartya Sen,

468:You cannot evade the issue of God, whether you are talking about pigs or the binomial theory...Things can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is false, but nothing can be irrelevant to the proposition that Christianity is true. ~ G K Chesterton,

469:Having beef with someone is unnecessary and avoidable. Whatever the issue, if not positive, it is an opportunity to cut the excess fat from an unhealthy dietary network. Simply excuse yourself from the table of negativity and lean forward in peace. ~ T F Hodge,

470:It is not the issue here wether punctuation of communicational sequence is, in general, good or bad, as it should be immediately obvious that punctuation organizes behavioral events and is therefore vital to ongoing interactions. ~ Paul Watzlawick,

471:The answer, I'm guessing, is probably the best and most sustaining answer to nearly every question arising inside a marriage, no matter who you are or what the issue is: You find ways to adapt. If you're in it forever, there's really no choice. ~ Michelle Obama,

472:Hunter found the edge of the sink to lean against; watching her mind hunt and wrestle the issue with a strategic defense against the danger to the pack was making it really hard to focus. It was so damned sexy to witness that he could barely breathe. ~ L A Banks,

473:People are not so interested,’ Kim Sang-hun, director of the Database Center, told the Christian Science Monitor after his organization published the book. ‘The indifference of South Korean society to the issue of North Korean rights is so awful. ~ Blaine Harden,

474:The civil rights movement didn't deal with the issue of political disenfranchisement in the Northern cities. It didn't deal with the issues that were happening in places like Detroit, where there was a deep process of deindustrialization going on. ~ Danny Glover,

475:The issue that we are raising is not whether Trump is mentally ill. It is whether he is dangerous. Dangerousness is not a psychiatric diagnosis. One does not have to be “mentally ill,” as both law and psychiatry define it, in order to be dangerous. ~ Bandy X Lee,

476:You see, a conflict always begins with an issue—a difference of opinion, an argument. But by the time it turns into a war, the issue doesn’t matter anymore, because now it’s about one thing and one thing only: how much each side hates the other. ~ Neal Shusterman,

477:The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance. ~ Richard Price,

478:Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,

479:There is no doubt the charge was an awful gamble and that no normal precautions were possible. The issue as far as I was concerned had to be left to Fortune or to God - or to whatever may decide these things. I am content and shall not complain. ~ Winston Churchill,

480:You see, a conflict always begins with an issue - a difference of opinion, an argument. But by the time it turns into a war, the issue doesn't matter anymore, because now it's about one thing and one thing only: how much each side hates the other. ~ Neal Shusterman,

481:I don't perceive an anti-religious agenda, especially with regard to Christians and Christianity. The issue being debated was creationism, the idea that the Earth is 6,000 years old. As I understand it, this involves the Bible's Old Testament exclusively. ~ Bill Nye,

482:I have found by experience that man makes his plans to be upset by God, but, at the same time, where the ultimate goal is the search of truth, on matter how a man's plans are frustrated the issue is never injurious and often better than anticipated. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,

483:The EU Kids Online project is the most theoretically informed and methodologically sophisticated study we have on the issue of risks in the new electronic environment. This book is rich in details and insights that greatly advance our understanding. ~ David Finkelhor,

484:I don't like debates anyway. I have never debated anyone, I think they're a very masculine form - like an intellectual prizefight. They let you know who the better debater is but they don't really tell you about the issue. It's all heat, but no light. ~ Gloria Steinem,

485:Putting aside the issue of how compelling her need for money may have been, and how significant her understanding of the consequences, we suggest that her consent is irrelevant. There are, in a civilized society, some things that money cannot buy.41 ~ Michael J Sandel,

486:The issue I focus on the most is extreme poverty. I think it's kind of out of sight out of mind. I wish there would be more stories about that to connect people to what's happening. To personalize it, to make it real to people, to inspire them to action. ~ John Legend,

487:As business leaders we need to understand that lack of data is not the issue. Most businesses have more than enough data to use constructively; we just don't know how to use it. The reality is that most businesses are already data rich, but insight poor. ~ Bernard Marr,

488:For Guy the news quickened the sickening suspicion he had tried to ignore, had succeeded in ignoring more often than not in his service in the Halberdiers; that he was engaged in a war in which courage and a just cause were quite irrelevant to the issue. ~ Evelyn Waugh,

489:Rushing to my side, he palms my face before I can protest. “That’s exactly the issue, though. You don’t know your own mind. It’s full of the secrets of your past, and instead of trying to understand that, you are charging pig-headed down the wrong path. ~ Siobhan Davis,

490:I know this might be breaking news to Nicholas Kristof, but guns being 'more lethal than anything else you have around' is sort of the whole point. The issue should not really be the lethality of the gun, but the but the psychology of the person holding it. ~ Glenn Beck,

491:Once we secure our borders - and the federal government has not done a good job - then Congress, I believe, needs to take up the issue and look at how we try and identify those people that are here, that are national security risks to the United States. ~ David Dewhurst,

492:The key is to be grateful for the scenarios we choose and those in which we find ourselves. The issue is to forgive ourselves for the judgments we have made about the work we do, the people we work with, and the value of what we bring to the work we do. ~ Iyanla Vanzant,

493:For conservatives, the issue is that for generations now, they have failed to make the case for their values. They haven't even conveyed conservative values to many of their children. And when they have, the university has often succeeded in undoing them. ~ Dennis Prager,

494:We need to start prioritizing people, not polar bears. We're probably less adaptable than them, anyway. The farther you are from the Beltway, the more you can have a conversation about climate no matter how people vote. I never try to politicize the issue. ~ David Titley,

495:Before anything else, Andre, let’s look at the issue differently. In order to become true helpers for suffering spirits, whether discarnate or not, we must understand wickedness as insanity, rebelliousness as ignorance, and despair as infirmity. ~ Francisco C ndido Xavier,

496:Love is like this, Faye thinks now. We love people because they love us. It’s narcissistic. It’s best to be perfectly clear about this and not let abstractions like fate and destiny muddle the issue. Peggy, after all, could have picked any boy in the school. ~ Nathan Hill,

497:On the one hand we have got to ask, are there some areas of universal benefits that are no longer affordable? But on the other hand let us look at the issue of dependency where we have trapped people in poverty through the extent of welfare that they have. ~ David Cameron,

498:She [Sarah Palin] doesn`t quite understand the issue [post-traumatic stress disorder] and, you know, if she`s going to continue to be in this space, hopefully she can do some homework and make some policy recommendation that are relevant to fixing the problem. ~ Jon Soltz,

499:Another way to frame the issue is that leaning in when you have significant caregiving responsibilities requires an intensive support structure at home and lots of flexibility at work. Think about simple physics. Imagine a tree leaning over the water ~ Anne Marie Slaughter,

500:Many will think they may reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are opposed to the authority of certain men held in the highest reverence by their inexperienced judgments; not considering that my works are the issue of pure and simple experience. ~ Leonardo da Vinci,

501:After all, he did say you were the issue of an encounter between your father and a traeling hatcha-hatcha dancer." There was a gasp of horror from the crowd. Duncan, smiling thinly, said through gritted teeth: "Thank you so much for reminding us all, Anthony. ~ John Flanagan,

502:And where does religion come into it? Are Protestant countries inherently less corrupt?” “No,” she said. “I don’t think it’s that simple. The issue, I suppose, is whether a culture stresses telling the truth. That’s the real point. It’s not religion. ~ Alexander McCall Smith,

503:Drones are a tool, not a policy. The policy is assassination. While every president since Gerald Ford has upheld an executive order banning assassinations by U.S. personnel, Congress has avoided legislating the issue or even defining the word “assassination. ~ Jeremy Scahill,

504:I have found by experience that man makes his plans to be often upset by God, but at the same time where the ultimate goal is the search of truth, no matter how a man’s plans are frustrated, the issue is never injurious and often better than anticipated. The ~ Mahatma Gandhi,

505:Peace is not something that happens by accident. Peace is like silence; it is always there. The lack of harmony in our lives is like noise superimposed on the silence. THe issue is not how to create peace, but how to live in a way that eliminates the noise. ~ Gabriel Cousens,

506:Peace is not something that happens by accident. Peace is like silence; it is always there. The lack of harmony in our lives is like noise superimposed on the silence. The issue is not how to create peace, but how to live in a way that eliminates the noise. ~ Gabriel Cousens,

507:Women worldwide ages 15 through 44 are more likely to die or be maimed because of male violence than because of cancer, malaria, war and traffic accidents combined,” writes Nicholas D. Kristof, one of the few prominent figures to address the issue regularly. ~ Rebecca Solnit,

508:I hope, by being honest about what happened to me, to help nourish a culture of honesty that might make something different - and better - possible. We really need to squarely face the issue of child abuse in America, and to look at our perversity, our illness. ~ Laura Mullen,

509:In a world where we are accustomed to rivalries over possession, authority, and borders, and people clashing over the issue, “Ours,” or “Mine, not yours,” it is rather strange to find two people debating whose the kingdom is not, and asserting: “Yours, not mine. ~ R K Narayan,

510:The issue is not answering questions, but leaving discussions open. Not in the sense that probably one day you are going to have an answer or you are not going to have an answer. Just live your life, do what you have to do, what you are enthusiastic about doing. ~ Paulo Coelho,

511:Michael Bealmear is a philanthropist, and he has become interested in the issue of refugees, and he proposed that we do an event in his community, where we could dedicate an entire evening focused on the global refugee crisis, focused primarily on Afghanistan. ~ Khaled Hosseini,

512:your book is full of piquant ideas on how sexual assault is practiced by many people but in African countries the issue is pressurized by females themselves as they tend to dress on night attires as a result males are piquant ed to commit an offense ~ Nicholas D Kristof,

513:Sometimes a single battle decides everything and sometimes, too, the slightest circumstance decides the issue of a battle. There is a moment in every battle at which the least manoeuvre is decisive and gives superiority, as one drop of water causes overflow. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte,

514:The issue is not whether people are "good enough" for a particular type of society; rather it is a matter of developing the kind of social institutions that are most conducive to expanding the potentialities we have for intelligence, grace, sociability and freedom. ~ Paul Goodman,

515:The issue is not whether people are 'good enough' for a particular type of society; rather it is a matter of developing the kind of social institutions that are most conducive to expanding the potentialities we have for intelligence, grace, sociability and freedom. ~ Paul Goodman,

516:Thoughtful men must feel that the fate of civilization upon this continent is involved in the issue of our contest. Among the most satisfying proofs of this conviction is the hearty devotion everywhere exhibited by our schools and colleges to the national cause. ~ Abraham Lincoln,

517:To put the issue bluntly, are the Beatitudes true? If so, why doesn't the church encourage poverty and mourning and meekness and persecution instead of striving against them? What is the real meaning of the Beatitudes, this cryptic ethical core of Jesus' teaching? ~ Philip Yancey,

518:After all, he did say you were the issue of an encounter between your father and a traeling hatcha-hatcha dancer." There was a gasp of horror from the crowd. Duncan, smiling thinly, said through gritted teeth: "Thank you so much for reminding us all, Anthony. ~ John Flanagan,

519:If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead. ~ Timothy J Keller,

520:Once you stop talking about the female body empowering itself vis-à-vis male forays or invasions or male demands or the necessity to respond to husband and son to bring the issue down to a more concrete level, the body is a different manifestation physically. ~ Shirley Geok lin Lim,

521:Donald Trump brought up the issue of the birth certificate and it's getting huge buzz around the country. Even Chris Matthews has called for, you know, the birth certificate to be released. Why can't they just release the birth certificate, you know, and just move on? ~ Sean Hannity,

522:Socrates pointed out that we carry on as though death were the greatest of all calamities-yet, for all we know, it might be the greatest of all blessings. What are we going to call good? What are we going to call bad? Good or bad is never our choice, or even the issue. ~ Steve Hagen,

523:desensitization: helping patients become less reactive to certain emotions and sensations. But is this the correct goal? Maybe the issue is not desensitization but integration: putting the traumatic event into its proper place in the overall arc of one’s life. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,

524:If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead. ~ Timothy Keller,

525:People sometimes ask me what length I look for in a method. To me length is not the issue. The key is the semantic distance between the method name and the method body. If extracting improves clarity, do it, even if the name is longer than the code you have extracted. ~ Martin Fowler,

526:The Constitution gives us a standard to follow. We cannot define impeachable offenses to a greater degree than the language of the Constitution. But we all agree the issue is the public trust. Our duty is not to punish anyone. And our challenge is to avoid pettiness. ~ Asa Hutchinson,

527:The practice of baring all, analyzing every nuance embedded in a quarrel, is a surefire way to keep an argument alive. Better to establish a temporary peace and revisit the conflict later. Often, by then, both parties have decided the issue isn’t worth the relationship. ~ Sue Grafton,

528:You’ve gotta pick your battles in this world, Hazel,” my mom said. “But if this is the issue you want to champion, we will stand behind you.” “Quite a bit behind you,” my dad added, and Mom laughed. Anyway, I knew it was stupid, but I felt kind of bad for scrambled eggs. ~ John Green,

529:As morally troubling and politically charged as the issue of inequality has become, it's not likely to cause a populist revolt. Most Americans still have a generally positive view of the wealthy and, rightly or wrongly, believe they too can make it to Richistan someday. ~ Robert Frank,

530:Meaning bad isn't the issue. Meaning you do what you do. Not without consequences for other people, of course, sometimes very grave ones. But it's not very helpful to regard your choices as a series of right or wrong moves. They don't define you as much as you define them ~ Ann Packer,

531:The first signs of a shift to his later emphasis on the material and economic conditions of human life came in an essay written in 1843 entitled ‘On the Jewish Question’. The essay reviews two publications by Bruno Bauer on the issue of civil and political rights for Jews. ~ Anonymous,

532:If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead. ~ Timothy J Keller,

533:Regarding the mantra..."There is no overtraining" Just because you can handle large amounts of volume doesn't mean it's needed. That's the crux of the issue. Just because the body can tolerate something doesn't mean it's a necessity for progress. This is simply poor logic. ~ Steve Shaw,

534:Everything that we [with Shindzo Abe] are talking about has come to us as a result of the events of 70 years ago. In some way or other, during these 70 years we have been involved in some kind of dialogue on the issue, and that includes the conclusion of a peace treaty. ~ Vladimir Putin,

535:I believe that street photography is central to the issue of photography—that it is purely photographic, whereas the other genres, such as landscape and portrait photography, are a little more applied, more mixed in the with the history of painting and other art forms. ~ Joel Meyerowitz,

536:It drives me crazy to see so much of this planet's life so casually endangered. The first steps are so easy (drive smaller cars, for instance) that it's very hard to understand why we haven't taken them. But I know that this is the issue our generation will be judged by. ~ Bill McKibben,

537:We know about the issue of children being sold and adopted and taken away but what is so extraordinary is how these two people come through something like - how both of them do, in actual fact. I think that she's one of the most considerable people I've ever met, Philomena. ~ Judi Dench,

538:Between the philosopher's attitude towards the issue of reality and that of the mathematician there is this essential difference: for the philosopher the issue is paramount; the mathematician's love for reality is purely platonic. ~ Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1930).,

539:I felt the little beads of sweat pooling on my temple. Sit here and look nice...I could do that. But answer questions? I knew I wasn't going to win this little game; that wasn't the issue. I just really, really didn't want to look like a moron in front of the entire country. ~ Kiera Cass,

540:a judicial or quasi-judicial act on the other hand implies more than mere application of the mind or the formation of the opinion. It is a reference to the mode or manner in which that opinion is formed. It implies a ‘proposal’, an ‘opposition’ and the ‘decision’ on the issue. ~ Anonymous,

541:Go ahead and do things, the bigger the better, if your fundamentals are sound. Avoid procrastination. Do not quibble for an hour over things that might be decided in minutes. However, if the issue at stake is large, stay as long as the next man, but go ahead and do things. ~ John J Raskob,

542:There are problems with nursing - such as the issue of nurses all having to do degrees these days. But that doesn’t mean to say the entire infrastructure of nursing is falling about and that it is populated by unfeeling psychopaths, which is, frankly, the implication sometimes. ~ Jo Brand,

543:And the issue is never the merits of the evidence but always the jealous rivalry of the contestants to see which would be the official light unto the world. Right down to the present day we have been the spectators of a foolish contest between equally vain and bigoted rivals. ~ Hugh Nibley,

544:The issue should not be, we're going to tax you more to give you the services you want. The issue is, this is the wealthiest country in the world, and we're going to use that wealth to service human needs and not to service a military industrial corporate surveillance state. ~ Henry Giroux,

545:Forget all the conventional 'rules' but one. There is one golden rule: Stick to topics you deeply care about and don't keep your passion buttoned inside your vest. An audience's biggest turn-on is the speaker's obvious enthusiasm. If you are lukewarm about the issue, forget it! ~ Tom Peters,

546:The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society - we are on the eve of universal change. ~ Eugene V Debs,

547:There is also the issue of personal privacy when it comes the executive power. Throughout our nation's history, whether it was habeas corpus during the Civil War, Alien and Sedition Acts in World War I, or Japanese internment camps in World War II, presidents have gone too far. ~ Dick Durbin,

548:We Jews have put issue upon issue to the American people. Then we promote both sides of the issue as confusion reigns. With their eye's fixed on the issues, they fail to see who is behind every scene. We Jews toy with the American public as a cat toys with a mouse. ~ Harold Wallace Rosenthal,

549:Second, you should examine the Scriptures for principles that relate to the issue at hand. The Lord will never ask you to do anything that is morally wrong or in contradiction to His Word. If what you are considering violates a concept you find in the Word, you can forget it. ~ James C Dobson,

550:You can’t divide human beings into the “those who make sacrifices” and “those who don’t.” We all carry things in our hearts for which we are very willing to make sacrifices. The issue that divides us is for what, or for whom, are we willing to make these personal sacrifices. ~ Paul David Tripp,

551:Believe it or not, I supported Richard Nixon on the issue of presidential privilege. How could anyone conceive of being the president of the United States and think that every single thing that you say or do can become a part of the public record? It just seems so stupid to me. ~ Jack Nicholson,

552:conscious mind is able to follow the precise arithmetic rules needed for correctness. On the other hand, for decisions that involve large amounts of information and multiple vague, and perhaps even conflicting, constraints, your unconscious mind is well suited to tackle the issue. ~ Cal Newport,

553:Every woman I know, particularly the senior ones, has been called too aggressive at work. We know in gender blind studies that men are more aggressive in their offices than women. We know that. Yet we're busy telling all the women that they're too aggressive. That's the issue. ~ Sheryl Sandberg,

554:I also think that the issue of doubt and uncertainty is always a good thing and I question why I believe what I believe. I see things changing all around me and I don't feel devoted to a form. If I'm devoted to anything, I'm devoted to the attempt - the "trying" to do something. ~ Lynne Tillman,

555:President Obama is the kind of politician who puts promises on the record, and then calls that the record. But we are four years into this presidency. The issue is not the economy as Barack Obama inherited it, not the economy as he envisions it, but this economy as we are living it. ~ Paul Ryan,

556:The biggest threat that we face right now is not a nuclear missile coming over the skies. It's in a suitcase. This is why the issue of nuclear proliferation is so important. It is the - the biggest threat to the United States is a terrorist getting their hands on nuclear weapons. ~ Barack Obama,

557:I'm a geophysicist who has conducted and published climate studies in top-rank scientific journals. My perspective on Mr. Inhofe and the issue of global warming is informed not only by my knowledge of climate science but also by my studies of the history and philosophy of science. ~ David Deming,

558:I'm the son of a newsman, I grew up around news, so I can understand the issue, which is that papers are losing subscribers and they're getting less and less outlets... it's a tricky thing. You're going to have to sell papers. The problem is, there's so little reporting anymore. ~ George Clooney,

559:Of course it's dangerous. But it's a lot more dangerous for all of us if we don't do it. Even in a conquering army there are casualties. Safety is not the issue when we look at the Great Commission. The purpose of the church cannot be to survive, or even to thrive, but to serve. ~ Brother Andrew,

560:Gay marriage has jumped out of the closet on to the front page. Everyone from the president of the U.S. to retired four-star general Colin Powell is embracing the issue, now supported by most Americans. Still, a few people, like former First Lady Laura Bush appear to be conflicted. ~ Kitty Kelley,

561:The issue is not just that land developers have unbalanced the ecology and made much of the geography ugly. What strikes so painfully is, at least in the perspective of our brief lives, they have destroyed the places where we became, and would like to continue to become, ourselves. ~ Robert Adams,

562:War is the sure result of the existence of armed men. That country which maintains a large standing army will sooner or later have a war. The man who prides himself on fisticuffs is going, some day, to meet a man who considers himself the better man, and they will test the issue. ~ Elbert Hubbard,

563:The issue is not that man simply fails to keep the rules. That might matter in sports or in board games, but it is not the measure in relationships. This is a test of trust. It is a test of fealty to a Sovereign, a test of love for a father, a test of faithfulness to a friend. This ~ Gregory Koukl,

564:The issue is: $1 trillion or $2 trillion is a lot of money. If our objective is to have stability in the Middle East, secure oil, or extend democracy, you can do a lot of democracy buying for this sum. To put it in context: The whole world spends $50 billion a year on foreign aid. ~ Joseph Stiglitz,

565:The issue is much more complicated than that, but there’s no doubt that Rockefeller’s achievement arose from the often tense interplay between the two opposing, deeply ingrained tendencies of his nature—his father’s daring and his mother’s prudence—yoked together under great pressure. ~ Ron Chernow,

566:Tom DeLay himself has never been the issue. DeLay is a symptom of a larger disease?a sick Republican culture of corruption that touches everyone who took his dirty money, voted for his corrupt leadership, or sat silently while their party has sold our government to the highest bidder. ~ Howard Dean,

567:Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump basically share a policy of brute military strength. And both, I think, make a lot of Americans uneasy about our foreign policy going forward, which needs a frank discussion. Likewise on the issue of student debt and the future of our younger generation. ~ Jill Stein,

568:...retreat into the privacy and sanctuary of our castle-like homes, shut the door, pull up the imaginary drawbridge and avoid the issue. Home may indeed be our substitute for a Fatherland, but at another level, I would suggest that *home is what the English have instead of social skills*. ~ Kate Fox,

569:The issue when it comes to meditation is what, not if. The mind observes the impulse to meditate the way the body observes the law of gravity. Scripture has a lot to say about meditating wisely. The psalmist talks about the fruitful person as one whose “delight is in the law of the ~ John Ortberg Jr,

570:Students of American history may recall that Alexander Hamilton had an affair while in public office, but when he quickly confessed publicly and was forgiven, the issue was pushed aside, much to the consternation of the mistress and her husband who were planning to blackmail Mr. Hamilton. ~ Ben Carson,

571:The issue, perhaps, boils down to one of how perceptions or misperceptions of racial difference impact various individuals’, or groups of individuals’, experience of freedom in America. Some would argue that it goes beyond hampering their 'pursuit of happiness' to outright obliterating it. ~ Aberjhani,

572:One sad consequence of this is that people don't feel permitted to try understand Internet infrastructure, so I'm really grateful to groups like Free Press and other nonprofits who are trying to make the issue urgent and comprehensible. And Andre Blum's book Tubes is great on this topic. ~ Astra Taylor,

573:It was a fabled railway that was the issue of desperation and fanaticism, made as much of myth and unreality as it was to be of wood and iron and the thousands upon thousands of lives that were to be laid down over the next year to build it. But what reality was ever made by realists? ~ Richard Flanagan,

574:We cannot stick our heads in the sand concerning the issue of hunger in America. Even though this subject seldom reaches the front page of our newspapers or is featured on news programs because of its lack of sensationalism, the problem exists in massive proportions and must be defeated. ~ Bruce Davison,

575:A protest meeting on the issue of environmental abuse is not a convocation of accusers, it is a convocation of the guilty. The realization ought to clear the smog of self-righteousness that has always conventionally hovered over these occasions, and let us see the work that is to be done. ~ Wendell Berry,

576:I am in the valley of prayer on the issue of gay marriage, and I will err on the side of inclusiveness and not exclusion. I'm going to follow Jesus and say, Whosoever will, let them come. And I'm going to extend rights to all of God's children and if I am wrong, God will have to judge me. ~ Joseph Lowery,

577:In the primary debates for the 2016 election, every single Republican candidate was a climate change denier, with one exception, John Kasich - the "rational moderate" - who said it may be happening but we shouldn't do anything about it. For a long time, the media have downplayed the issue. ~ Noam Chomsky,

578:There's no doubt that on the issue of abortion, oftentimes it's very difficult to split the difference, although we can agree on the notion that none of us are pro-abortion and all of us would like to see a reduction in unwanted pregnancies, for example, and we could focus on those issues. ~ Barack Obama,

579:We need to confront honestly the issue of scale... You may need a large corporation to run an airline or to manufacture cars, but you don't need a large corporation to raise a chicken or a hog. You don't need a large corporation to process local food or local timber and market it locally. ~ Wendell Berry,

580:An SDS radical once wrote, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” In other words the cause - whether inner city blacks or women - is never the real cause, but only an occasion to advance the real cause which is the accumulation of power to make the revolution. ~ David Horowitz,

581:Essentially, Iran was sanctioned because of what had happened at Fordow, its unwillingness to comply with previous U.N. security resolutions about their nuclear program, and as part of the package of sanctions that was slapped on them, the issue of arms and ballistic missiles were included. ~ Barack Obama,

582:No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian is a theologian. Perhaps not a theologian in the technical or professional sense, but a theologian nevertheless. The issue for Christians is not whether we are going to be theologians but whether we are going to be good theologians or bad ones. ~ R C Sproul,

583:The first half-truth is that the issue of work-life balance is a “women’s problem.” If we define it that way, then it is up to women to find or at least implement the solution. The second is that employers can make room for caregiving by offering flextime and part-time arrangements. ~ Anne Marie Slaughter,

584:The issue that captured the church was the issue of ensoulment and when it occurred during development. A church council decided to call it at conception, instead of the time frame St. Thomas Aquinas had argued in the thirteenth century, which was at around three months of gestation. ~ Michael S Gazzaniga,

585:An absolute supernatural darkness falls On man sometimes when he draws near to God: An hour arrives when fail all Nature’s means; Forced out from the protecting Ignorance And flung back on his naked primal need, He at length must cast from him his surface ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

586:For some reason I can articulate my feelings better in song. I wish it would come out better in regular life too though. The issue is that I struggle with is that I'm worried about what people think, or how they'll react to whatever it is I have to say, and obviously that's not a good thing. ~ Brett Dennen,

587:From the very beginning, I said there are two tracks of reform: there's the political and the technical. I don't believe the political will be successful, for exactly the reasons you underlined. The issue is too abstract for average people, who have too many things going on in their lives. ~ Edward Snowden,

588:The difficult notes are when they say, "And this is how we want you to fix it . . ." Just tell me what the problem is. Just tell me what the issue is, and I'll go off an fix it. It's usually when executives get to a place where they're trying to fix the problem for you that you have issues ~ Ronald D Moore,

589:There was indeed a clear difference between the philosophy of Republicans and Democrats on the issue of race and racial equality. Southern Democrats had been willing to form an entire nation on the foundation of white supremacy – and there was no doubt that the South was strongly Democratic. ~ David Barton,

590:No matter what the issue is, don't try to justify why you don't feel good. And don't try to justify why you should feel differently. Don't try to blame whatever it is you think the reason is that's keeping you from feeling good. All of that is wasted effort. Just try to feel better right now. ~ Esther Hicks,

591:The diagnosis is clear, the science in unequivocal-it's completely immoral, even, to question now, on the basis of what we know, the reports that are out, to question the issue and to question whether we need to move forward at a much stronger pace as humankind to address the issues. ~ Gro Harlem Brundtland,

592:When something bad happens to us, especially when we are young, our brains will sometimes protect us from it until we are strong enough to deal with the issue. It's not uncommon for people to completely black out an experience for years and revisit it only when they feel safe enough to face it. ~ Gwen Hayes,

593:The 1.8 million child deaths each year related to clean water and sanitation dwarf the casualities associated with violent conflict. No act of terrorism generates economic devastation on the scale of the crisis in water and sanitation. Yet the issue barely registers on the international agenda. ~ Rose George,

594:I could see something that Bill couldn’t: Steve had responded to Bill’s passion about the issue. The fact that Bill was willing to stand up so forcefully and articulately for what he believed showed Steve that Bill’s ideas were worthy of respect. Steve never raised the format issue with us again. ~ Ed Catmull,

595:It`s not just Republicans. It`s Republicans and Democrats. It`s middle class, lower middle class, working class Americans who have felt the angst, who are frustrated, who are angry as a result of 1% growth which, in my view, has been really the issue that has propelled Donald Trump from day one. ~ Bob Ehrlich,

596:No one except for al-Assad's army is fighting against ISIS or other terrorist organisations in Syria, no one else is fighting them on Syrian territory. Minor airstrikes, including those by the United States aircraft, do not resolve the issue in essence; in fact, they do not resolve it at all. ~ Vladimir Putin,

597:The predominance of moral factors in all military decisions. On them constantly turns the issue of war and battle. In the history of war they form the more constant factors, changing only in degree, whereas the physical factors are different in almost every war and every military situation. ~ B H Liddell Hart,

598:If you think there is freedom of the press in the United States, I tell you there is no freedom of the press... They come out with the cheap shot. The press should be ashamed of itself. They should come to both sides of the issue and hear both sides and let the American people make up their minds ~ Bill Moyers,

599:The First Amendment to the Constitution says government can't establish a religion, but neither can it limit the exercise of religion. And that's the issue here. What does it mean to be free to exercise your religion? It's not about what you can believe. It's whether you can act on those beliefs. ~ Tom Gjelten,

600:The issue, of course, is not the mountain, whether that mountain is the dishes or the lawn or the title; or whether, for that matter, the mountain is Mount Moriah itself. No, the issue lies beneath the mountain in the realities in our hearts that make these mountains our battlegrounds. ~ The Arbinger Institute,

601:We simply can no longer afford to deny the full potential of one half of the population. The world needs to tap into the talent and wisdom of women. Whether the issue is food security, economic recovery, health, or peace and security, the participation of women is needed now more than ever. ~ Michelle Bachelet,

602:Fifty three per cent children in India face sexual abuse - both boys and girls - but we still feel uncomfortable talking about it. We are still hypocrites when it comes to issues like child abuse, sex or for that matter homosexuality. It is high time that we brought the issue from under the carpet. ~ Rahul Bose,

603:If you want to understand another person in some fundamental way you must know where the person is in his or her evolution...the way in which the person is settling the issue of what is 'self' and what is 'other' essentially defines the underlying logic (or 'psychologic') of the person's meanings. ~ Robert Kegan,

604:I think companies over the last 10 years have done a very bad job of explaining to their employees what the intrinsic risks are. All I know is, if you wait until you let the employee go to deal with the issue of how do you communicate to the employee about being let go, it's too late to do anything. ~ Paul Saffo,

605:Pex and Chips were closer now, discussing the merits of various fictional characters. 'Captain Hook rocks,' said Pex. 'He would kick Barney's purple butt ten times out of ten.' Chips sighed. 'You're missing the whole point of Barney. It's a values thing. Butt-kicking is not the issue. ~ Eoin Colfer,

606:the crisis prompted the issue of emergency paper money: in Britain, £1 and 10s Treasury notes; in the United States, the emergency currency that banks were authorized to issue under the Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908.46 Then, as now, the authorities reacted to a liquidity crisis by printing money. ~ Niall Ferguson,

607:It seems to me to be kind of inescapable that one has to be interested in the issue of gender and gender equality. I don’t really expect any credit for going in that direction. It’s the only natural direction to go in. Why is it that some people don’t see that as so patently obvious as it should be? ~ Amartya Sen,

608:The whole country is divided into two camps," wrote Dave Boone in the San Francisco Chronicle. "People who never saw a horse race in their lives are taking sides. If the issue were deferred another week, there would be a civil war between the War Admiral Americans and the Seabiscuit Americans. ~ Laura Hillenbrand,

609:It's important for me to not historicize. I work to diffuse the issue of identity and to intensify identification. You have to lose your authority in the making of a film to achieve this. The film is about me being absolutely dislocated. I focus on the very personal to arrive at the very political. ~ Elia Suleiman,

610:Jaina never intended to marry the prince." "I see. He's not a Jedi." "True, but that's not the issue. I'm guessing that the only man Jaina would ever take seriously is one who can outfly her." "There are not many who fit that description." "Yeah, I've noticed that." Kyp & Jag ~ Elaine Cunningham,

611:The issue is not the thing, but rather our approach to the thing. Same as with food. Our temptation is to objectify the problem, trying to locate sin in the stuff—in the tobacco, in the alcohol, in the gun, in the donut—instead of where sin is actually located, which is right under the breastbone. ~ Douglas Wilson,

612:I personally believe that gender equality underlines every other equality, and certainly the issue of sexuality. For instance, if we didn’t distinguish between gender, in terms of giving different genders disparate values and attributes, what problem would we have with two men loving each other? ~ Abigail Tarttelin,

613:I think it is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one’s god.” Umegat emptied his cup. “The gods love their great-souled men and women as an artist loves fine marble, but the issue isn’t virtue. It is will. Which is chisel and hammer. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold,

614:I was going to the heart of this matter, which is, the issue of whether Europeans should contribute more to NATO, I think, is a matter of consensus. I think Secretary Hillary Clinton believes that, and a series of U.S. presidents and secretaries of defense and state have urged our European partners. ~ Philip Gordon,

615:About 75% of the price of gas is really dictated by crude oil. At the heart of the issue is increasing demand over a period of many years around the world. World crude oil consumption now is close to 90 million barrels a day. Most of the growth in demand is coming from China and the developing world. ~ John S Watson,

616:Consciousness is anything you define it as. I tell people instead of waiting, just take any definition that you like, and use that, and run with it! So I don't think the issue is that we don't know what consciousness is. The issue is we don't have a consensus on what consciousness is. Far from it. ~ Stanley Krippner,

617:It should go without saying—but it usually doesn’t, so we’ll say it—that data is best understood by those closest to the issue, which is often not management. As a leader, it is best not to get lost in details you don’t understand, but rather trust the smart people who work for you to understand them. ~ Eric Schmidt,

618:The issue of racism and racial prejudice. It is very, very difficult to discuss. It is difficult to discuss the issue of apartheid. Many have made the observation that it is very difficult to find anyone in SA who ever supported apartheid because everyone was opposed, it was against our will and so on. ~ Thabo Mbeki,

619:When Turkey began approaching the EU, I wasn't the only one who worried that the dark stain in Turkey's history - or rather the history of the Ottoman Empire - could become a problem one day. In other words, what happened to the Armenians in World War I. That's why I couldn't leave the issue untouched. ~ Orhan Pamuk,

620:[...] it is generally accepted that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery. That, at best, is a half-truth. Slavery was an issue, but the primary force for war was a clash between the economic interests of the North and the South. Even the issue of slavery itself was based on economics. ~ G Edward Griffin,

621:She spent the entire day at the house, debating the issue with herself. First, she watched TV. British television seemed to consist mostly of makeover shows. Garden makeovers. Fashion makeovers. House makeovers. Everything relating to change. It seemed like a hint. Change something. Make a move. She ~ Maureen Johnson,

622:C. Sproul: No Christian can avoid theology. Every Christian is a theologian. Perhaps not a theologian in the technical or professional sense, but a theologian nevertheless. The issue for Christians is not whether we are going to be theologians but whether we are going to be good theologians or bad ones.1 ~ Dave Harvey,

623:I want to have scrambled eggs for dinner without this ridiculous construction that a scrambled egg-inclusive meal is breakfast even when it occurs at dinnertime." "You've gotta pick your battles in this world, Hazel," my mom said. "But if this is the issue you want to champion, we will stand behind you. ~ John Green,

624:Take a step back. Draw in a deep breath. Now ask yourself 'so what?' Then, after answering, ask yourself again 'so what?' And then a third time—'so what?' Chances are you'll come to realize that the issue at hand is not as dire, detrimental, or important as you first thought. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,

625:no matter the issue, the company’s managers were always drawn to the quicker, cheaper option over the better long-term solution. Just like the habitual dieter, “they never have the time or money to do it right the first time,” she said of her client, “but they always have the time and money to do it again. ~ Simon Sinek,

626:I am able to hug Rosie. This was the issue that caused me the most fear after she agreed to live with me. I generally find body contact unpleasant, but sex is an obvious exception. Sex solved the body contact problem. We are now also able to hug without having sex, which is obviously convenient at times. ~ Graeme Simsion,

627:Nobody else. Just as nobody has brought me to my knees as you do. And I should like to be there begging you to comeback to me now, but that's not the issue, is it?" "No." "No. I wish it were." Richard sighed. "When you come back to me, my fox, you will do so of your own will. I depend on that. ~ K J Charles,

628:Safe to say our Lord was one of the first radical feminists. He constantly berated men who judged women. The woman with the alabaster jar. The woman with the issue of blood. The first person he spoke to after His resurrection was not Peter, but Mary Magdalene.' 'Jesus loved the ladies. I like that. ~ Tiffany Reisz,

629:We must not constantly talk about tackling obesity and warning people about the negative consequences of obesity. Instead we must be positive - positive about the fun and benefits to be had from healthy living, trying to get rid of people's excuses for being obese by tackling the issue in a positive way. ~ Andrew Lansley,

630:The issue of gay marriage has reached the Supreme Court and observers are analyzing every detail to predict how each justice will vote. Experts say Chief Justice John Roberts is likely to rule in favor of gay marriage based on the fact that he spent Tuesday's hearings watching the Tony Award nominations. ~ David Letterman,

631:We have lots of challenges around the world, and I have no doubt the intelligence community will continue to watch them, monitor them, and report on them. The issue is, with all of our other distractions here in Washington, particularly, will the appropriate attention be paid to each one of these issues? ~ James R Clapper,

632:It seems to me [he wrote in early April] that in no other war in history has the issue been so distinctly drawn between the forces of arbitrary oppression on the one side and, on the other, those conceptions of individual liberty, freedom, and dignity, under which we have been raised in our great Democracy…. ~ Rick Atkinson,

633:I've always wanted to be part of something that would radically change the world. . . . People forget the power of inspiration. All of humanity went to the moon with the Apollo missions. The issue was cost. There was no chance to build a base and create frequent flights. That's the problem I would like to solve. ~ Elon Musk,

634:In the event of defeat,” he wrote in the February 1914 memorandum to Nicholas II, “social revolution in its most extreme form is inevitable.” Durnovó specifically forecast that the gentry’s land would be expropriated and that “Russia will be flung into hopeless anarchy, the issue of which cannot be foreseen. ~ Stephen Kotkin,

635:Above all, you ask if the God of Christians forgives those who do not believe and who do not seek faith. Given the premise, and this is fundamental, that the mercy of God is limitless for those who turn to him with a sincere and contrite heart, the issue for the unbeliever lies in obeying his or her conscience. ~ Pope Francis,

636:I created my foundation as a result of that and my website, and I try to shed some light on some very topical issues right now. The idea is to try to get people to become obviously more knowledgeable about the issue and try to get corporations and individuals to contribute to these nonprofit organizations. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio,

637:It is always a disappointment to turn from forthright consideration of some subject - whether from the Left or the Right, a poet or a plumber - to the Beltway version, in which the only aspects of the issue that matter are the effects it will have on the fortunes of the two parties and the various men in power. ~ Thomas Frank,

638:We waited for Congress to act. They couldn't act on the issue. So I just went ahead and signed an executive order which will unleash - [applause] - which says the federal agencies will not discriminate against faith-based programs. They ought to welcome the armies of compassion as opposed to turning them away. ~ George W Bush,

639:I know fear. Fear that cripples you. Fear that takes everything from you. The loss of my dream in the middle of the night ain't the issue. The warmth of the heavy air don't bother me none. Being woken to the feeling of someone's whispered words on my lips wouldn’t be disturbing, if I knew whose words they was. But ~ Tara Brown,

640:In a nurturant family, the issue of fair distribution concerns the whole family over its whole existence. Where unfairness has existed in the past, some unfairness in the present may be needed to balance things out and make things fair overall. The Nation As Family metaphor makes that true of a nation. Liberals ~ George Lakoff,

641:Nearly every African who has given the issue thought knows that America is not only not racist, it is the best place for an African to immigrate to. That is why more black Africans have come to America voluntarily than came to America as slaves — a statistic that virtually no college student is allowed to know. ~ Dennis Prager,

642:Tackling the issue of climate change presents us with an inflection point in human history - a climate justice revolution that separates development from fossil fuels, supports people in the most vulnerable situations to adapt, allows all people to take part, and, most importantly, realise their full potential. ~ Mary Robinson,

643:That's the issue that I've been exploring: How did the Republic turn into the Empire? That's paralleled with: How did Anakin turn into Darth Vader? How does a good person go bad, and how does a democracy become a dictatorship? It isn't that the Empire conquered the Republic, it's that the Empire is the Republic. ~ George Lucas,

644:The reality is that all God has to do is reveal himself to you,and you'll gladly join the mission in service to his kingdom. He doesn't force the issue; he just has to reveal himself as is: mighty,wondrous, gracious, loving, and radically saving. No man goes back to saltine crackers when he's had fillet mignon. ~ Matt Chandler,

645:What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of what they called daydreaming often required more effort and concentration than it would have taken simply to listen in class. Laziness is not the issue. It is just not the work dictated by the administration. ~ David Foster Wallace,

646:But Trump’s claim was never about the birth certificate. The issue was clearly race-based, and it was more about the pigment of the baby’s skin and that of the baby’s father as well. Father and baby were both guilty of being Black, which is still the unwritten crime this nation subtly acknowledges in everyday life. ~ April Ryan,

647:His throne is the pulpit. He stands in Christ's stead. His message is the Word of God. Around him are immortal souls. The Savior, unseen, is beside him. The Holy Spirit broods over the congregation. Angels gaze upon the scene, and heaven and hell await the issue. What associations and what vast responsibility! ~ Matthew Simpson,

648:I think the issue that millennials have is that the return on asset classes such as bonds, cash, are so low now compared to the historical levels that it's very difficult for them to save enough to be able to retire comfortably. If interest rates do trend back upwards, it may be less of a problem going forward. ~ Martin Gilbert,

649:Look at the weaknesses of others with compassion, not accusation. It's not what they're not doing or should be doing that's the issue. The issue is your own chosen response to the situation and what you should be doing. If you start to think the problem is "out there," stop yourself. That thought is the problem. ~ Stephen Covey,

650:the IAEA illegally insisted on politicizing the Iranian nation's nuclear case, but today, because of the resistance of the Iranian nation, the issue is back to the agency. And I officially announced that, in our opinion, the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed and has turned into an ordinary agency matter. ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,

651:I do not bring any professional knowledge of the issue to bear, but what I do bring to my consideration of immigration is a deepened and highly sensitized feeling with those persons who feel alien in our country. I can feel the strangeness they feel because it is something I have experienced in a different area. ~ Barbara Jordan,

652:Men's consciences ought in no sort to be violated, urged, or constrained. And whenever men have attempted any thing by this violent course, whether openly or by secret means, the issue has been pernicious, and the cause of great and wonderful innovations in the principallest and mightiest kingdoms and countries. ~ Roger Williams,

653:On the issue past of independence of Germany, after the time of National Socialism, Germany has been given an enormous amount of help particularly and also from the United States of America. A fact that we were able to enjoy German unification is due first and foremost to the help of the United States of America. ~ Angela Merkel,

654:I had all this anxiety about what it meant to be a minority. My professors - the same men who taught me the intricacies of language - just shied away from the issue. They didn't want to talk about it, other than to suggest I could be a "role model" to other Hispanics - when I went back to my barrio, I suppose. ~ Richard Rodriguez,

655:It's really hard to fit a complex idea into a 3-minute pop song. And when you're dealing with issues that you're passionate about, usually they have various levels. And within a poem, you can get around the issue of space, and in a song the same way, by simply leaving holes and alluding to what you're talking about. ~ Jon Foreman,

656:Look at the weaknesses of others with compassion, not accusation. It’s not what they’re not doing or should be doing that’s the issue. The issue is your own chosen response to the situation and what you should be doing. If you start to think the problem is “out there,” stop yourself. That thought is the problem. ~ Stephen R Covey,

657:Wake up, buddy,” Royce whispered, nudging him. Hadrian was damp with sweat. “About time you got here. I was starting to think you ran off and left me.” “I considered it, but the thought of Magnus as my best man kinda forced the issue. Nice haircut, by the way. It looks good on you—very knightly. ~ Michael J Sullivan,

658:You know what the issue is? Do you want to know? It's what these guys have decided to call America. They have the audacity to say, 'There, you sons of bitches, don't lay a finger on it. That is a finished product.'" "But any country is still in the making. Always. That's just history, people have to see that. ~ Barbara Kingsolver,

659:It seems to me to be a way to give the Clinton Administration an opportunity to sidestep the issue of whether to announce they're going to withdraw from the ABM treaty, or whether they're going to go ahead and proceed with construction and be hopeful the Russians are not going to accuse them of violating the treaty. ~ Thad Cochran,

660:Life has to be in the moment, spontaneous and venerable. There isn't any winning or losing. Life itself, as it flowers in depth and subtlety, is the reward, and it isn't always an easy or fun process. We must learn to see that the issue of happiness is irrelevant. The relevant quest is the expansion of consciousness. ~ Richard Moss,

661:The best way to respond to distracting personal attacks is to practice bringing the conversation back to the issue at hand. Never fall into the trap of engaging in personal attacks while letting the topic of conversation slip into the background. Doing so allows your opponent to escape the need to explain her position. ~ Ben Carson,

662:Well, as I said, you know the issue of Greek debt, they've grasped the principle of debt reduction. I think most people would argue that probably more needs to be done on that front, and they've just begun to take the first steps to accepting that there's going to have to be much closer economic integration in Europe. ~ Vince Cable,

663:I think that we definitely deal with that issue and don't ignore it, the issue of drink, but that's not where it ends. I just think that what the fear is that you think alcoholic writer or whatever and you forget the intelligence that can be present. I mean so many people just write off someone who drinks as one thing. ~ Debra Winger,

664:On January 17, 2008, Obama made clear his hostility toward, of all things, electricity generated from coal and coal-powered plants. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal . . . under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.  ~ Mark R Levin,

665:The issue for the major companies is how, is how when and where to make their content online. So you look at these major cable companies, whether it's Disney or Time Warner, News Corp., ESPN, USA, they're being very very careful, about making their content available over the internet, and they're trying to figure it out. ~ Harry E Sloan,

666:We know that babies develop as well in nonmaternal as in maternal care, as long as the care is of good quality. The issue is not who gives the care but the quality of that care,... The guilt trip is, in my view, a hangover of another era and of unacknowledged tactics to keep women in their proper place--at home full-time. ~ Sandra Scarr,

667:We are living in a highly contentious period ... We have a split in our society – 50 percent say it’s night and 50 percent say it’s day – and it’s not only on the issue of Muslims, but this is true for almost any issue we have, from health care, to immigration, to the budget, to how we deal with the economy after a collapse. ~ Ben Daniel,

668:Any issue, including political, economic and religious activities human beings pursue in this world, should be fully understood before we pass our judgement. Therefore, it is very important to know the causes. Whatever the issue, we should be able to see the complete picture. This will enable us to comprehend the whole story. ~ Dalai Lama,

669:Russia and the United States are the biggest nuclear powers, this leaves us with an extra special responsibility. By the way, we manage to deal with it and work together in certain fields, particularly in resolving the issue of the Iranian nuclear programme. We worked together and we achieved positive results on the whole. ~ Vladimir Putin,

670:When I first raised the issue of the so-called Islamic State at the Munich Security Conference in February, speaking about its economy, its flexibility and pathology, people thought I was trying to scare them. But now we have experienced just that. If al-Qaida was version 2.0 of terror, then the Islamic State is version 5.0. ~ Ashraf Ghani,

671:Climate change is not just another issue. It is the issue that, unchecked, will swamp all other issues. The only hope lies in all the countries of the world coming together around a common global project to rewire the world with clean energy. This is a path to peace -- peace among people, and peace between people and nature. ~ Ross Gelbspan,

672:Friends started saying, "Oh, don't come. No vengas. It's dangerous for us, and we live here." Then there's also the issue, if you go back, and you happen to be Mexican-American, you get treated very differently [in Mexico] than if you're blond. If you say something wrong, they say, "Why don't you learn your mother tongue?" ~ Sandra Cisneros,

673:Shared knowledge can weigh heavy in the scales of power,” he replied, and I have seen the truth of it since. “Controlling what you want shared is always the issue, and writing down nothing is the most extreme method of control. But while this preserves our secrets, it also limits our ability to spread our wisdom, does it not? ~ Kevin Hearne,

674:the time, a psychologist and marketing expert by the name of Ernest Dichter speculated that leaving out some of the ingredients and allowing women to add them to the mix might resolve the issue.• This idea became known as the “egg theory.” Sure enough, once Pillsbury left out the dried eggs and required women to add fresh ones, ~ Dan Ariely,

675:When I was a kid, politicians wanted to avoid talking about religion if they could. John F. Kennedy couldn't duck the issue, being Catholic and all. So how did he address it? By reminding Americans that religion shouldn't be an issue, that he was concentrating on big things like poverty and hunger and leading the space race. ~ Penn Jillette,

676:A second key decision by Kennedy concerned his Catholicism, which led many Protestants, including Norman Vincent Peale, to question whether he ought to be President. (Martin Luther King, Sr., was another doubter.) Kennedy met the issue head-on by addressing Protestant clergymen in Houston, a center of Protestant strength. ~ James T Patterson,

677:There always are a basket of issues in any federal election campaign, but in this part of Australia [Capricornia] I can assure you having as you know a fairly frequent visitor to Rockhampton, that the issue of jobs and employment and where the jobs of the future are coming from, is the biggest single issue on people's minds. ~ George Brandis,

678:We have so many issues today that we need to confront. Comprehensive immigration reform. We have to solve the issue of poverty, the issue of hunger, the issue of war - spending billions of dollars to kill rather than to build. We have to deal with the fact that all of our children should be receiving the best possible education. ~ John Lewis,

679:What is entrepreneurship, after all? Bigness is not the issue. Poor people are the ones who take challenges every day. The guy who sells a hot dog on the street is as much an entrepreneur as anyone else. Getting his $50 loan to start could be as difficult as finding $50 million for someone else. All people are entrepreneurs. ~ Muhammad Yunus,

680:I spent a long time in the shadows. I always had this feeling that I was the only one going through stuff, because I kept it a secret. Once I decided to use my voice in a way that could potentially help others, I found there were a lot of people like me - a lot of kids left behind. So, I wanted to call attention to the issue. ~ Diane Guerrero,

681:Ender's Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984... It will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute. ~ Orson Scott Card,

682:On the other hand, if you suggest to a person who has been a victim of a serious crime that we take the issue too seriously, they'll look at you like you're crazy. So that's a really tough issue, whether we're doing more harm than good by paying so much attention to a few cases that honestly don't normally intersect with our lives. ~ Bill James,

683:They didn't know Zane like he did. Ty knew his partner had to take the issue from every angle, analyze it to death, resurrect it, and then study its dead, rotting body to see the results. Yeah, it might take Zane four months to decide if he loved someone, and then more to decide if that was a good idea. Ty didn't mind waiting. ~ Abigail Roux,

684:Vampires let us play with death and the issue of mortality. They let us ponder what it would mean to be truly long lived. Would the long view allow us to see the world differently, imagine social structures differently? Would it increase or decrease our reverence for the planet? Vampires allow us to ask questions we usually bury. ~ Margot Adler,

685:What if a man save my life with a draught that was prepared to poison me? The providence of the issue does not at all discharge the obliquity of the intent. And the same reason holds good even in religion itself. It is not the incense, or the offering that is acceptable to God, but the purity and devotion of the worshipper. ~ Seneca the Younger,

686:Indeed, this delayed disclosure of the crucial personal detail dents Mr. Modi’s credibility as a prime ministerial candidate. With the socially conservative RSS driving the BJP’s campaign, there is the apprehension of a resurgence of a patriarchal mindset reflecting restrictive approaches to the issue of further empowerment of women. ~ Anonymous,

687:In the 1800s, the United States was divided over the issue of slavery. The North wanted the country to end all slavery. But the South wanted to keep slaves because more than four million African-American slaves worked in the huge plantation fields there. This disagreement between the North and South led to the Civil War. Jack ~ Mary Pope Osborne,

688:Media bias in editorials and columns is one thing. Media fraud in reporting 'facts' in news stories is something else. ...The issue is not what various journalists or news organizations' editorial views are. The issue is the transformation of news reporting into ideological spin, along with self-serving taboos and outright fraud. ~ Thomas Sowell,

689:People like you and me, we have too many nerves and not enough skin. That’s the issue. Too many nerves. Not enough skin. We feel things straight to our bones. We’re radar dishes. We take in everything and we feel everything. We feel pain that doesn’t even belong to us. We are the animal shelter of feelings. We rescue everything. ~ Suanne Laqueur,

690:The issue becomes politically important because it is on everyone’s mind, and the response of the political system is guided by the intensity of public sentiment. The availability cascade has now reset priorities. Other risks, and other ways that resources could be applied for the public good, all have faded into the background. ~ Daniel Kahneman,

691:April 12, 1790, the House voted down Hamilton’s assumption plan, thirty-one to twenty-nine, and two weeks later voted to discontinue all debate on the issue. By early June, it looked as if the assumption plan was heading for oblivion. So Hamilton began to search for a compromise that would salvage the linchpin of his economic program. ~ Ron Chernow,

692:As a culture, we believe that if we kill something, we've killed the issue. That's why so many books end with death, why so many plays end with death, because it's full resolution. I'm always curious to know what happens after Romeo and Juliet die. In a way, that's the beginning of the story. Maybe beyond the story is even better. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,

693:As an advocate to end violence against women, I have come to learn that the shame surrounding domestic violence is a barrier to talking about the issue. #‎ PurplePurse provides victims and those who support the cause with information and resources they need to take the necessary actions to break the vicious cycle with confidence. ~ Rosario Dawson,

694:The issue is fear. But the deeper issue is trust. Can we trust our lives, our futures, and the lives of those we love to God? Can we trust a God we can't control? Can we trust this God whose take on life and death and suffering and joy is so very different from our own? Yes. Yes, we can. Because we know him. And we know he is good. ~ Stasi Eldredge,

695:I was born in '58, so the riot in Detroit in 1967 was a memorable introduction to the issue of race and how race made a difference in American society. And then the next year, of course, Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. And the Detroit Tigers winning the World Series. All of that made a huge impression on my growing mind. ~ Michael Eric Dyson,

696:So do fundamentalists believe in majority rights or minority rights? The answer is, apparently, neither. They'll pull whichever argument suits them out of its file when necessary, but basically they are unprincipled on the issue of school prayer. They have a big double standard that basically says, "Whatever I want is right. ~ Bob Altemeyer,

697:We can begin to address the issue of guns by teaching our young people how to deal with situations in nonviolent ways. Someone said to me the other day, "What our adolescents need is not so much health care, but healthy caring," and I agree. Parents and churches need to provide that. Curricula in our schools [need to] provide that. ~ Joycelyn Elders,

698:A great read; an exciting, frightening account of organized crime today. But like all important works of nonfiction, it goes further… This book is must reading for anyone with an interest in the enduring effects of the Vietnam War, the subject of crime in our streets, and the issue of personal responsibility in a harsh, chaotic world. ~ Le Ly Hayslip,

699:The issue is, you do not have to go to either criminalizing and throwing people in prison. I don't think you should do that for people who are using any drugs. I think they absolutely need treatment. But we don't want to increase the availability, promotion and commercialization that would absolutely come with this idea of legalization. ~ Kevin Sabet,

700:What the issue here is, you get rid of all the conservative orthodoxy about capital gains, marginal tax rate, supply side economics, you just throw all that out the window, limited government and you just embrace the sheer and raw politics of resentment that have been bubbling the whole time and that`s what you get. You get Donald Trump. ~ Chris Hayes,

701:At the heart of this covenantal relationship is the issue of responsibility. Whenever there is genuine federal headship, the head as representative assumes responsibility for the spiritual condition of the members of the covenant body, and the organic connection applies in both directions. We are covenantal beings; we were created this ~ Douglas Wilson,

702:Even though the restriction couldn’t be enforced under federal law, the state ban on interracial marriage in Alabama continued into the twenty-first century. In 2000, reformers finally had enough votes to get the issue on the statewide ballot, where a majority of voters chose to eliminate the ban, although 41 percent voted to keep it. ~ Bryan Stevenson,

703:Scotland has always been independent. We have our own legal system, our own culture; I don't see the issue. We are different and I think we should celebrate those differences within the union. I can see what would be lost, but don't necessarily see what would be gained by breaking away. What does upset me is that I can't vote in Scotland. ~ Damian Barr,

704:The odd thing about these television discussions designed to “get all sides of the issue” is that they do not feature a spectrum of people with different views on reality: Rather, they frequently give us a face-off between those who see reality and those who have missed it entirely. In the name of objectivity, we are getting fantasy-land. ~ Molly Ivins,

705:There's also the issue of tech titans throwing their weight around in Washington and lobbying. There was just a Reuters poll that reported that more than half of Americans are concerned that tech companies are "encroaching too much on their lives." That's pretty major, considering these companies were universally loved not that long ago. ~ Astra Taylor,

706:Where the currency depreciation is a result of government inflation carried out by the issue of notes, it is possible to avert its disastrous effect on economic calculation by conducting all bookkeeping in a stable money instead. But so far as the depreciation is a depreciation of gold, the world money, there is no such easy way out. ~ Ludwig von Mises,

707:I know that plenty of folks have issues with Social Security, but I'd urge them to confront it on its own terms. Calling it a Ponzi scheme is misleading and does more to cloud the issue than it does to illuminate it. And yes, I do know that unless changes are made, the current system is unsustainable. But that doesn't mean it's fraud. ~ Mitchell Zuckoff,

708:The issue of torture, connected to American soldiers, is not somewhere most people want to linger. We may not want to confront this issue so much in the U.S. because of how we want to think about our veterans. There's the sense that we want to think of our veterans as - if they're damaged, damaged by something glamorous, like a firefight. ~ Russell Banks,

709:The subject of British abolitionism has long been controversial, complex, and even baffling. It also raises the issue of moral progress in history - whether groups of reformers and even nations can succeed in eliminating deeply entrenched forms of human oppression, and if so, by what methods, misconceptions, and under what conditions? ~ David Brion Davis,

710:I've always tried to make sure that what I do really connects with the broader agenda of what my husband Barack Obama is trying to do.... But I also find that I have to be very passionate myself about the issue to be able to represent it well. One of the big issues that I've talked a lot about...is childhood health, nutrition and obesity. ~ Michelle Obama,

711:May Hell have pity on you should you find yourself on the wrong side of any of the Queen’s Own. One was always a problem, when two came together people started leaving the area. Should all five show up, those with any intelligence would leave the planet. Because if the five didn’t handle the issue, then their Queen wouldn’t be far behind. ~ Michael Anderle,

712:The issue of respect is also useful in guiding parents’ interpretation of given behavior. First, they should decide whether an undesirable act represents a direct challenge to their authority . . . to their leadership position as the father or mother. The form of disciplinary action they take should depend on the result of that evaluation. ~ James C Dobson,

713:As James Davison Hunter has commented, “There have never been ‘generic’ values.”52 The issue is a kind of “sources of the self”53 concern: Does a secularized, post-Christian, increasingly antireligious society have the sources (formative communities) to engender the dispositions/virtues needed for “a modest unity” and a tolerant pluralism? ~ James K A Smith,

714:It's so easy to demagogue the issue and make someone who speaks out against the internal-combustion engine sound like an insane communist, when the truth is that the internal-combustion engine is the biggest threat to my life in the next 25 years, in terms of what it's doing to our environment and how it's depleting the ozone layer and so forth. ~ Bill Maher,

715:The basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anti-colonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. What matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be. ~ Frantz Fanon,

716:You are always doing the asking—because creating IS the asking. When one creates, one asks! However, the issue is whether you are clearing enough of the gunk away such that you allow what you are asking to come into your life. That gunk we are talking about includes negative beliefs, negative conditioning, worry, and fear thoughts and doubts. ~ Richard Dotts,

717:Throughout our story, the people involved demanded the right to be heard, insisting that we—the public—had the right to hear both sides and that the media had an obligation to present it. They insisted that this was only fair and democratic. But were they attempting to preserve democracy? No. The issue was not free speech; it was free markets. ~ Naomi Oreskes,

718:We’ve danced around the issue of ‘us’ for about two hundred years too long. While we work together, I want us to explore each other. Up close and personal. In bed. That would be more than adequate payment.” “And if I don’t agree?” “I’ll help you. Free of charge. But I’ll probably be an asshole.” He shrugged. “Blue balls make me cranky. ~ Robin Covington,

719:Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime [in Israel] must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine... I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world. ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,

720:War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests: by war the issue is left to chance, and the tacit assumption that the best man will win is not at all justified. It might equally be argued that the worst, the most unscrupulous man will win, although history will continue the absurd game by finding him after all the best man. ~ Germaine Greer,

721:I believe that religious witness should not mobilize public authority to impose a view where a decision is inherently private in nature or where people are deeply divided about whether it is... Americans are plainly and persistently divided about abortion and the fiat of government cannot settle the issue as a matter of conscience or of conduct. ~ Edward Kennedy,

722:I try to employ a different strategy for each story. Often, I'll have a specific look in mind before I even have the story to go with it. I'm not so much interested in forcing the issue of reader identification through various graphic tricks. I'm more interested in creating specific characters that resonate with my own particular inner struggles. ~ Daniel Clowes,

723:So, what’s the key difference between a good citizen of a group and a poor one? I find that the most useful place to draw the line is at the issue of others’ rights. Employees who respect others’ rights are aware of where they stop and the other person starts; they don’t habitually do things that undermine, inconvenience, or intrude upon others. ~ Erika Andersen,

724:We must distinguish between those who depend on others, that is between those who to achieve their purposes can force the issue and those who must use persuasion. In the second case, they always come to grief, having achieved nothing; when, however, they depend on their own resources and can force the issue, then they are seldom endangered. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli,

725:She sipped the hot coffee as she gazed at her many bookshelves, her mind wandering. Even while she loved being there, Morgan knew that the issue with the University of Oxford was its age and the instant kudos the name evoked. It trapped scholars and all who worshipped at their feet into ancient thought patterns with no room for change or progress.  She ~ J F Penn,

726:The equivalent of five jumbo jets’ worth of women die in labor each day, but the issue is almost never covered. The remedy? America should lead a global campaign to save mothers in childbirth. Right now the amount we Americans spend on maternal health is equivalent to less than one twentieth of 1 percent of the amount we spend on our military. ~ Nicholas D Kristof,

727:Voluntary actions by corporations should not go beyond innovative win - win 'no regrets' initiatives. Greenhouse gas control practices that are uneconomic penalize either consumers or stockholders while politicizing the issue of corporate responsibility. Few will be satisfied, and the ineffectual measures will eventually have to be abandoned. ~ Robert L Bradley Jr,

728:When it comes to immigration, I have actually put more money, under my administration, into border security than any other administration previously. We've got more security resources at the border - more National Guard, more border guards, you name it - than the previous administration. So we've ramped up significantly the issue of border security. ~ Barack Obama,

729:I stuff because: I don’t feel safe enough to confront this person. I don’t have the energy or the time to get into a conflict right now. I don’t know how to address the issue. I don’t want to seem hypersensitive. I don’t want to get rejected. I don’t want to lose control. I don’t want to make things worse, so I convince myself I can just let it go. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,

730:Like any army moving from war to peace, this Army was entering a period in which it would search high and low for its soul. Only the vanquished truly learn anything from the last war, according to an ancient maxim, and the issue now confronting America was whether the defeated nation and the nation’s vanquished Army would learn anything from Vietnam. ~ Rick Atkinson,

731:The infallibility and inerrancy of biblical teaching does not, however, guarantee the infallibility and inerrancy of any interpretation or interpreter of that teaching; nor does the recognition of its qualities as the Word of God in any way prejudge the issue as to what Scripture does, in fact, assert. This can be determined only by careful Bible study. ~ J I Packer,

732:There is no doubt that the issue of race is always present in American politics and in the politics of any multiracial society. There is also no doubt that for some people it is an element in the manifested hostility to Obama. But I don't think it is the major theme at all. Obama is right when he reminds people: By the way, I was black before the election. ~ Al Gore,

733:The issue is not about raising taxes. The issue is, how do we allocate the wealth that we have? We spend trillions of dollars on a military industrial complex. The United States accounts for 38% of all the military armaments produced in the world. 38%. This is a huge amount of money. People want and need services. They want roads, they want healthcare. ~ Henry Giroux,

734:you pray for something and you do not see the answer, consider the following: (1) Is what you want good for you? (2) Will you or anyone else be hurt by your having it? (3) Are you ready for the responsibility of having it? If you can answer these questions affirmatively, and the answer to your prayer has not manifested, the issue is probably patience. ~ Iyanla Vanzant,

735:If we are to be biblical, then, the issue is not whether we should have a doctrine of predestination or not, but what kind we should embrace. If the Bible is the Word of God, not mere human speculation, and if God himself declares that there is such a thing as predestination, then it follows irresistibly that we must embrace some doctrine of predestination. ~ R C Sproul,

736:When you are doing seven shows a week, you have to take care of yourself. There are some moments when you cannot allow yourself to emotionally reenact the issue you're talking about or the experience that you're remembering. I mean that would kill you, you know. To experience a thing, a trauma, every single night, it would probably kill you emotionally. ~ Staceyann Chin,

737:Often as I creep along in a traffic jam, someone inevitably tries to enter my lane from the side. Now here is the issue: If I let the car in, I feel good about it. But when I see others in front of me let someone in, I feel cheated, because I’ve been waiting longer than the car entering the lane, and I am upset with the driver who acted kindly at my expense. ~ Dan Ariely,

738:The thought leader, when he or she strips politics from the issue, makes it about actionable tweaks rather than structural change, removing the perpetrators from the story. It is no accident that thought leaders, whose speaking engagements are often paid for by MarketWorld, whose careers are made by MarketWorld, are encouraged to put things that way. ~ Anand Giridharadas,

739:All I can say on the Guilford story - and this comes more from my perspective as a father than an artist - is for parents and administrators to give so little value to the career of a public-school teacher - to allow him to be cast aside without exhausting every avenue to resolve the issue - is an obscenity worse than anything I've ever drawn in my comics. ~ Daniel Clowes,

740:In his Treatise on Human Nature, the Scots philosopher David Hume posed the issue in the following way (as rephrased in the now famous black swan problem by John Stuart Mill): No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,

741:The problem is that affirmative action could never really get at the issue of corporate power in the workplace, and so you ended up with the downsizing; you ended up with de-industrializing. You ended up with the marginalizing of working people and working poor people even while affirmative action was taking place, and a new black middle class was expanding. ~ Cornel West,

742:The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don’t email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me. ~ Allie Brosh,

743:When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force. ~ Bertrand Russell,

744:I think there's something remarkable happening here that nobody is talking about. They're skirting the issue. For the longest time, the Republican Party has told us that they can't win with just Republican votes. And that's why they support amnesty. That's why they support the Democrats on many of their issues to go out and get Hispanics or other minorities. ~ Rush Limbaugh,

745:I wanted a guy who made my stomach flutter, who was polite and respectful to everyone because he didn't think of anybody as beneath him, a man who did good things not because of what he’d gain but simply because it was the right thing to do. I wanted someone that cared about the injustices of the world and tried to help even if the issue didn't affect his life. ~ Skyla Madi,

746:For Americans war is almost all of the time a nuisance, and military skill is a luxury like Mah-Jongg. But when the issue is brought home to them, war becomes as important, for the necessary period, as business or sport. And it is hard to decide which is likely to be the more ominous for the Axis -- an American decision that this is sport, or that it is business. ~ D W Brogan,

747:For the first time that evening, a small idea was uttered by the representative of this extraordinary company. Schmidt spoke of invigorating the Google PAC, and pushing harder to get their side of the issue better heard. And I thought, Wow. This is a Google solution to this, the most important problem facing this republic? This the most they can imagine? ~ Lawrence Lessig,

748:I have a whole regimental intelligence service that’s developed a fine line in rumour-mongering and story-placing over the last few years, and the ear of every media player you’ve courted so assiduously over the decades; they will ask the questions we’ve suggested, they will listen, and they will repeat what we tell them. The issue is whether people believe it. ~ Iain M Banks,

749:The issue for us is trusting God enough to trust also His timing. If we can truly believe He has our welfare at heart, may we not let His plans unfold as He thinks best? The same is true with the second coming and with all those matters wherein our faith needs to include faith in the Lord’s timing for us personally, not just in His overall plans and purposes. ~ Neal A Maxwell,

750:The person across the table is never the problem. The unsolved issue is. So focus on the issue. This is one of the most basic tactics for avoiding emotional escalations. Our culture demonizes people in movies and politics, which creates the mentality that if we only got rid of the person then everything would be okay. But this dynamic is toxic to any negotiation. ~ Chris Voss,

751:When it comes to identity, that was an issue that plagued me for a lot of my life. It's something that I wanted to tap into. Film can really take you to other places, and sometimes that's necessary to understand your own identity or someone else's identity or just the issue of identity, in general. It takes you. It's borderless. It's boundless. It's universal. ~ Cherien Dabis,

752:Proactive boundaries go beyond problem identification to problem solving. Your child needs to know that in protesting, she has only identified the problem, not solved it. A tantrum doesn’t solve anything. She needs to use these feelings to motivate her to action, to address the issue at hand. She should think about her responses and choose the best one available. ~ Henry Cloud,

753:I’m just scared, Willow. He was my best friend. He was my everything.” Saying the words out loud made my chest sting. Willow threw her arm around my shoulder, steering me back toward Hay Stacks. “I know, babe. And maybe that’s part of the issue, you know? If you give your all to someone else, realize you may one day have to change all you know about yourself.” I ~ Kandi Steiner,

754:I was planning on writing a detailed review of several books on web security tonight, but the Obama collapse has superseded my best-laid plans. Here’s another open thread for this important topic, as America wrestles with the issue of whether it would be a good idea to elect a President with a 20-year history of associating with people who hate America. ~ Charles Foster Johnson,

755:The issue — which is about 95 percent political and five percent scientific — won’t go away. The Left will use it as a battering ram to force more taxes, more regulation, more control of every kind over the economy and over Americans’ personal behavior. This issue, on top of ObamaGovernmentCare, could finish the job of Sovietizing what’s left of a once free America. ~ Anonymous,

756:Too often we get caught up in our own words concerning prayer. Sometimes we try to pray so long, loud, and fancy that we lose sight of the fact that prayer is our conversation with God. The length or loudness or eloquence of our prayer is not the issue; it is the sincerity of our heart and the confidence we have that God hears and will answer us that is important. ~ Joyce Meyer,

757:What happens when a solitude-loving individualist marries an outgoing family woman who does not love solitude one bit? The answer, I’m guessing, is probably the best and most sustaining answer to nearly every question arising inside a marriage, no matter who you are or what the issue is: You find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice. ~ Michelle Obama,

758:Declining to hear “no” is a signal that someone is either seeking control or refusing to relinquish it. With strangers, even those with the best intentions, never, ever relent on the issue of “no,” because it sets the stage for more efforts to control. If you let someone talk you out of the word “no,” you might as well wear a sign that reads, “You are in charge. ~ Gavin de Becker,

759:For me, moral questions such as stem-cell research turn upon whether suffering is caused. In this case, clearly none is. The embryos have no nervous system. But that's not an issue discussed publicly. The issue is, Are they human? If you are an absolutist moralist, you say, "These cells are human, and therefore they deserve some kind of special moral treatment." ~ Richard Dawkins,

760:His aggravation was soothed by the sight of Sophia's serene face, the dark lashes screening her blue eyes as she concentrated on her task. Remembering the sweet fire of her response, Ross felt a glow of triumph. Despite her fears, she had been willing to let him make love to her. He would not press the issue now, not until he was well again. But then... oh, then... ~ Lisa Kleypas,

761:I don’t know that she can ever make you a proper wife,” Tavis said in a low voice that sounded precariously close to pleading. “Don’t force the issue. I wouldn’t have her hurt or ill-treated for anything in the world. She is dear to all of us. You are receiving a gift, Laird. Whether you choose to believe so or not, you are receiving something more precious than gold ~ Maya Banks,

762:The basic question that the 'new science' raises for our balance sheet is the issue of what scientific questions have not been asked for 500 years, which scientific risks have not been pursued. It raises the question of who has decided what scientific risks were worth taking, and what have been the consequences in terms of the power structures of the world. ~ Immanuel Wallerstein,

763:we pay doctors to give chemotherapy and to do surgery but not to take the time required to sort out when to do so is unwise. This certainly is a factor. But the issue isn’t merely a matter of financing. It arises from a still unresolved argument about what the function of medicine really is—what, in other words, we should and should not be paying for doctors to do. ~ Atul Gawande,

764:The theoretical fruits of deliberate oversimplification through idealization are not to be denied... Reality in all its messy particularity is too complicated to theorize about, taken straight. The issue is, rather (since every idealization is a strategic choice), which idealizations might really shed some light... which will just land us... diverting fairy tales. ~ Daniel Dennett,

765:He knew he could force the issue. Be blunt. But in getting his way, he would have to watch the bright light go out of her eyes. He would see her slim shoulders slump and know he was the cause. Damn it all to hell, he didn't think he could stand that. Yet another testament to how bad he had it for her. Women, he thought with a sigh. What had God been thinking? ~ Susan Mallery,

766:Dr. Heissman laughed and immediately apologized, "I'm sorry, I'm just so used to what I think of as squeezing water from a stone syndrome. SpecWar operators are not big on admitting to what they perceive to be a weakness. Even though awareness of vulnerability ultimately leads to strength. Either from directly dealing with the issue or learning to work around it. ~ Suzanne Brockmann,

767:He couldn’t let her get away again, or he’d never be the same. She could push him back, be angry about his screwup, but he was going to keep coming at her until he had her attention. She was going to have to tell him, convincingly, that she didn’t love him, and didn’t want him in her life. That was the only way he’d let go. And he was done tiptoeing around the issue. He ~ Robyn Carr,

768:Japanese industrialist and founder of Toyota Industries Sakichi Toyoda understood that problems often have nested causes. He wanted people to get past their preconceptions and “with a blank mind” get to the heart of the issue.7 He didn’t ask Why? once, or even twice. Repeat ‘why’ five times to every matter, he instructed, until you arrive at something with real context. ~ Jim Benson,

769:An absolute supernatural darkness falls    On man sometimes when he draws near to God:    An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means;    Forced out from the protecting Ignorance    And flung back on his naked primal need,    He at length must cast from him his surface soul    And be the ungarbed entity within:    That hour had fallen now on Savitri.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

770:Not to be constantly correcting people, and in particular not to jump on them whenever they make an error of usage or a grammatical mistake or mispronounce something, but just answer their question or add another example, or debate the issue itself (not their phrasing), or make some other contribution to the discussion—and insert the right expression, unobtrusively. ~ Marcus Aurelius,

771:Implementing parts of European constitution and leaving out others - without knowing where we're going - isn't an option. That would be detrimental to the overall balance, which is why we must embark on another comprehensive discussion of the issue once again. I would like to see Europe retain the idea of a constitution in the end, and I plan to campaign on its behalf. ~ Angela Merkel,

772:Because newborns spent nine months free-floating while curled in the fetal position, many are uncomfortable lying flat on their backs on a firm mattress. However, back sleeping on a firm mattress is the most important protection against SIDS. If your newborn naps well only in a sling or in your arms, this aversion to flat, stiff positioning may be part of the issue. ~ Elizabeth Pantley,

773:Money is in politics, it's been there. I was in politics for 10 years, I had some of the worst ads run against me ever. I had some of the most money spent by a guy in my state running against me. That's not the issue. The issue is getting out and making the case for what we're going to do to create jobs and to make the economic situation for individual families better. ~ Harold Ford Jr,

774:When there are deportations, you better believe there are families involved - there are parents being separated from their children. It doesn't reflect our values as Americans, and I don't think it fixes the issue. I think there would be a lot of advantages to creating paths to citizenship for people who are already working here so they are contributing to our economy. ~ Diane Guerrero,

775:A cap and trade bill will likely increase the costs of electricity. . . . These costs will be passed on to the consumers. But the issue is, how does it actually...how do we interact in terms with the rest of the world? If other countries don't impose a cost on carbon, then we would be at a disadvantage. . . . We should look at considering duties that would offset that cost. ~ Steven Chu,

776:And none of this necessarily has any bearing on the issue of the existence or non-existence of a God. What I'm saying is that the thought of the man and the way this thinking-feeling can reach an extreme degree of incommunicability - that, without sophism or paradox, is at the same time, for that man, the point of greatest communication. He communicates with himself. ~ Clarice Lispector,

777:Cygnus Atratus In his Treatise on Human Nature, the Scots philosopher David Hume posed the issue in the following way (as rephrased in the now famous black swan problem by John Stuart Mill): No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,

778:Danto Manquez Jr., president of MVM, Inc., has spoken to the issue of a leader’s ability to communicate: “A leader must get things done through others, therefore the leader must have the ability to inspire and motivate, guide and direct, and listen. It’s only through communication that the leader is able to cause others to internalize his or her vision and implement it. ~ John C Maxwell,

779:Some years ago our Japanese counterparts asked us to resume the discussions of the issue and so we did meeting them halfway. Over the passed couple of years the contacts were practically frozen on the initiative of the Japanese side, not ours. At the same time, presently our partners have expressed their eagerness to resume discussions on this issue [the Kuril Islands]. ~ Vladimir Putin,

780:The question of the relation between modernity and postmodernity revolves around the issue of 'legitimation.' Modernity, then, appeals to science to legitimate its claim - and by 'science' we simply mean the notion of a universal, autonomous reason. Science, then, is opposed to narrative, which attempts not to prove its claims but rather to proclaim them within a story. ~ James K A Smith,

781:The image of keys (plural) perhaps suggests not so much the porter, who controls admission to the house, as the steward, who regulates its administration (Is 22:22, in conjunction with 22:15). The issue then is not that of admission to the church (which is not what the kingdom of heaven means; see pp. 45-47) but an authority derived from a delegation of God's sovereignty. ~ Craig S Keener,

782:The public school system is not about educating black children. Never has been. Inner-city schools are about social control. Period. They’re operated as holding pens—miniature jails, really. It’s only when black children start breaking out of their pens and bothering white people that society even pays any attention to the issue of whether these children are being educated. ~ Barack Obama,

783:What we need to know about loving is no great mystery. We all know what constitutes loving behavior; we need but act upon it, not continually question it. Over-analysis often confuses the issue and in the end brings us no closer to insight. We sometimes become too busy classifying, separating, and examining, to remember that love is easy. It's we who make it complicated. ~ Leo F Buscaglia,

784:All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract . . . a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts. ~ Richard Diebenkorn,

785:I'm convinced that after years of studying the phenomenon, global warming is not the real issue of temperature. That is the issue of a new ideology or a new religion. A religion of climate change or a religion of global warming. This is a religion which tells us that the people are responsible for the current, very small increase in temperatures. And they should be punished. ~ Vaclav Klaus,

786:Entitlements is not sic the issue. And if so, cool heads can sit down and engage the American people and tell us how many seniors in nursing homes do we want to throw out in the street? ... And then who wants to make a fuss about Medicare when it's solvent until 2024? ... Who wants to make a fuss about Social Security when it's solvent - and it's about, 'You earned it'? ~ Sheila Jackson Lee,

787:Of course the issue of ending war, and creating prosperity; they're overarching issues all the time. But right now, the challenge to this generation I believe is the climate crisis. It's a national security issue, it's a health issue in terms of clean air, it's a competitiveness issue in terms of innovation and it's a moral issue to preserve the planet for the next generation. ~ Nancy Pelosi,

788:Are you really saying there's only one way to God?' people immediately ask. Yet even as we ask the question, we reveal the problem. If there were 1,000 ways to God, we would want 1,001. The issue is not how many ways lead to God; the issue is our autonomy before God. We want to make our own way. This is the essence of sin in the first place — trusting our way more than God's way. ~ David Platt,

789:I deal with my guests the same. I just love them. I deal with the issue as it is. There's no issue that can't be overcome. I don't tolerate disrespect of themselves or of me. And dishonesty. Those are two things that upset me. Don't tell me you said something or did something and you didn't. I'm very clear. I warn them early. There always comes a moment when you don't like me! ~ Iyanla Vanzant,

790:You know, in America, Christian fundamentalism vs. science. You know, be it teaching Darwinian evolutionary theory or stem cell res- You know, the whole thing, and then the issue of women being educated in Middle Eastern - I mean, it just seems so contemporary. In terms of spirituality, it's interesting because I actually think (her character in Agora) Hypatia is very spiritual. ~ Rachel Weisz,

791:Some people draw a comforting distinction between force and violence. I refuse to cloud the issue by such word-play. The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence. Call an elephant a rabbit only if it gives you comfort to feel that you are about to be trampled to death by a rabbit. ~ Kenneth Kaunda,

792:Papering over the issue of race makes for bad social theory, bad research, and bad public policy.” To ignore the fact that one of the oldest republics in the world was erected on a foundation of white supremacy, to pretend that the problems of a dual society are the same as the problems of unregulated capitalism, is to cover the sin of national plunder with the sin of national lying. ~ Anonymous,

793:Sometimes the issue is about whether families and communities think girls are even worthy of an education in the first place. It's about whether girls are valued only for their labor and reproductive capacities or for their minds as well. And it's about whether women are viewed as second-class citizens or as full human beings entitled to the same rights and opportunities as men. ~ Michelle Obama,

794:While we have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, we still have a lot of work to do. Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. It's about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect. ~ Barack Obama,

795:In the end, North Africa and Rome agreed to differ on the issue of baptism, the North Africans saying that valid baptism could take place only within the Christian community which is the Church, the Romans saying that the sacrament belonged to Christ, not to the Church, and that therefore it was valid whoever performed it if it was done in the right form and with the right intentions. ~ Anonymous,

796:Seventh-Gay Adventists isn't just a helpful movie, important for the way it can help congregations of any denomination deal graciously and truthfully with the issue of homosexuality. It's also a beautifully-filmed and artfully-conceived movie. It does what the best art does - it 'humanizes the other.' You should see it, and when you do, you'll encourage others to see it as well. ~ Brian D McLaren,

797:For me, it's important to elevate the hypocrisy with humor. Then you really are using the humor to elevate the problem, saying this is why it matters, and then saying we can combine the work together with laughing and being around joyful people and helping out. So the comedy sometimes can actually full-on expose the issue, but also it's a gathering tool. It serves a lot of purposes. ~ Lizz Winstead,

798:The key thing is figuring out what your issues are, and it's really never about the food. You have to be real and honest with yourself. I had to stop and look and ask myself, ‘Why do I want this? What is the real reason?’ At times it was comfort food like chocolate. I love chocolate and I realized it relaxes me, so when you acknowledge what the issue is, you can control it better. ~ Jennifer Hudson,

799:You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,

800:I have neither the learning nor the experience to know whether the doomsayers are right about the human causes of climate change. But I am willing to acknowledge that people who know a lot more than I do may be right when they claim that it is the consequence of our own behaviour. I assume that this is why the BBC's coverage of the issue abandoned the pretence of impartiality long ago. ~ Jeremy Paxman,

801:I think there's a lot of shame in American race relations. There's a lot of suppressed guilt that lashes itself out still. I see that all the time, and whereas opposed to sort of trying to address the issue in an up-front way, they're attacking and thus perpetuating the problem thinking that they're being sophisticated and post-racial, when, in fact, they're being completely regressive. ~ Danny Strong,

802:The issue of comparative performances can be regarded as settled to-day, both scientifically and practically. Though differences in attitudes between men and women still form a favorite topic of drawing-room conversation ... women's abilities are no longer seriously in doubt. These discussions rather seem to be a kind of rearguard action carried on after the main battle has been decided. ~ Alva Myrdal,

803:I am cross with Christopher,” Beatrix told Amelia in the afternoon, as they strolled arm in arm along the graveled paths behind Ramsay House. “And before I tell you about it, I want to make it clear that there is only one reasonable side of the issue. Mine.” “Oh, bother,” Amelia said sympathetically. “Husbands do make one cross at times. Tell me your side, and I will agree completely. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

804:It's the reason why I am always interested in engaging in people who are pushing us and pushing against the status quo. But having been an activist, the only thing that I'm always encouraging activists to do is, once you have raised the issue, and even through controversial means, you have to come behind it with an agenda and the possibility of reconciliation if power meets your demands. ~ Barack Obama,

805:Once you get to this place on what we might metaphorically call your spiritual quest, once you get to the place where you hear about psychedelics, the issue is no longer then about where is the gas peddle on the spiritual vehicle. The issue suddenly becomes, where is the brake? Because this is the fuel to go where you want to go. This is the power to lift you where you want to be lifted. ~ Terence McKenna,

806:The more I studied the issue, the more I noticed that the passion hypothesis convinces people that somewhere there’s a magic “right” job waiting for them, and that if they find it, they’ll immediately recognize that this is the work they were meant to do. The problem, of course, is when they fail to find this certainty, bad things follow, such as chronic job-hopping and crippling self-doubt. ~ Cal Newport,

807:You may not agree with a woman, but to criticize her appearance — as opposed to her ideas or actions — isn't doing anyone any favors, least of all you. Insulting a woman's looks when they have nothing to do with the issue at hand implies a lack of comprehension on your part, an inability to engage in high-level thinking. You may think she's ugly, but everyone else thinks you're an idiot. ~ Hillary Clinton,

808:Individual heterosexual women came to the movement from relationships where men were cruel, unkind, violent, unfaithful. Many of these men were radical thinkers who participated in movements for social justice, speaking out on behalf of the workers, the poor, speaking out on behalf of racial justice. However when it came to the issue of gender they were as sexist as their conservative cohorts. ~ Bell Hooks,

809:Individual heterosexual women came to the movement from relationships where men were cruel, unkind, violent, unfaithful. Many of these men were radical thinkers who participated in movements for social justice, speaking out on behalf of the workers, the poor, speaking out on behalf of racial justice. However when it came to the issue of gender they were as sexist as their conservative cohorts. ~ bell hooks,

810:Other than they may or may not have discussed the relative merits of the Electoral College vs. the popular vote, what I am told by sources close to Al Gore is that this was at the instigation of Ivanka Trump, that she reached out to the former vice president recently to discuss climate change, and that he was really impressed with the way she was thinking about the issue, framing the issue. ~ Karen Tumulty,

811:This is community land that belongs to particular clans, and therefore, it must go back and its administration and the determination as to what to do, must rest in the hand of the communities. That is why you have these committees, among whose members, of course, they will be traditional leaders. You will have these collectives, which must then deal with the land, the issue of communal rights. ~ Thabo Mbeki,

812:What does it mean when a man falls in love with a radiant face across the room? It may mean that he has some soul work to do. His soul is the issue. Instead of pursuing the woman and trying to get her alone, away from her husband, he needs to go alone himself, perhaps to a mountain cabin, for three months, write poetry, canoe down a river, and dream. That would save some women a lot of trouble. ~ Robert Bly,

813:Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there [...] You see God where others don't. And then you point him out. So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst. ~ Rob Bell,

814:The more I studied the issue, the more I noticed that the passion hypothesis convinces people that somewhere there’s a magic “right” job waiting for them, and that if they find it, they’ll immediately recognize that this is the work they were meant to do. The problem, of course, is when they fail to find this certainty, bad things follow, such as chronic job-hopping and crippling self-doubt. We ~ Cal Newport,

815:In order to detach caste from the political economy, from conditions of enslavement in which most dalits lived and worked, in order to slide the questions of entitlement, land reforms and the redistribution of wealth, Hindu reformers cleverly narrowed the question of caste to the issue of untouchability. They framed it as an erroneous religious and cultural practice that needed to be reformed. ~ Arundhati Roy,

816:Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there [...] You see God where others don't. And then you point him out. So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst. ~ Rob Bell,

817:That this gentleman [President John Adams] ought not to be the object of the federal wish, is, with me, reduced to demonstration. His administration has already very materially disgraced and sunk the government. There are defects in his character which must inevitably continue to do this more and more. And if he is supported by the federal party, his party must in the issue fall with him. ~ Alexander Hamilton,

818:The issue we are reluctant to talk about is even more sensitive than condoms. The issue - and I will try to be tasteful here - is that sometimes it seems like maybe the president of the United States is kind of dumb. If you get what I mean. What I mean is, I am not totally confident that the president would get what I mean, unless several aides explained it to him. And even then, he might forget. ~ Dave Barry,

819:I think the issue will come up after the election of the new Tory leader. They may well decide to call an election. What the British people need now is stability. Stability to retain their jobs, stability to protect those working conditions, and we need a plan from this government now on how they're going to approach the negotiations for leaving the European Union before they invoke Article 50. ~ Jeremy Corbyn,

820:The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable-even legally actionable-to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty-lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self image. ~ Amy Chua,

821:The issue was not that he might act precipitously and recklessly because he didn’t understand the consequences of doing so. The issue was that he could not comprehend the actual choices that needed to be made in order to act; indeed, he could not even stay in the room long enough to decide on a course of action. For Trump, the fog of war would waylay him before the first command could be given. ~ Michael Wolff,

822:Corinne suggested a different reason, indicating that her dying father had expressed concern about Theodore’s intimacy with Edith, given Charles Carow’s fiscal and temperamental instability. If Theodore discussed the issue with Edith that night, he might well have triggered the volatility that he would obscurely explain to Bamie as a clash of tempers “that were far from being of the best. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin,

823:Defining away the question by arguing that the buck stops with God may seem to obviate the issue of infinite regression, but here I invoke my mantra: The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not. The existence or nonexistence of a creator is independent of our desires. A world without God or purpose may seem harsh or pointless, but that alone doesn’t require God to actually exist. ~ Lawrence M Krauss,

824:Fred Singer gave his game away when he denied the reality of the ozone hole, suggesting that people involved in the issue “probably [have] … hidden agendas of their own—not just to ‘save the environment’ but to change our economic system … Some of these ‘coercive utopians’ are socialists, some are technology-hating Luddites; most have a great desire to regulate—on as large a scale as possible.”33 ~ Naomi Oreskes,

825:One parent of a Rebel explained, “The best way to wrangle the Rebel child is to give the kid the information to make a decision, present the issue as a question that he alone can answer, and let him make a decision and act without telling you. Let him make a decision without an audience. Audiences = expectations. If he thinks you’re not watching, he won’t need to rebel against your expectations. ~ Gretchen Rubin,

826:When you refuse to think about an issue, it remains unchanged, in precisely the same state as you tucked it away." "Precisely the point of boxing it. The issue dies. Can no longer affect you. It's a damned effective tactic." "Short-term yes. Long-term, a recipe for disaster. When you next encounter whatever you boxed your feeling about, you're ambushed by repressed, unresolved emotion. ~ Karen Marie Moning,

827:You may not agree with a woman, but to criticize her appearance — as opposed to her ideas or actions — isn’t doing anyone any favors, least of all you. Insulting a woman’s looks when they have nothing to do with the issue at hand implies a lack of comprehension on your part, an inability to engage in high-level thinking. You may think she’s ugly, but everyone else thinks you’re an idiot. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton,

828:It's a hat," said Jess. Manx stretched. "Yes." "A hat with - just to be clear - a lizard on it. A real, dead lizard." "An iguana, yea. It's been stuffed." "I can see that. Any idiot can see that, but it doesn;t address the issue." "The issue being?" "Manx, you're wearing a goddamn reptile! On your head! With pride! It's like you're the lovechild of Carmen Miranda and a taxidermist! ~ Foz Meadows,

829:The issue of the pension gap has got to become visible and important to millions of people before Washington will respond seriously. Right now, everyone thinks it's his or her own problem and that individuals have to do better and save more. Of course, that is true. We all have to save more and take responsibility for our own retirement. But we have a huge social and economic problem on our hands. ~ Hedrick Smith,

830:The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy, and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal, and have done so for a very long time.... Respondent would have us announce, as the Court of Appeals did, a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do. ~ Byron White,

831:Why didn’t you talk about whether women are funny or not? I just felt that by commenting on that in any real way, it would be tacit approval of it as a legitimate debate, which it isn’t. It would be the same as addressing the issue of “Should dogs and cats be able to care for our children? They’re in the house anyway.” I try not to make it a habit to seriously discuss nonsensical hot-button issues. ~ Mindy Kaling,

832:Although Kim Jong Un is a very unreasonable leader and has a firm, unreasonable belief that nuclear and missile weapons will protect him and his regime, we will continue to employ all possible means - sanctions, pressure, as well as dialogue - to draw North Korea to the negotiating table for denuclearization. To resolve the issue, we have to add dialogue to the current menu of sanctions and pressure. ~ Moon Jae in,

833:I was raised by a strong mother who always taught me to speak up, I never had difficulty leaving an uncomfortable situation or cutting eye contact; people used to call me cold. Girls need to learn that they're allowed to say no and to speak up. This is what I work on in Africa with the girls, but the issue is global and I'm glad that women are speaking up and saying that we won't put up with it anymore. ~ Toni Garrn,

834:There is a thirty-three page essay by Arundhati Roy on the issue yet it doesn't smell of the jungles. It smells of her. It stinks of her agenda. Why, I wonder? Why is it that most of the op-eds and essays from the so-called intelligentsia comprising editors, professors, historians, political analysts, social workers, NGO entrepreneurs, humanitarians, and civil society leaders favour the false Naxal ~ Vivek Agnihotri,

835:If we limit our sight to individual players, we'll never see the big picture. The issue is a systemic one, maintained by interconnected actors, all acting in their self-interest to further their goals. The trouble is not, or not always, the actors themselves, or their intrinsic motivations. Instead, it's the overarching goal of the entire system that's at fault: corporate profit above public health. ~ T Colin Campbell,

836:I'm sorry, to boycott the Academy Awards is a slap in Chris Rock's face. To host is such a prestigious honor. To boycott it is not the issue. I think it does a disservice to all the African Americans that have worked so hard this year that will be attending and looking at this as an opportunity of a lifetime. I think it's a slap in the face. I understand the sentiment, but I don't appreciate the tactic. ~ Eva Marcille,

837:I think we need to address greenhouse gas emissions. But I try to get involved in issues where I see a legislative result... So I just leave the issue alone because I don't see a way through it, and there are certain fundamentals, for example nuke power, that people on the left will never agree with me on. So why should I waste my time when I know the people on the left are going to reject nuclear power? ~ John McCain,

838:The efficiency of a President at the beginning of his term depends on their capacity to get everything under control. That was my case. But once the institutions have been put in place, and the responsibilities delegated, the leader becomes a reference, a referee, a symbol and unifying figure for the nation. The issue is how and when to recognize the moment when staying in power becomes counterproductive. ~ Paul Kagame,

839:Why didn't you talk about whether women are funny or not? I just felt that by commenting on that in any real way, it would be tacit approval of it as a legitimate debate, which it isn't. It would be the same as addressing the issue of 'Should dogs and cats be able to care for our children? They're in the house anyway.' I try not to make it a habit to seriously discuss nonsensical hot-button issues. ~ Mindy Kaling,

840:Every single American can exclaim, 'Nothing justifies what they did in New York and Washington,' not even the bombs that our government has dropped on them for ten years or the embargo that has caused the deaths of so many children. That's of course true...The issue is simply an acceptance of reality and a fundamental fact of life: When governments do bad things to people, people sometimes retaliate. ~ Jacob G Hornberger,

841:Experience, however, shows that neither a state nor a bank ever have [sic] had the unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power; in all states, therefore, the issue of paper money ought to be under some check and control; and none seems so proper for that purpose as that of subjecting the issuers of paper money to the obligation of paying their notes either in gold coin or bullion. ~ David Ricardo,

842:I have traveled many times outside Iran, and have discussed the issue [of the Iranian nuclear project]. I have been asked for my opinion and that of the Iranian Jewish community, and I have always emphasized that the Iranian people has the right to obtain nuclear technology and energy for peaceful purposes. The Iranian people must not give up this right under any circumstances - and indeed, it will not. ~ Maurice Motamed,

843:[T]he Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps volunteers? Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse. But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen? ~ P J O Rourke,

844:The issue is your undermining of the authority of rational argument. What it liberates people to do is to act on their deepest prejudices, without having to justify them rationally. Don’t assume that what they do then will be politically acceptable to you. If they feel liberated to choose injustice and cruelty, you may not like the results. You may be the first to be lined up against the wall and shot. ~ Timothy Williamson,

845:Investing in [children] is not a national luxury or a national choice. It's a national necessity. If the foundation of your house is crumbling, you don't say you can't afford to fix it while you're building astronomically expensive fences to protect it from outside enemies. The issue is not are we going to pay - it's are we going to pay now, up front, or are we going to pay a whole lot more later on. ~ Marian Wright Edelman,

846:Faith in God offers no insurance against tragedy. Nor does it offer insurance against feelings of doubt and betrayal. If anything, being a Christian complicates the issue. If you believe in a world of pure chance, what difference does it make whether a bus from Yuba City or one from Salina crashes? But if you believe in a world ruled by a powerful God who loves you tenderly, then it makes an awful difference. ~ Philip Yancey,

847:The comfort-women agreement that we made with Japan during the last administration is not accepted by the people of Korea, particularly by the victims. They are against this agreement. The core to resolving the issue is for Japan to take legal responsibility for its actions and to make an official apology. But we should not block the advancement of Korea-Japan bilateral relations just because of this one issue. ~ Moon Jae in,

848:The first skill to develop for sensing energy is the ability to pay attention. Learn how to observe others by being silent. You know what it is like to sit back and watch. Observe any area about which you want more information without judgment or having any opinions or preconceived ideas about it. As you think intently about something, you will begin to receive guidance, ideas, and new thoughts about the issue. ~ Sanaya Roman,

849:I think we can provide common-sense approaches to the issue of illegal guns that are ending up on the streets. We can make sure that criminals don't have guns in their hands. We can make certain that those who are mentally deranged are not getting a hold of handguns. We can trace guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers that may be selling to straw purchasers and dumping them on the streets. ~ Barack Obama,

850:As regards humanitarian issues and how to handle them, that was the Prime Minister's [Shinzō Abe] initiative. He brought the matter up at our last meeting in Lima and asked me straightforwardly whether we would agree to let Japanese citizens travel on a visa-free basis, resolve the issue in such a way as to enable them to visit the South Kurils, visit their native areas. I said at once that it was quite possible. ~ Vladimir Putin,

851:A lot of the young people make beautiful films or big films or are able to finance them, but they can't get anyone to distribute them, they can't get anyone to see them, so they go to these thousands of film festivals. So I still believe that even though a young kid might be able to make a masterpiece or something that changes the direction of cinema, the issue of how to get it to people is still not solved. ~ Francis Ford Coppola,

852:I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people. ~ Coretta Scott King,

853:We’re all bound for the Sky Road, sooner or later. How we walk it depends on how we walked in the world beneath. So you don’t sit on your arse whining and waiting for your death to come find you. You go looking for it. Track the fucker down, force the issue. You walk, Archidi, you find the strength to walk, and you keep walking till you drop. Now some men don’t have that strength, so you have to lend it to them. ~ Richard K Morgan,

854:In his competition with Bradford, Franklin had one big disadvantage. Bradford was the postmaster of Philadelphia, and he used that position to deny Franklin the right, at least officially, to send his Gazette through the mail. Their ensuing struggle over the issue of open carriage was an early example of the tension that often still exists between those who create content and those who control distribution systems. ~ Walter Isaacson,

855:One way programming languages avoid the issue of data being modified by concurrently running threads is by providing immutable data structures or collection classes. Clearly data that cannot change doesn't need to be protected. It is often desirable to be able to create new data structures that are similar to existing ones, for example, a list with a new item added at one end or a hash map with a new key/value pair added. ~ Anonymous,

856:Two economists recently concluded, after studying the issue, that the entire concept of food miles is ‘a profoundly flawed sustainability indicator’. Getting food from the farmer to the shop causes just 4 per cent of all its lifetime emissions. Ten times as much carbon is emitted in refrigerating British food as in air-freighting it from abroad, and fifty times as much is emitted by the customer travelling to the shops. ~ Matt Ridley,

857:I am the same artist with the same nagging questions I had in my early 20's. What's real and what isn't? How do we tell what's real in our lives? How do we see things as they are? What is my role in life? If the Signature hadn't forced the issue by devoting its season to my plays, I could at least believe I had changed. Really, they're all the same! What is SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION but THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES with money? ~ John Guare,

858:I'm very pleased this military engagement together with a political road map that we developed, we were able to continue. We want to bring about a political solution there. We worked very closely together [with Barack Obama] on the issue of annexation of Crimea and Russia's attempt to actually conquer Ukraine and actually, they did so, conquer part of the territory. We tried to come to a peaceful settlement here on this. ~ Angela Merkel,

859:RBC invited Brad along with a bunch of other nonwhite people to a meeting to discuss the issue. Going around the table, people took turns responding to a request to “talk about your experience of being a minority at RBC.” When Brad’s turn came he said, “To be honest, the only time I’ve ever felt like a minority is this exact moment. If you really want to encourage diversity you shouldn’t make people feel like a minority. ~ Michael Lewis,

860:One of the commonest signs of social decline lies in the separation of the elites from the masses.  Where the elites – the leadership – share the concerns of their people, government proceeds smoothly.  Where the elites are physically and socially separated from their people, they start designing policies that are actively harmful to the masses.  This is nowhere clearer than it is in the issue of criminal justice. ~ Christopher G Nuttall,

861:("A Free Market in Education: The Answer to Prayer, And Other Issues") No matter where you are on the issue, there is no solution to it within a government school context, only perpetual conflict. The answer involves choice, competition and private alternatives. If you don't like what a business offers, you don't argue endlessly about it; you walk across the street. Why is this principle so complicated for some people? ~ Lawrence W Reed,

862:Coalition members learned to make our points via stories. It is impossible to argue with a story that simply reflects the experience of the storyteller. People like stories and remember them. They create emotions that are essential to motivation and action. Emotions, not facts, are what energize humans to act. Our best stories were about our own inconsistencies and failings or about our own emotional struggles with the issue. ~ Mary Pipher,

863:Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder. ~ Eric Metaxas,

864:The issue of climate change, it really does bring home the fact that we are on one planet, and that some of the impact of what human beings do in one corner of the world is going to affect people in a distant corner of the world. So we may still feel very far from each other, but we are really very close to each other because of the changes we have made with travel and technology and especially the information technology. ~ Wangari Maathai,

865:Vampires Are Us: Understanding Our Love Affair with the Immortal Dark Side,” is now out! Quote: “Vampires let us play with death and the issue of mortality. They let us ponder what it would mean to be truly long lived. Would the long view allow us to see the world differently, imagine social structures differently? Would it increase or decrease our reverence for the planet? Vampires allow us to ask questions we usually bury. ~ Margot Adler,

866:alright?  Doctor just gave me the basics.” “It’s the skull fracture that’s the issue,” she said.  “There’s some swelling and bleeding in and around the brain.  Assuming the swelling and bleeding subside, he should be okay.  But he won’t be alert until that happens.” Like the doctor, she didn’t state the obvious, that the swelling and bleeding might not subside. “You’re an investigator now?” Jane asked.  “That’s what Lauren said. ~ Jeff Shelby,

867:Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

868:I could reach out and take her hand, force the issue, but I want her to be the one to do it this time. I want her to acknowledge this thing between us out loud. I can't leave well enough alone. I want her to say the words. We're meant to be. Something. Anything. I need to hear them. To know that I'm not alone in this. I should let it go. I am going to let it go. 'What are you so afraid of?' I ask, not letting it go at all. ~ Nicola Yoon,

869:Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored... I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, and there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,

870:Maybe that's the problem. But whether they've heard it of not. The issue is the train that is going off the cliff. After we save the country, after we keep the train from going off the cliff, I would welcome, quite frankly, a discussion of morality in this country. I think it would be a wonderful thing if we bring back our Judeo-Christian values once again. I think it could do nothing but help us. I would be all in favor of that. ~ Benjamin Carson,

871:Neuroscientists rarely have to grapple with the issue of presentism versus existentialism. But in practice, neuroscientists are implicitly presentists. They view the past, present, and future as fundamentally distinct, as the brain makes decisions in the present, based on the memories of the past, to enhance our well being in the future. But despite its intuitive appeal, presentism is the underdog theory in physics and philosophy. ~ Dean Buonomano,

872:Perhaps we could revisit the issue of World Cup Host selection for 2018/2022 as some countries feel, and we did say, they are more suitable. Russia was the only high risk location for 2018 and racial chanting is rife there but a Mr. R. Abramovich paid a significant fee to fund the voting proceedings and, not to be discriminatory, we would have to see the same thing from any England/Spain representatives wishing to have another vote. ~ Sepp Blatter,

873:With 450,000 U. S. troops now in Vietnam, it is time that Congress decided whether or not to declare a state of war exists with North Vietnam. Previous congressional resolutions of support provide only limited authority. Although Congress may decide that the previously approved resolution on Vietnam given President Johnson is sufficient, the issue of a declaration of war should at least be put before the Congress for decision. ~ Dwight D Eisenhower,

874:For a very long time, white evangelicalism has been simply wrong on the issue of race. Indeed, conservative white Christians have served as a bastion of racial segregation and a bulwark against racial justice efforts for decades, in the South and throughout the country. During the civil rights struggle, the vast majority of white evangelicals and their churches were on the wrong side—the wrong side of the truth, the Bible, and the gospel. ~ Jim Wallis,

875:Research supports the concept that it is indeed more difficult for audiences to process information when it is presented in spoken and written form at the same time. So perhaps it would be better to just remain silent and let people read the slides. But this raises the issue: Why are you there? A good oral presentation is different from a well-written document, and attempts to merge them result in poor presentations and poor documents, ~ Garr Reynolds,

876:It iscrucial that we understand lesbian/feminism in the deepest, most radical sense: as that love for ourselves and other women, that commitment to the freedom of all of us, which transcends the category of "sexual preference" and the issue of civil rights, to become a politics of asking women's questions, demanding a world in which the integrity of all women--not a chosen few--shall be honored and validated in every respect of culture. ~ Adrienne Rich,

877:The issue is that when you're a critic it's hard to tell the difference between the thrill of denouncing and telling the truth. Telling the truth to me feels more often like denouncing than like praising. There are many more concrete advantages in the world for people who praise than for those who denounce. So if you want to tell the truth, oftentimes you're going to err on the side of denouncing. That's just something I have to work on. ~ Dan Chiasson,

878:There is such a thing as righteous judgment, but it seems that lately the word 'judgment' has become a curse word, period. The issue isn't whether or not we're insightful enough to avoid being judgmental, but whether or not we're secure enough to accept being judged. It is inevitable for every conscious human being to judge. It may spring from insight and experience and sincerity, and in such cases, it is quite beneficial on the receiving end. ~ Criss Jami,

879:On July 6, 2015, the Bureau received a referral from the inspector general of the intelligence community, a congressionally created independent office focused on finding risks and vulnerabilities across the nation’s vast intelligence community. The referral raised the issue of whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had mishandled classified information while using her personal email system. On July 10, the FBI opened a criminal investigation. ~ James Comey,

880:We are tossed about by external causes in many ways, and like waves driven by contrary winds, we waver and are unconscious of the issue and our fate.' We think we are most ourselves when we are most passionate, whereas it is then we are most passive, caught in some ancestral torrent of impulse or feeling, and swept on to a precipitate reaction which meets only part of the situation because without thought only part of a situation can be perceived. ~ Will Durant,

881:The fool!" I broke in—"the fool! Thou callest him great; but how can the man be truly great who has no strength to stand against a woman's wiles? Cæsar, with the world hanging on his word! Cæsar, at whose breath forty legions marched and changed the fate of peoples! Cæsar the cold! the far-seeing! the hero!—Cæsar to fall like a ripe fruit into a false girl's lap! Why, in the issue, of what common clay was this Roman Cæsar, and how poor a thing! ~ H Rider Haggard,

882:The issue was: I wanted a boyfriend this summer, and to have a boyfriend, I needed to meet boys, and the Lonestar League was guys, guys, guys. Honesty time. I released a big sigh. “All right, so maybe I’d like to have a brother for the summer.” Okay, not so honest. “A boyfriend is more like it,” Tiffany said. I glared at her. “Any chance you could move off to college next week? Don’t they have summer classes or something? ~ Rachel Hawthorne,

883:There was also the issue of his hygiene. He was still convinced, against all evidence, that his vegan diets meant that he didn’t need to use a deodorant or take regular showers. “We would have to literally put him out the door and tell him to go take a shower,” said Markkula. “At meetings we had to look at his dirty feet.” Sometimes, to relieve stress, he would soak his feet in the toilet, a practice that was not as soothing for his colleagues. ~ Walter Isaacson,

884:As a writer, I've always believed that while my work and I myself are embedded in whatever period I am writing about, clearly I am sensitive to the winds that are blowing in the culture. At the same time, I have always felt that the issue was not to deal with the problem in the abstract, but to deal with the people who are in that problem. The emphasis is on the people. The general problem begins to resolve itself even before the play is finished. ~ Arthur Miller,

885:If you don't educate people well, then you're going to have a lot of violent, angry young men and women. You can go around saying they're all so violent, just throw them in jail, this is an underclass, what can you do? You can create fear. The issue of violence is very suitable for a repressive society. Then you can have more legislation, more police, more laws to fight crime, when all you need to do is to encourage people in a different way. ~ Jeanette Winterson,

886:For the purposes of this book, however, the relevant question is much narrower: the issue is not whether, in general, a national securities regulator is preferable to Canada's fragmented provincial securities regulatory system. The key question, for our purposes, is this: Would a national securities regulator have made a material difference in this specific case? Framed this way, the question is much more challenging and the answer far less certain. ~ Paul Halpern,

887:It is perfectly clear that people, given no alternative, will choose tyranny over anarchy, because anarchy is the worst tyranny of all... The special nature of liberties is that they can be defended only as long as we still have them. So the very first signs of their erosion must be resisted, whether the issue be domestic surveillance by the Army, so-called preventive detention, or the freedom of corporate television, or that of a campus newspaper. ~ Eric Sevareid,

888:In our election manifesto is: we keep the right to create money and to bring in circulation, for the cause of the government ... Those who do not share this view, reply us to the issue of paper money is for the banks, the government should stay out of the banking business. I agree with Jefferson's opinion ... and just like him I say again: the issue of money is a matter for the government and the banks should stay out of government activity. ~ William Jennings Bryan,

889:What did she do that made her happy? The question implied action, a conscious purpose. She did many things in a day, and many things made her happy, but that, Claire could tell, wasn’t the issue. Nor the only one, Claire realized. Because in order to consciously do something that made you happy, you’d have to know who you were. Trying to figure that out these days was like fishing on a lake on a moonless night—you had no idea what you would get. ~ Erica Bauermeister,

890:It launched one worker, Eugene Debs, into a lifetime of activism for labor unions and socialism. Debs was arrested for supporting the strike. Two years later he wrote: The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis for civilization. The time has come to regenerate [renew] society—we are on the eve of a universal change. Like ~ Howard Zinn,

891:Everything is connected. Connectivity is going to be the key to addressing these issues, like contaminants and climate change. They're not just about contaminants on your plate. They're not just about the ice depleting. They're about the issue of humanity. What we do every day - whether you live in Mexico, the United States, Russia, China ... can have a very negative impact on an entire way of life for an entire people far away from that source. ~ Sheila Watt Cloutier,

892:Leaders often have to decide between great outcomes that might backfire and mediocre ones that work for sure. It is what I call “The Leader's Dilemma.” The issue stems in large part because the game has a fixed order. Because the leader has to act first, followers have time to observe flaws and make criticisms. Often, the good outcomes need cooperation so they are risky and less likely to win out. In turn, safer but mediocre outcomes rise to the top. ~ Presh Talwalkar,

893:one can either believe in rebirth or not believe in it. But there is a third alternative: that of agnosticism—to acknowledge in all honesty that one does not know. One does not have either to assert it or to deny it; one neither has to adopt the literal versions presented by tradition nor fall into the other extreme of believing that death is a final annihilatioṇ This, I feel, could provide a good Buddhist middle way for approaching the issue today. ~ Stephen Batchelor,

894:The explanations a writer gives himself for having written any particular book are more often not the real reasons why that book has been written. Honesty is not the issue. Understanding is. A man does not write one novel at a time or even one quatrain at a time. He is engaged in the long process of putting his whole life on paper. He is on a journey and he is reporting in: ‘This is where I think I am and this is what this place looks like today.’” The ~ Harlan Ellison,

895:Capital, and the question of who owns it and therefore reaps the benefit of its productiveness, is an extremely important issue that is complementary to the issue of full employment... I see these as twin pillars of our economy: Full employment of our labor resources and widespread ownership of our capital resources. Such twin pillars would go a long way in providing a firm underlying support for future economic growth that would be equitably shared. ~ Hubert H Humphrey,

896:Create ways to foster alternative view and constructive criticism. Assign people to play the devils advocate, taking opposing viewpoints so you can see the holes in your position. Get people to wage debates that argue different sides of the issue. Have an anonymous suggestion box that employees must contribute to as part of the decision-making proces. Remember, people can be independent thinkers and team players at the same time, help them fill both roles. ~ Carol S Dweck,

897:When the benefits are seen as abstractable from the Benefactor the issue becomes: 1) For the preacher: “How can I offer these benefits?” and 2) For the hearer: “How can I get these benefits into my life?” But when it is seen that Christ and his benefits are inseparable and that the latter are not abstractable commodities, the primary question becomes: 1) For the preacher: “How do I preach Christ himself?” and 2) For the hearer: “How do I get into Christ? ~ Sinclair B Ferguson,

898:This is a young country,” Kennedy went on, his voice getting louder, “founded by young men . . . and still young in heart. . . . The world is changing, the old ways will not do. . . . It is time for a new generation of leadership to cope with new problems and new opportunities.” Even Kennedy’s enemies agreed that his speech that day was stirring. He turned Truman’s challenge around: the issue was not his inexperience but the older generation’s monopoly on power. ~ Robert Greene,

899:A coherent and useful conservative response would be that unless a sounder case can be made that the planet is undergoing anything more than the normal climate change that has existed as long as there has been a planet, and, more importantly, that anything could be done about the planet’s climate even if it is going off the rails, then the seriousness of the issue is political: Leftists using faux science and a gullible media to advance the agenda they’ve always had. ~ Anonymous,

900:The issue here really is not whether international trade shall be free but whether or not it makes any sense for a country - or, for that matter, a region - to destroy its own capacity to produce its own food. How can a government, entrusted with the safety and health of its people, conscientiously barter away in the name of an economic idea that people's ability to feed itself? And if people lose their ability to feed themselves, how can they be said to be free? ~ Wendell Berry,

901:The issue is whether we want to live in a free society or whether we want to live under what amounts to a form of self-imposed totalitarianism, with the bewildered herd marginalized, directed elsewhere, terrified, screaming patriotic slogans, fearing for their lives, and admiring with awe the leader who saved them from destruction, while the educated masses goose-step on command and repeat the slogans they’re supposed to repeat and the society deteriorates at home. ~ Noam Chomsky,

902:Replace risk with certainty. You have no worries about losing control if you aren't threatened. Once you are certain about yourself, external threats don't exist anymore, because threat is the same as fear, and knowing who you are is a fearless state. Who you are is the true self. Expanded awareness takes you closer to this true self; therefore, fear decreases. When that happens, the issue of control lessens. In its place you experience a state of increased freedom. ~ Deepak Chopra,

903:The manufacturing industry is starting to press for some kind of national healthcare. Now it's beginning to put it on the agenda. It doesn't matter if the population wants it. What 90% of the population wants would be kind of irrelevant. But if part of the concentration of corporate capital that basically runs the country - another thing we're not allowed to say but it's obvious - if part of that sector becomes in favor then the issue moves onto the political agenda. ~ Noam Chomsky,

904:that we are in here not to correct the deformation but to accustom ourselves to it: that one of our problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own deformities. Just as each person has certain idiosyncrasies in the way he or she walks, people have idiosyncrasies in the way they think and feel and see things, and though you might want to correct them, it doesn’t happen overnight, and if you try to force the issue in one case, something else might go funny. ~ Haruki Murakami,

905:And what about the idea that hitting a child merely teaches them to hit? First: No. Wrong. Too simple. For starters, “hitting” is a very unsophisticated word to describe the disciplinary act of an effective parent. If “hitting” accurately described the entire range of physical force, then there would be no difference between rain droplets and atom bombs. Magnitude matters—and so does context, if we’re not being wilfully blind and naïve about the issue. ~ Jordan Peterson,

906:1. Because of our lengthy, vulnerable childhood – where for so many years we rely upon our parents to meet our needs and protect us from the dangers of the world – the issue of dependency lies at the core of the human experience. If our needs aren’t met during infancy when we’re utterly vulnerable and helpless, if our parents make us feel unsafe in the world from early on, it will shape our ability to trust and depend upon other people for the rest of our lives. Consider ~ Joseph Burgo,

907:However, there is a fundamental difference between the issue related to Japan's history and our negotiations with China. What is it all about? The Japanese issue resulted from World War II and is stipulated in the international instruments on the outcomes of World War II, while our discussions on border issues with our Chinese counterparts have nothing to do with World War II or any other military conflicts. This is the first, or rather, I should say, the second point. ~ Vladimir Putin,

908:She was certain that it was wise to prevent Wilson and Brown from working closely together during sorties inside Rama. Nicole chastised herself for not having raised the issue with Borzov on her own. She realized that her mission portfolio included mental health as well, but somehow she had difficulty thinking of herself as the crew psychiatrist. I avoid it because it’s not an objective process, she thought. We have no sensors yet to measure good or bad mental health. ~ Arthur C Clarke,

909:Trust was the sexual clincher for Dolores Alexander, the once-married early NOW member from chapter 3. "Once I had had sex with a woman," says Alexander "it was mind-blowing, it was so much better than with men. [My sexuality] just never became a question, I just stayed there. The issue was trust. I felt I could trust women so much more than I could ever trust a man. You are dealing on a truly peer level with women and you are not with men - or at least I wasn't. ~ Jennifer Baumgardner,

910:And what about the idea that hitting a child merely teaches them to hit? First: No. Wrong. Too simple. For starters, “hitting” is a very unsophisticated word to describe the disciplinary act of an effective parent. If “hitting” accurately described the entire range of physical force, then there would be no difference between rain droplets and atom bombs. Magnitude matters—and so does context, if we’re not being wilfully blind and naïve about the issue. ~ Jordan B Peterson,

911:The issue of unequal access to higher education is increasingly a subject of debate in the United States. Research has shown that the proportion of college degrees earned by children whose parents belong to the bottom two quartiles of the income hierarchy stagnated at 10–20 percent in 1970–2010, while it rose from 40 to 80 percent for children with parents in the top quartile.30 In other words, parents’ income has become an almost perfect predictor of university access. ~ Thomas Piketty,

912:If you do not influence them, someone else will. If you are not shaping their values, others will do it for you. The issue is not, Will my child be influenced? The issue is, Who will be that influence? Most parents I know prefer to wield the greatest influence in the lives of their children. They wisely want to make the major investment in their children’s lives so that the values of their offspring largely reflect their own. That’s the most basic rationale for investing ~ David Jeremiah,

913:The American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC) embarked on a well-financed publicity campaign that helped by late 1947 to generate large majorities—some polls said over 80 percent—of the American people in favor of such a homeland. AZEC's efforts helped induce thirty-three state legislatures to pass resolutions favoring a Jewish state in Palestine. In addition, forty governors, fifty-four senators, and 250 members of congress signed petitions to Truman on the issue. 34 ~ James T Patterson,

914:People of faith can read the Bible so that almost any perspective on a current issue will find some support in the Bible. That rich and multivoiced offering in the Bible is what makes appeals to it so tempting—and yet so tricky and hazardous, because much of our reading of the Bible turns out to be an echo of what we thought anyway. THE ISSUE OF LAND The dispute between Palestinians and Israelis is elementally about land and secondarily about security and human rights. ~ Walter Brueggemann,

915:Forget morality tales and all the fury and mire of human complexity, and follow the money. It will lead you through urban legends about sex and revenge and jealousy and the acquisition of power over others, but ultimately, it will lead you to the issue from which all the other motivations derive—money, piles of it, green and lovely and cascading like leaves out of a beneficent sky, money and money and money, the one item that human beings will go to any lengths to acquire. ~ James Lee Burke,

916:I have observed one thing among true Christians in their differences in many countries: What divides and severs true Christian groups and Christians - what leaves a bitterness that can last for 20, 30, 40 years (or for 50 or 60 years in a son's or daughter's memory) - is not the issue of doctrine or belief that caused the differences in the first place. Invariably, it is a lack of love - and the bitter things that are said by true Christians in the midst of differences. ~ Francis A Schaeffer,

917:But on the other hand, in discussion and debate concerning social issues or American foreign policy, Vietnam or the Middle East, for example, the issue is constantly raised, often with considerable venom. I've repeatedly been challenged on grounds of credentials, or asked, what special training do you have that entitles you to speak of these matters. The assumption is that people like me, who are outsiders from a professional viewpoint, are not entitled to speak on such things. ~ Noam Chomsky,

918:For the Warrior Princess Submissive, her feminism is less about “talking the talk,” and more about “walking the walk.” She doesn’t have to wear her feminism on her sleeve; she exudes it from every pore and typically demonstrates it in practically everything she does. No, the issue - when it comes to the Warrior Princess’ feminism - isn’t whether or not she is a feminist; it’s about how she reconciles her feminism with her submission and how she is perceived by those around her. ~ Michael Makai,

919:The end is what you want, the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. ... The real arena is corrupt and bloody. ~ Saul Alinsky,

920:Macherey v. Home Ins. Co., 184 Wis. 2d 1, 516 N.W.2d 434, 438 (Ct. App. 1994) (trial counsel’s failure to object or move to strike patently inadmissible evidence waived the issue); Wingad v. John Deere & Co., 187 Wis. 2d 441, 523 N.W.2d 274, 280 (Ct. App. 1994) (in a pretrial notice the defendant objected to certain learned treatises on grounds of one being undated and the other being unpublished; held that additional objections to the treatises as irrelevant and prejudicial that ~ Anonymous,

921:Alice loved in order to make up for her own insufficiencies, she searched in others for qualities she aspired to, respected but lacked. Her emotional needs were like a puzzle incomplete without a segment brought by another but the dimensions of the void altered in response to self-development, the piece which fitted at fifteen would no longer fit at thirty. The gap redrew its contours, and unless the puzzle-person kept up she would be left to divorce or awkwardly force the issue. ~ Alain de Botton,

922:I'm not sure if Cupitt himself still uses this term, but it's useful in suggesting that, actually, there are more choices than the choice between nihilism and faith. In fact, the issue may not be faith as such but the fact that for millennia, Christianity has buttressed itself with a particular kind of metaphysics that has now seemingly reached the end of its life-span. But perhaps Buddhist metaphysics could provide an alternative here - or, at least, offer a direction of travel. ~ George Pattison,

923:It's necessary to address the concerns and beliefs of those who are taken in by the fraud, or who don't recognize the nature and significance of the issues for other reasons. If by philosophy we mean reasoned and thoughtful analysis, then it can address the moment, though not by confronting the "alternative facts" but by analyzing and clarifying what is at stake, whatever the issue is. Beyond that, what is needed is action: urgent and dedicated, in the many ways that are open to us. ~ Noam Chomsky,

924:The issue of who gets to define the future, own the nation's wealth, shape the parameters of the social state, control the globe's resources, and create a formative culture for producing engaged and socially responsible citizens is no longer a rhetorical issue, but offers up new categories for defining how matters of representations, education, economic justice, and politics are to be defined and fought over. At stake here is the need for both a language of critique and possibility. ~ Henry Giroux,

925:I think it's interesting," he said, "that you used the word 'compulsions.' That kind of removes the issue of responsibility." "But I'm taking responsibility," I said. "I'm trying to stop it." "You are," he said, "and that's very admirable, but you started this whole conversation by saying that 'fate' wants you to be a serial killer. If you tell yourself that it's your destiny to become a serial killer, then aren't you really just dodging reponsibility by passing the blame to fate? ~ Dan Wells,

926:I would willingly have recourse to other means. I cannot; I am fit for nothing but literature. Wait for the issue of this Tragedy? No — there cannot be greater uncertainties east, west, north, and south than concerning dramatic composition. How many months must I wait! Had I not better begin to look about me now? If better events supersede this necessity what harm will be done? I have no trust whatever on Poetry. I don’t wonder at it — the marvel is to me how people read so much of it. ~ John Keats,

927:Psalm PSALM—NOTE ON 37. This can be called a wisdom psalm because it reflects on themes normally dealt with in the Bible’s Wisdom Literature, particularly in Proverbs. It addresses the issue of why godless people often prosper. It shows that it really is better to stay loyal to the Lord—a loyalty expressed in contentment, honesty, and generosity. In his own good time, the Lord will make a clear distinction between the godless and the faithful. Meanwhile, the faithful must wait patiently. ~ Anonymous,

928:He tries not to give offense. He likes to think of himself by nature as reasonable and conciliatory. He can duck out, prevaricate, evade the issue. He can smile enigmatically and refuse to come down on either side. He can quibble, and stand on semantics. It’s a living, he thinks; but it isn’t. For there comes the bald question, the one choice out of two: do you want a revolution, M. de Robespierre? Yes, damn you, damn all of you, I want it, we need it, that’s what we’re going to have. ~ Hilary Mantel,

929:I think a lot about the poems I wasn't able to write...I masturbrated...Solitude is essentially a matter of pride; you bury yourself in your own scent. The issue is the same for all real poets. If you've been happy for too long, you become banal. By the same token, if you've been unhappy for a long time, you lose your poetic power...Happiness and poverty can only coexist for the briefest time. Afterword either happiness coarsens the poet or the poem is so true it destroys his happiness. ~ Orhan Pamuk,

930:I understand why some women/girls/ladies don't want to be women-identified 'cuz it totally complicates your band identity and no one seems to pay much attention to the music or what you're doing. We have chosen to be girl-identified (although Billy isn't a girl!), because we want to encourage other women/girls to play music. When I was growing up, I found it discouraging to have all these women in bands not wanting to address the issue of gender...we're interested in what women are doing. ~ Tobi Vail,

931:Not only did Trump disregard the potential conflicts of his business deals and real estate holdings, he audaciously refused to release his tax returns. Why should he if he wasn’t going to win? What’s more, Trump refused to spend any time considering, however hypothetically, transition matters, saying it was “bad luck”—but really meaning it was a waste of time. Nor would he even remotely contemplate the issue of his holdings and conflicts. He wasn’t going to win! Or losing was winning. ~ Michael Wolff,

932:The issue of press freedom was all the more important because the spirit of faction, “that mortal poison to our land,” had spread through America. He worried that a certain unnamed party might impose despotism: “To watch the progress of such endeavours is the office of a free press. To give us early alarm and put us on our guard against the encroachments of power. This then is a right of the utmost importance, one for which, instead of yielding it up, we ought rather to spill our blood. ~ Ron Chernow,

933:This is something the Democrats have talked about, and a goal we share, getting everyone insured, and solving the issue in a Republican way, which is applying a personal responsibility principle (individual mandate), reforming the market (more strictly regulating the insurance companies), and allowing people to buy private health care insurance that they can take with them from job to job that's entirely affordable. So it's a Republican way of solving a problem that we face as a nation. ~ Mitt Romney,

934:When you are consumed with the rightness or wrongness of a given issue—whether it’s fracking or gun control or genetically engineered food—it’s easy to lose track of what the issue actually is. A moral compass can convince you that all the answers are obvious (even when they’re not); that there is a bright line between right and wrong (when often there isn’t); and, worst, that you are certain you already know everything you need to know about a subject so you stop trying to learn more. ~ Steven D Levitt,

935:The issue is not, "What must I do in order to secure my salvation?" but rather, "What does God require of me in response to the needs of others?" It is not, "How can I be virtuous?" but "How can I participate in the struggle of the oppressed for a more just world?"Otherwise our nonviolence is premised on self-justifying attempts to establish our own purity in the eyes of God, others, and ourselves, and that is nothing less than a satanic temptation to die with clean hands and a dirty heart. ~ Walter Wink,

936:The issue, as correctly emphasized by Carl Sagan, is the probability of the evolution of high intelligence and an electronic civilization on an inhabited world. Once we have life (and almost surely it will be very different from life on Earth), what is the probability of its developing a lineage with high intelligence? On Earth, among millions of lineages of organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe in its utter improbability. ~ Ernst Mayr,

937:There were of course many moderates in the South, including some of the most influential planters, who wanted to give the Lincoln government a trial, even after South Carolina seceded. Not that they doubted the right of secession. The question was rather one of expediency. But Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for volunteers took the ground from under these middle-of-the-roaders. The issue now was whether to fight with or against secessionists, and this left no choice for most Southerners. ~ Bell Irvin Wiley,

938:The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation. ~ John F Kerry,

939:We must, however, reflect on what is happening. It is an urgent matter, especially for those of us who still live in a meaningful, even a numinous, earth community. We have not spoken. Nor even have we seen clearly what is happening. The issue goes far beyond economics, or commerce, or poetics, or an evening of pleasantries as we look out over a scenic view. Something is happening beyond all this. We are losing splendind and intimate modes of divine presence. We are, perhaps, losing ourselves. ~ Thomas Berry,

940:It can be seen, then, that a public debate on the issue of the Nakbah, whether conducted in Israel itself or in the United States, its imperial protector, could open up questions concerning the moral legitimacy of the Zionist project as a whole. The mechanism of denial, therefore, was crucial, not only for defeating the counter-claims made by Palestinians in the peace process, but, far more importantly, for disallowing any significant debate on the very essence and moral foundations of Zionism. ~ Noam Chomsky,

941:It will take a long period to decide the issue in the ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism in our country. The reason is that the influence of the bourgeoisie and of the intellectuals who come from the old society will remain in our country for a long time to come, and so will their class ideology. If this is not sufficiently understood, or is not understood at all, the gravest mistakes will be made and the necessity of waging the struggle in the ideological field will be ignored. ~ Mao Zedong,

942:Europe has an incredibly long, bloody history based on an excess of nationalism which has also created a lot of amazing art. The issue is that America also imported a lot of that wholesale, dropped it onto this other big continent over the sea, and that's worked really well so far, but my view is that a little breather is necessary to make sure that - because Europe is about to fall, Sweden is going, Germany is going, France is going, America is going to be the preserver of that inheritance. ~ Milo Yiannopoulos,

943:Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons ~ Milton Friedman,

944:In any bare-knuckle bargaining session, the most vital principle to keep in mind is never to look at your counterpart as an enemy. The person across the table is never the problem. The unsolved issue is. So focus on the issue. This is one of the most basic tactics for avoiding emotional escalations. Our culture demonizes people in movies and politics, which creates the mentality that if we only got rid of the person then everything would be okay. But this dynamic is toxic to any negotiation. Punching ~ Chris Voss,

945:Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons. ~ Milton Friedman,

946:Libraries have become a de facto community center for the homeless across the globe. There is not a library in the world that hasn’t grappled with the issue of how—and how much—to provide for the homeless. Many librarians have told me that they consider this the defining question facing libraries right now, and that they despair of finding a balance between welcoming homeless people and somehow accommodating other patrons who occasionally are scared of them or find them smelly or messy or alienating. ~ Susan Orlean,

947:The opposing barristers were in tactical agreement (because it was plainly the judge’s view) that the issue was not merely a matter of education. The court must choose, on behalf of the children, between total religion and something a little less. Between cultures, identities, states of mind, aspirations, sets of family relations, fundamental definitions, basic loyalties, unknowable futures. In such matters there lurked an innate predisposition in favor of the status quo, as long as it appeared benign. ~ Ian McEwan,

948:This attitude of how society views women as chattel - that's the biggest thing to overcome. When I first started a stake in the issue of relationship abuse, I got really beat up by the Christian right because I was interfering in what was a personal family affair. It's a "family matter." That's why I wish we'd drop the phrase "domestic violence." It sounds like a domesticated cat. It is the most vicious of all crimes - to be abused by someone you had a relationship with! Because then you blame yourself. ~ Joe Biden,

949:I think I can speak with some expertise on the issue of personally inflicted bodily harm,' Vicky said. 'May I?' 'Go for it.' 'It's not worth it. Sure, high school sucks sometimes. Some people will mess with you, whenever they want, and for no reason except that they can. But hurting yourself is giving those people all the power, and they don't deserve it. Why would they deserve to have control over your life? Because they're cool? Because they're pretty? That's completely illogical. ~ Leila Sales,

950:* Even though the restriction couldn’t be enforced under federal law, the state ban on interracial marriage in Alabama continued into the twenty-first century. In 2000, reformers finally had enough votes to get the issue on the statewide ballot, where a majority of voters chose to eliminate the ban, although 41 percent voted to keep it. A 2011 poll of Mississippi Republicans found that 46 percent support a legal ban on interracial marriage, 40 percent oppose such a ban, and 14 percent are undecided. ~ Bryan Stevenson,

951:If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency first by inflation then by deflation the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered... I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs. ~ Thomas Jefferson,

952:Alberto Alessi had asked a dozen architects to design a sterling silver tea service - with a teapot, a coffee pot, sugar, creamer, a spoon, and a tray. Our brief was that it didn't matter if it didn't work and cost wasn't the issue. It was a promotional project, not a commercial enterprise, and was going to be showcased in museums. And the coffee and tea piazza, as mine was called, received a great response. It was wonderful to walk into the Whitney museum and see all these objects on the first floor. ~ Michael Graves,

953:It was the means of making it clear that no matter how painful, Muhammad needed to be true to himself, to his voice and to that of God. That was the meaning behind the revelation of Sura 109, which reads in full: “Muhammad, say: ‘Disbelievers, I serve not what you serve, and you serve not what I serve. I will never serve what you serve, and you will never serve what I serve. To you your religion, and to me mine.’” The Satanic Verses had forced the issue once and for all. There would be no going back. ~ Lesley Hazleton,

954:Disengagement is the issue underlying the majority of problems I see in families, schools, communities, and organizations and it takes many forms, including the ones we discussed in the “Armory” chapter. We disengage to protect ourselves from vulnerability, shame, and feeling lost and without purpose. We also disengage when we feel like the people who are leading us—our boss, our teachers, our principal, our clergy, our parents, our politicians—aren’t living up to their end of the social contract. Politics ~ Bren Brown,

955:She paused and met his gaze straight on. “You should be seeing someone your own age, Troy Lee.” “Please don’t start that bullshit again. It’s not the issue and you know it.” “Really. What, pray tell, is the issue?” “We’ve been out one time and already you’re looking for me to cut and run." He shook his head. “You’re doing it again. Speeding ahead, looking for where you think you’re going, instead of seeing what’s along the way. You gotta learn to slow down and enjoy the ride, Angel. ~ Linda Winfree,

956:If you want to understand suffering you must look into the situation at hand. The teachings say that wherever a problem arises it must be settled right there. Where suffering lies is right where non-suffering will arise, it ceases at the place where it arises. If suffering arises you must contemplate right there, you don't have to run away. You should settle the issue right there. One who runs away from suffering out of fear is the most foolish person of all. He will simply increases his stupidity endlessly. ~ Ajahn Chah,

957:If this is the degree of inflation planned for in advance, the real outcome is indeed likely to be such that most of those who will retire at the end of the century will be dependent on the charity of the younger generation. And ultimately not morals but the fact that the young supply the police and the army will decide the issue: concentration camps for the aged unable to maintain themselves are likely to be the fate of an old generation whose income is entirely dependent on coercing the young. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek,

958:Running a multi-million dollar business can be frustrating at times, especially when someone does something I am not happy with. It might not even be their fault, but it is human nature to reach in an angry or heated way. However, I have learned an important and effective lesson. Rather than complain to my member of staff about their actions, I search my memory bank for things I find wonderful about them. This changes the energy around the issue instantly. People tend to live up to what you expect of them. ~ Vishen Lakhiani,

959:But from an evolutionary standpoint, there are good grounds to assert that “language” is indeed a natural phenomenon, which originates in the molecular language of the genome and has found, in the course of evolution, its hitherto highest expression in human language (Küppers, 1995). For evolutionary biologists, there is no question as to whether languages below the level of human language exist; the issue is rather about identifying the general conditions under which linguistic structures originate and evolve. ~ Paul Davies,

960:The issue of redistribution of resources and wealth needs to resolved systemically, but in the meantime but there are individual spots you can occupy. There are things that you can do on a daily basis that will make a difference in moving the needle in individual lives. When we look at the mentoring of young black kids, for instance, the number-one mentor group is white women. I think after that maybe it's black women, and then white men, and then black men. We can make all kinds of arguments about that. ~ Michael Eric Dyson,

961:It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities. It’s why we will finally be thrown into the lakes of molten lead. Because she was confused by happiness that first time anyone said she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be the issue, so people won’t notice that rocks and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also created in His image. ~ Jack Gilbert,

962:The IMF is a more complicated issue. I think there is a broad sentiment among both the left and the right that the IMF may be doing more harm than good. On the right, there's the view that it represents a form of corporate welfare that is counter to the IMF's own ideology of markets. But anybody who has watched government from the inside recognizes that governments need institutions, need ways to respond to crises. If the IMF weren't there, it would probably be reinvented. So the issue is fundamentally reform. ~ Joseph Stiglitz,

963:In fact, as soon as we raise the issue of how things exist, we have entered the realm of description which can only be carried out by mind. But that does not mean that everything exists only in the mind and that the earth did not exist before there was life on it. An object need not be experienced by a specific mind at this moment in order to exist. But if we are going to talk about how things exist, or try to understand, prove and know it, we can only do so in relation to mind. Mahamudra starts on this premise. ~ Dalai Lama XIV,

964:I don’t want you to go.” I sigh, “I know, but maybe this is what we need.” “No, it’s not what we need, but it’s what we have. I’m going to ache for you every day you’re gone. I’m going to wish you were here so I could snuggle into your side and remind you why you should love me.” I pull her closer and rub the side of her arm. “Loving you was never the issue. It’s keeping you when you’re not mine to have.” She looks at me as a tear falls. “I think I was always yours to have. I’m just hoping you’ll see that soon. ~ Corinne Michaels,

965:I quickly realized that there are two main kinds of diversity—demographic and moral. ... Once you make this distinction, you see that nobody can coherently even want moral diversity. If you are pro-choice on the issue of abortion, would you prefer that there be a wide variety of opinions and no dominant one? Or would you prefer that everyone agree with you and the laws of the land reflect that agreement? If you prefer diversity on an issue, the issue is not a moral issue for you; it is a matter of personal taste. ~ Jonathan Haidt,

966:The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril. There may still be disputes about exactly how much we're contributing to the warming of the earth's atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe. ~ Barack Obama,

967:What can you do? The answer isn’t trying harder, or using your will power. Instead, realize that you don’t have what you don’t have. You will need to get from the outside what you don’t possess on the inside. You need to do this for your kid, and for yourself as well. You may need to take a break from the fracas and say, “I’m getting worn out with this, but I want to finish it. I’ll get back to you.” Call a safe and sane friend and get your emotional tank filled, and then enter the ring again and resolve the issue. ~ John Townsend,

968:The way my father put it completely turned the issue around for me: suddenly the draft card wasn’t so much an obligation as a chance to be part of something bigger than myself. And he’d made it clear that if the United States embarked on a war that I felt was wrong, I could always refuse to go; in his opinion, protesting an immoral war was just as honorable as fighting a moral one. Either way, he made it clear that my country needed help protecting the principles and ideals that I’d benefited from my entire life. In ~ Sebastian Junger,

969:he lacked something very important: faith. He believed in the Almighty, sure. He even believed in the Holy Trinity. That was not the issue. The issue was that he couldn’t control his ambitions. He had a very weak spirit and refused to give the control over to God. And because of that, he found himself involved in things that the church could never agree with. He constantly gave in to temptation. He was full of pride. He only thought of himself and how he benefited in every situation. Quite simply, he was a lost soul. ~ Robbie Cheuvront,

970:If we want energy security, then we have to reduce our appetite for fossil fuels. There's no other way. Other issues may crowd the headlines, but this is our fundamental challenge. Big challenges require bold action and leadership. To get the United States off fossil fuels in this uneasy national climate of terrorism and conflict in the Persian Gulf, we must treat the issue with the urgence and persistance it deserves. The measure of our success will be the condition on which we leave the world for the next generation. ~ Robert Redford,

971:The issue has two dimensions. One is the legal dimension and the other one is the issue at the realpolitik. [In the] legal realm, we believe in equal rights for all people in all nations. If Israel, the United States, Russia, Pakistan, other countries, China, have the right to have a nuclear program and nuclear bomb, Iran, too, must have that same right. Now, at the realm of realpolitik, because there is a global consensus against Iran, and because there are all manner of dangers facing Iran, I am opposed to this program. ~ Akbar Ganji,

972:concern. Tellingly, there were those in the North, such as the prominent intellectual Ralph Waldo Emerson, who as early as August 1862 deeply feared that the Confederacy might preempt the Union and adopt emancipation first. In so doing, he believed that the South would appear before the world as the champion of freedom, gaining recognition from France and England, and putting the North in a disastrous position. Emerson’s fears were hardly unfounded. Within months, in the South, the issue did indeed come under serious debate. ~ Jay Winik,

973:Even now, I sometimes wonder why my father was so different in North Korea from the man he’d been in Japan. I used to think it was related to his physical strength. In Japan, that was the thing that had given him real power. But in North Korea, his strength was meaningless. In fact, it was more of a liability than an asset. But I think the issue was more complicated than that. In Japan, he faced endless bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination. The only way he could express his feelings and fight back was through violence ~ Masaji Ishikawa,

974:In the resurrection there is already wrapped up a judging-process, at least for believers: the raising act in their case, together with the attending change, plainly involves a pronouncement of vindication. The resurrection does more than prepare its object for undergoing the judgment; it sets in motion and to a certain extent anticipates the issue of the judgment for the Christian. And it were not incorrect to offset this by saying that the judgement places the seal on what the believer has received in the resurrection. ~ Geerhardus Vos,

975:The issue of the American justice system is so much broader than any one party, or any area of the country, or any one policy, because the totality of it is that it's driven by the underlying politics. The underlying politics are white fear and wrath and punishment. And that's what tends to be consistent. As I say in the book, that's the magnet that's drawing the iron filings into alignment. That's the thing that's powering all of it. The gravitational pole of those politics operate on each of these disparate little actors. ~ Chris Hayes,

976:It's often not until you explain that this phenomenon is what is commonly called "teen prostitution" that recognition dawns. "Oh, that...but that's different. Teen prostitutes choose to be doing that; aren't they normally on drugs or something?" In under three minutes, they've gone from sympathy to confusion to blame. Not because the issue is any different, not because the violence isn't as real, not because the girls aren't as scared, but simply because borders haven't been crossed, simply because the victims are American. ~ Rachel Lloyd,

977:You have something on your neck,” he observed. Alec’s hand flew to his throat. “What?” “Looks like a bite mark,” said Jace. “What have you been doing all day, anyway?” “Nothing.” Beet red, his hand still clamped to his neck, Alec started down the corridor. Jace followed him. “I went walking in the park. Tried to clear my head.” “And ran into a vampire?” “What? No! I fell.” “On your neck?” Alec made a noise, and Jace decided the issue was clearly better dropped. “Fine, whatever. What did you need to clear your head about? ~ Cassandra Clare,

978:At one level, the Opposition's most urgent job, between now and the next election, is to publicise the government's mistakes. Randolph Churchill once declared that oppositions should oppose everything, propose nothing and turf the government out. He was right in this fundamental respect: the opposition's job is to get elected. Intelligent oppositions have no unnecessary enemies. They make the government rather than themselves the issue by ensuring that everyone harmed by government decisions well and truly knows about it. ~ Tony Abbott,

979:The ache of those words: Let’s hear you. It put a plum in my throat to be the person who wanted to play but could not bear to play. To want the microphone but to stand in the back. To know there is a book in you but to never find the nerve to wrestle it out. I was so screwed up on the issue of performance. It’s like I didn’t want anyone to hear me, but I couldn’t shut up. Or rather, I wanted everyone to hear me, but only in the way I wanted to be heard, which was an impossible wish, because nobody ever followed instructions. ~ Sarah Hepola,

980:We need to have a broad debate so that the new Chilean constitution is representative of everyone. I am convinced that it cannot just be developed by an expert group. First, people at all levels will be given an opportunity to provide input. They should be allowed to express their opinions about the kind of society they would like to live in. That's the kind of open process I would like to see. The issue at hand here is finding unity on the greater rules. Afterwards, a text will be developed and presented to parliament. ~ Michelle Bachelet,

981:In an active scientific debate, there can be many sides. But once a scientific issue is closed, there’s only one “side.” Imagine providing “balance” to the issue of whether the Earth orbits the Sun, whether continents move, or whether DNA carries genetic information. These matters were long ago settled in scientists’ minds. Nobody can publish an article in a scientific journal claiming the Sun orbits the Earth, and for the same reason, you can’t publish an article in a peer-reviewed journal claiming there’s no global warming. ~ Naomi Oreskes,

982:We often sometimes forget that- prior to the invention of removable pipe- there really were no English Bibles. We have treasures, we have Bibles in every size and shape and color. But there's a failure to recognize what's contained inside the cover of the Bible. We grow apathetic, and I think that the issue is reacting to the Word of God. Not just carrying, but get back into the Word of God and then get the Word of God into us. It's all about mining the scripture, memorizing the scripture, and meditating with our scripture. ~ Hank Hanegraaff,

983:everything conspires to make us forget the socially constructed, and hence arbitrary and artificial, character of investment in the economic game and its stakes: the ultimate reasons for commitment to work, a career or the pursuit of profit in fact lie beyond or outside calculation and calculating reason in the obscure depths of a historically constituted habitus, which means that, in normal circumstances, one gets up every day to go to work without deliberating on the issue, as indeed one did yesterday and will do tomorrow.) ~ Pierre Bourdieu,

984:curing’ victims of multiple-personality disorder is actually tantamount to serial murder. The issue has remained controversial in the wake of recent findings that the human brain can potentially contain up to one hundred forty fully-sentient personalities without significant sensory/motor impairment. The tribunal will also consider whether encouraging a multiple personality to reintegrate voluntarily—again, a traditionally therapeutic act—should be redefined as assisted suicide. Cross-linked to next item under cognition and legal. ~ Peter Watts,

985:There was genuine hurt in his voice, but I refused to let myself soften. It had been Ben’s favorite tactic in arguments, when we were together, to divert the discussion away from whatever was annoying me to the fact that I’d hurt his feelings and was acting irrationally. Time and again I’d ended up apologizing for the fact that I’d upset him—my own feelings completely ignored, and always, in the process, we’d somehow wound up losing sight of the issue that had provoked the disagreement in the first place. I wasn’t falling for it now. ~ Ruth Ware,

986:COACHING TIP: Encourage mutual contribution. People at Stage Three rely on themselves. The issue that they need to address, especially later in the stage, is that their effectiveness is capped by their time, which is a limited resource. The more the person can accept help from others, the more he will see that help from others is not only helpful but necessary to his becoming a fully developed leader. Once he begins to form strategies that rely on others, and in which others rely on him, he will have taken a big step into Stage Four. ~ Dave Logan,

987:I do not know, at this point, whether Joshua Joseph Spork is the man of my life. He could be. I have given it considerable thought. The jury is still out. The issue between you and me is that you wish to deprive me of the opportunity to find out. Joe Spork is not yours to give or to withhold from me, Mr. Cummerbund. He is mine, until I decide otherwise. You have caused him grief, sullied his name, and you have hurt him. If anyone is going to make him weep, or lie about him, or even do bad things to him, it is me. ~ Nick Harkaway,

988:In the last two years we've seen a sea change in the United States on media issues. Two years ago, people would have read this, then opened the window on the ledge of the 18th floor and jumped. They would have said, "Okay, it's over, there's nothing I can do, it's just getting worse." But in the last two years, what we've seen is that millions of Americans have gotten aware of the issue, they've organized on it, they've risen up, and we're seeing the beginnings of a burgeoning media reform movement across this country. ~ Robert Waterman McChesney,

989:Worried that it needed to do more to promote diversity, RBC invited Brad along with a bunch of other nonwhite people to a meeting to discuss the issue. Going around the table, people took turns responding to a request to “talk about your experience of being a minority at RBC.” When Brad’s turn came he said, “To be honest, the only time I’ve ever felt like a minority is this exact moment. If you really want to encourage diversity you shouldn’t make people feel like a minority.” Then he left. The group continued to meet without him. ~ Michael Lewis,

990:He paid the check and I objected. Alex was a waiter and, for better or worse, I was pretty sure I made quite a lot more than he did. But I didn’t press the issue because my objection was met with an insulted glare and stony silence. Usually I don’t dispute or offer to go halfsies. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, maybe it’s because my father brainwashed me, or maybe I’m a free-loading cow who is a blight on feminist principles, but I typically staunchly believe the man should pay for dinner, especially if it’s early in the relationship. ~ Penny Reid,

991:tassels . . . long. Jewish sources associate this practice with the Biblical requirement to wear blue and white tassels, or fringes (called tzitzith), on the corners of their garments to remind them of God’s commandments (Nu 15:38–39; Dt 22:12). (Some later rabbis felt that God would punish more strictly the person who in prayer neglected the white threads more than someone who neglected the blue ones.) The issue here is not wearing phylacteries or tassels (cf. 9:20; 14:36), but seeking to draw honor to oneself rather than God (cf. 6:2). ~ Anonymous,

992:Now I don't have to explain to the world about India's position. The world is unanimously appreciating India's position. And the world is seeing that Pakistan is finding it difficult to respond. If we had become an obstacle, then we would have had to explain to the world that we are not that obstacle. Now we don't have to explain to the world. The world knows our intentions. Like on the issue of terrorism, the world never bought India's theory on terrorism. They would sometime dismiss it by saying that it's your law and order problem. ~ Narendra Modi,

993:There's a difference between unspoken and unsaid," Jaycee says. "Just because chimpanzees cannot speak doesn't mean they have nothing to say; the ability to vocalize thoughts is not the same as the ability to acquire and use language...Language is really just a systematic means of communication through symbols or sounds. Almost all animals use language. The problem is that when it comes to the issue of language, humans are incredibly narcissistic. Since we literally hold the key to their cages, our language is the only one that counts. ~ Neil Abramson,

994:It seems strangely difficult for some to realize that here in Asia is where the Communist conspirators have elected to make their play for global conquest, and that we have joined the issue thus raised on the battlefield; that here we fight Europe's war with arms while the diplomats there still fight it with words; that if we lose the war to communism in Asia the fall of Europe is inevitable, win it and Europe most probably would avoid war and yet preserve freedom. As you pointed out, we must win. There is no substitute for victory. ~ Douglas MacArthur,

995:The investigation of causal relations between economic phenomena presents many problems of peculiar difficulty, and offers many opportunities for fallacious conclusions. Since the statistician can seldom or never make experiments for himself, he has to accept the data of daily experience, and discuss as best he can the relations of a whole group of changes; he cannot, like the physicist, narrow down the issue to the effect of one variation at a time. The problems of statistics are in this sense far more complex than the problems of physics. ~ Udny Yule,

996:From the circumstances of my position, I was often thrown into the society of horse-racers, card-players, fox-hunters, scientific and professional men, and of dignified men; and many a time have I asked myself, in the enthusiastic moment of the death of a fox, the victory of a favorite horse, the issue of a question eloquently argued at the bar, or in the great council of the nation, well, which of these kinds of reputation should I prefer? That of a horse-jockey, a fox-hunter, an orator, or the honest advocate of my country's rights? ~ Thomas Jefferson,

997:In matter-ism (materialism), there can be nothing wrong with the world since there is no right way for the world to be in the first place. Everything is just matter in motion and that's that. In Mind-ism (monism) there's a different route to the same problem. There cannot be a problem of evil, even in principle, since in Mind-ism even morality is maya; illusion. In neither story, then (if we're to be consistent with their principles), can the issue of evil be raised. But in real life the problem comes up all the time. That's the difficulty. ~ Greg Koukl,

998:The available supply of gold and silver being wholly inadequate to permit the issuance of coins of intrinsic value or paper currency convertible into coin of intrinsic value or paper currency convertible into coin in the volume required to serve the needs of the People, some other basis for the issue of currency must be developed, and some means other than that of convertibility into coin must be developed to prevent undue fluctuation in the value of paper currency or any other substitute for money intrinsic value that may come into use. ~ Abraham Lincoln,

999:The essence of education is that it be religious. Pray, what is religious education? A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education (1929),

1000:Here’s my full list of guidelines for how to apply the principles of this chapter to email communication. 1. Emails should contain as few words as possible. 2. Make it easy to see your central point at a glance, in one screen. 3. Never send an email that could emotionally affect another person unless it’s pure positive feedback. 4. Emotional issues must be discussed by phone; email should be used only to book a time for a call. 5. If you accidentally break rule number four, phone the person immediately, apologize, and discuss the issue by phone. ~ David Rock,

1001:It is no longer a mere critique of taste in the sense that taste is the object of critical judgment by an observer. It is a critique of critique; that is, it is concerned with the legitimacy of such a critique in matters of taste. The issue is no longer merely empirical principles which are supposed to justify a widespread and dominant taste—such as, for example, in the old chestnut concerning the origin of differences in taste—but it is concerned with a genuine a priori that, in itself, would totally justify the possibility of critique. ~ Hans Georg Gadamer,

1002:the behavior that arises from it, is the science of psychology. Economics is also an effective theory, based on the notion of free will plus the assumption that people evaluate their possible alternative courses of action and choose the best. That effective theory is only moderately successful in predicting behavior because, as we all know, decisions are often not rational or are based on a defective analysis of the consequences of the choice. That is why the world is in such a mess. The third question addresses the issue of whether the laws that ~ Anonymous,

1003:To mystify, in the active sense, is to befuddle, cloud, obscure, mask whatever is going on, whether this be experience, action, or process, or whatever is "the issue." It induces confusion in the sense that there is failure to see what is "really" being experienced, or being done, or going on, and failure to distinguish or discriminate the actual issues. This entails the substitution of false for true constructions of what is being experienced, being done (praxis), or going on (process), and the substitution of false issues for the actual issues. ~ R D Laing,

1004:I believe in a wall between church and state so high that no one can climb over it. When religion controls government, political liberty dies; and when government controls religion, religious liberty perishes. Every American has the constitutional right not to be taxed or have his tax money expended for the establishment of religion. For too long the issue of government aid to church related organizations has been a divisive force in our society and in the Congress. It has erected communication barriers among our religions and fostered intolerance. ~ Sam Ervin,

1005:Using the techniques, perspective, and language of planetary exploration, Sagan, Toon, and Pollack published a paper in Science in 1979, long before climate change became the issue it is now, entitled, “Anthropogenic Albedo Changes and the Earth’s Climate,” in which they discussed how changing land use practices by human societies (starting with fires set by hunter-gatherers, expanding with the Agricultural Revolution, and accelerating with the Industrial Revolution) had likely been influencing our planet’s climate for a very long time. Then, ~ David Grinspoon,

1006:Look at an offending edit and figure out why the editor thought the text needed help. There will usually be something wrong that needs fixing: after all, if the editor misunderstoodyou, other readers may, too. If you don't like the editor's solution, figure out a better one and write it in. If you are convinced that the original wording is the way you want it, mark a row of dots under everything you want restored and write "stet" beside it. And unless you want to go another round on the issue with the editor, pencil in a brief explanation. ~ Carol Fisher Saller,

1007:WALK BY FAITH, NOT BY SIGHT. As you take steps of faith, depending on Me, I will show you how much I can do for you. If you live your life too safely, you will never know the thrill of seeing Me work through you. When I gave you My Spirit, I empowered you to live beyond your natural ability and strength. That’s why it is so wrong to measure your energy level against the challenges ahead of you. The issue is not your strength but Mine, which is limitless. By walking close to Me, you can accomplish My purposes in My strength. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:7 NKJV; ~ Sarah Young,

1008:But on the other hand, not being able to read a lot and learning by listening and asking questions means that I need to simplify issues to their basics. And that is very powerful, because in trial cases, judges and jurors -- neither of them have the time or the ability to become an expert in the subject. One of my strengths is presenting a case that they can understand." His opponents tend to be scholarly types, who have read every conceivable analysis of the issue at hand. Time and again, they get bogged down in excessive detail. Boies doesn't. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,

1009:Maybe I’m just tired. (Geary) People only say that when they’re not really willing to deal with the issue at hand. It’s like when you ask a guy what he’s thinking and he says ‘nothing’ but in reality you know he’s checking out another woman and he doesn’t want you to give him grief over it. It’s Thia’s theory. (Tory) I think you need to stay away from her before she corrupts you. (Geary) Nah, it’s too much fun. She has the most misguided views on everything. But I think what I just said is one of the few lucid thoughts she’s ever managed. (Tory) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,

1010:The Gospel of Life is not for believers alone: it is for everyone. The issue of life and its defense and promotion is not a concern of the Christian alone. Although faith provides special light and strength, this question arises in every human conscience which seeks the truth and which cares about the future of humanity. Life certainly has a sacred and religious value, but in no way is that value a concern only of believers. The value at stake is one which every human being can grasp by the light of reason; thus it necessarily concerns everyone. ~ Pope John Paul II,

1011:As previously stated, Americans often have a difficult time addressing the issue of race. The tendency in the dialogue on race in the United States contrasts to the acknowledgment of shame in the book of Lamentations. American culture tends to hide the stories of guilt and shame and seeks to elevate stories of success. American culture gravitates toward narratives of exceptionalism and triumphalism, which results in amnesia about a tainted history. The reality of a shameful history undermines the narrative of exceptionalism, so it must remain hidden. ~ Soong Chan Rah,

1012:The issue of religious liberty is absolutely critical. America was founded on three different types of liberty: political liberty, economic liberty, and religious and civil liberty. It's remarkable that, one-by-one, these strands of liberty are coming under fierce attack from the Left. And that's particularly ironic because "liberal" derives from a word which means "liberty," the free man as opposed to the slave. This liberalism which we're saddled with today isn't a real liberalism at all, but a gangster style of politics masquerading as liberalism. ~ Dinesh D Souza,

1013:Not a hunch. A fact. Some small, trivial fact. What was it? Could it be the answer? Something was bothering me terrifically. I tried some more beer. No. No. No ... no ... no ... no ... no. The answer wouldn’t come. How must our minds be made? So complicated that a detail gets lost in the maze of knowledge. Why? That damn ever-present WHY. There’s a why to everything. It was there, but how to bring it out? I tried thinking around the issue, I tried to think through it. I even tried to forget it, but the greater the effort, the more intense the failure. ~ Mickey Spillane,

1014:In Wright Morris's novel Plains Song, the narrator asks, "Is the past a story we are persuaded to believe, in the teeth of the life we endure in the present?" The question is always open. How we treat our world and each other grows from our vision of how we have come to where we are. Ultimately, of course, the issue is not survival but decency and common sense. Everything passes, the psalmist reminds us. No one escapes. The best we can hope is to learn a little from the speaking dead, to find in our deep past some help in acting wisely in the teeth of life. ~ Elliott West,

1015:Maybe I’m just tired. (Geary) People only say that when they’re not really willing to deal with the issue at hand. It’s like when you ask a guy what he’s thinking and he says ‘nothing’ but in reality you know he’s checking out another woman and he doesn’t want you to give him grief over it. It’s Thia’s theory. (Tory) I think you need to stay away from her before she corrupts you. (Geary) Nah, it’s too much fun. She has the most misguided views on everything. But I think what I just said is one of the few lucid thoughts she’s ever managed. (Tory) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon,

1016:Mr. President, can I be blunt?” she says. “You haven’t been so far?” She puts her hands out in front of her, as if trying to frame the issue for me, or maybe she’s pleading with me. “You’re going to be impeached,” she says. “And if you don’t do something to turn things around, something dramatic, the senators in your own party will jump ship. And I know you won’t resign. It isn’t in your DNA. Which means President Jonathan Lincoln Duncan will be remembered in history for one thing and one thing only. You’ll be the first president forcibly removed from office. ~ Bill Clinton,

1017:I have been one who believes that abortion is the taking of a human life . . . . The fact that they could not resolve the issue of when life begins was a finding in and of itself. If we don't know, then shouldn't we morally opt on the side that it is life? If you came upon an immobile body and you yourself could not determine whether it was dead or alive, I think that you would decide to consider it alive until somebody could prove it was dead. You wouldn't get a shovel and start covering it up. And I think we should do the same thing with regard to abortion. ~ Ronald Reagan,

1018:Gay and lifestyle. Two simple words. Yet for LGBT people, those two words, put together, are offensive and create hurt and anger. For decades anti-gay religious conservatives have used the term "gay lifestyle" as a missile to attack LGBT people, their community and struggle for equality. Used by others, it reveals their ignorance of the realities of everyday LGBT lives. We don’t have lifestyles, we have lives. Maybe saying "I disagree with the gay lifestyle" is just a nice way of saying "I hate fags" and demonstrates homophobia is still the issue. ~ Anthony Venn Brown,

1019:As in a mystic and dynamic dance    A priestess of immaculate ecstasies    Inspired and ruled from Truth's revealing vault    Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods    A heart of silence in the hands of joy    Inhabited with rich creative beats    A body like a parable of dawn    That seemed a niche for veiled divinity    Or golden temple-door to things beyond.    Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;    Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense    Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight    Poured a supernal beauty on men's lives.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

1020:Our conflict is not likely to cease so soon as every good man would wish. The measure of iniquity is not yet filled; and unless we can return a little more to first principles, and act a little more upon patriotic ground, I do not know when it will-or-what may be the issue of the contest. Speculation-peculation-engrossing-forestalling-with all their concomitants, afford too many melancholy proofs of the decay of public virtue; and too glaring instances of its being the interest and desire of too many, who would wish to be thought friends, to continue the war. ~ George Washington,

1021:Any profession should have norms around the issue you raise. And, in the words of the great economic thinker Albert Hirschman, we all owe a measure of loyalty to professional norms. But when the norms seem unhelpful or unproductive, one needs to speak up - to activate voice. And in the extreme, if the profession and one's colleagues seem estranged from a thoughtfully selected course of action, you need to consider the possibility of exit. Of course, if you knowingly violate norms or laws, you need to be prepared to face the consequences - or to lead a revolution! ~ Howard Gardner,

1022:I don't take so-called "vacations" often. In fact vacations are more stressful than the lives my wife and I worked hard to set up for ourselves in New York. It seems like being on vacation is like normal living, which is not very satisfying. It means we're figuring out what to make for lunch today, and that seems like such an absurd way to live. The issue of dealing with that doesn't seem to be so prominent back home. It sounds so silly and ridiculous, but it's really the way it is. We love what we do, so I prefer being in the studio; that's really living for me. ~ Ryan McGinness,

1023:There is no "true Islam," just different interpretations. Since I brought up patriarchy, let me make one thing clear. I am not singling out men; I am addressing the issue of inequality of genders. A patriarchy does not only not accept the equality of the sexes, it also has a hard time understanding the principles of democracy and its essence. Women are the victims of this patriarchal culture, but they are also its carriers. Let us keep in mind that every oppressive man was raised in the confines of his mother's home. This is the culture we need to resist and fight. ~ Shirin Ebadi,

1024:Importantly, the issue as we describe the wealthy and powerful is not whether they—in our case, the Jerusalem authorities centered in the temple—were “corrupt,” if by that we mean an individual failing. As individuals, the wealthy and powerful can be good people—responsible, honest, hard-working, faithful to family and friends, interesting, charming, and good-hearted. The issue is not their individual virtue or wickedness, but the role they played in the domination system. They shaped it, enforced it, and benefited from it. The high priest and the temple authorities ~ Marcus J Borg,

1025:Happy is not the right word. This world is not a place where we can be happy. It wasn’t created for man’s happiness, though many believe this is the reason of our existence. I think we are here to fight, so that good and evil can clash within us, and good may prevail, thus enriching us spiritually. It’s difficult to say whether we are happy or not: it doesn’t depend on us… There are times when one regrets being born, but life also gives us surprising things that, alone, are worth living. The issue of happiness doesn’t exist for me: happiness as such doesn’t exist. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky,

1026:For sure I would prefer Trump had not withdrawn from the Paris Agreement. But the fight against climate change is really done at the local level - whether it's cities, local governments or the private sector, corporate and individual. No matter what Trump says, nobody is going to go back and take the scrubber out or change back to polluting. The damage that Trump can do is if there are countries that are on the fence about whether they want to address the issue, this gives the naysayers, the doubters, those that don't want to do anything, a little more ammunition. ~ Michael Bloomberg,

1027:I was asked by the National Institute of Health to be their scientific discussant on the effects of these drug [Ritalin] at a big conference they held. Beforehand, I reviewed all of the important literature on the issue. Even with experiments on animals. When they're given these drugs they stop playing; they stop being curious; they stop socializing; they stop trying to escape. We make good caged animals with these drugs. And we make good caged kids by knocking their spontaneity out of them. And, Michael, the other thing is that these drugs enforce obsessive behavior. ~ Peter Breggin,

1028:Both India and Pakistan have a long history of deploying rhetorical strategies to skirt the issue of plebiscite or complete secession of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. When feeling particularly belligerent Pakistan cries itself hoarse declaring the legitimacy of plebiscite held under United Nations auspices in J & K; India responds just as aggressively by demanding the complete withdrawal of Pakistani troops from the territory of pre-partition J & K; or, in a moment of neighborly solicitude, for conversion of the LOC to a permanent International border. ~ Nyla Ali Khan,

1029:Even though questions around armed actions will never cease to be discussed, another matter is definite to me—one may imagine another world but one must also face the responsibility of actions and its possible causalities, especially when innocent bystanders have the possibility of being victimized. My rule from what I learned in my “go to the people” campaign: do not proclaim yourself the leader of anything unless you are fully involved and committed to the issue/cause. Russian peasants, like industrial workers in the U.S., can identify a dressed-up radical from miles away. ~ Anonymous,

1030:This is the exaltingquality—to become so perfectedin our lives that not only do we live with God, but we become like him. This is the ultimate oneness. Oneness is not only a matter of geography, but of identity. The issue is not just where we live, but what we become. To live with God does not assure us we will be like him. All who live in the celestial kingdom dwell with God, but only those who are exalted become as he is. The objective of the Atonement is not just to cleanse us, but to so transform our lives and our way of thinking and acting that we become like God. ~ Tad R Callister,

1031:July 5, Comey “announced his own conclusions about the nation’s most sensitive criminal investigation,” which was Hillary Clinton’s emails, preempting the decision of the prosecutor and offering “derogatory information” by calling Clinton’s conduct “extremely careless.” Then, 11 days before the election, he announced he was reopening the Clinton investigation because he believed it was a question of “speak” or “conceal.” This misstated the issue, Rosenstein said. He quoted five former attorneys general or deputy attorneys general agreeing that Comey had violated the rules. ~ Bob Woodward,

1032:What I realized is that if we're going to be able to have a theory about what happens in, for example, nature there has to ultimately be some rule by which nature operates. But the issue is does that rule have to correspond to something like a mathematical equation, something that we have sort of created in our human mathematics? And what I realized is that now with our understanding of computation and computer programs and so on, there is actually a much bigger universe of possible rules to describe the natural world than just the mathematical equation kinds of things. ~ Stephen Wolfram,

1033:My friend Luke told me once that he’d been considering my question about whether the dead ever visit. It was true that I had asked him, back around the time I asked Nate, but this was weeks and weeks later. Apparently he had been deliberating the issue ever since. “I’ve decided,” he said, “that they don’t visit. But I think if you knew them well enough, if you’d listened to them closely enough while they were still alive, you might be able to imagine what they would tell you even now. So the smart thing to do is, pay attention while they’re living. But that’s only my opinion. ~ Anne Tyler,

1034:Our brains cope automatically with all three layers of time—past, present and future. The issue is which one we concentrate on. My suggestion is not to avoid making long-term plans, but once they’re in place to focus wholly on the now. Make the most of your present experiences instead of worrying about future memories. Savor the sunset instead of photographing it. A life of wondrous yet forgotten moments is still a wondrous life, so stop thinking of experiences as deposits for your memory bank. One day you’ll be on your deathbed, and your account will be permanently closed. ~ Rolf Dobelli,

1035:[In the story of the Good Samaritan,] everybody knows the robber is bad--but doesn't Jesus also imply an indictment on the priest and Levite? . . . The priest and Levite are over here. They are 'righteous' in a superficial way. They don't rob anybody. They're not like that lousy criminal who is over here, on the bad end of the line. Do you see it? That's the line we modern Christians try to live on the right end of it . . . The Samaritan traveler lives on a higher level, altogether. The issue isn't who is wrong or righteous; that's obvious. The issue is who is truly good. ~ Brian D McLaren,

1036:Without the power of intelligence there is no capacity for spiritual knowledge; and without spiritual knowledge we cannot have the faith from which springs that hope whereby we grasp things of the future as though they were present. Without the power of desire there is no longing, and so no love, which is the issue of longing; for the property of desire is to love something. And without the incensive power, intensifying the desire for union with what is loved, there can be no peace, for peace is truly the complete and undisturbed possession of what is desired. ~ Saint Maximus the Confessor,

1037:It is easy to take a stand about a remote issue, but speciesists, like racists, reveal their true nature when the issue comes nearer home. To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada, while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, or the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks. ~ Peter Singer,

1038:The AKP government in Turkey, in power since 2002, while not officially abandoning its predecessors’ denialist approach to the issue, has taken a more permissive attitude, allowing alternative histories to be written and read in Turkey itself. This means that, first, the Turkish nationalist (or “denialist”) version of the Armenian Genocide that took root in the 1950s has crumbled in the face of the new scholarship: None of these Turkish nationalist historians has managed to write a full-length book that sets out a coherent “Turkish version” of what happened to the Armenians. ~ Thomas de Waal,

1039:We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness. There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us—those we aspire to be—handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists. Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating. ~ Atul Gawande,

1040:She had a rosebud on her ass, and wasn't happy about it. Standing naked in the bathroom, Eve adjusted the trifold mirror until she could get a good look. "I think I could bust her for this," she muttered. "Decorating a cop's posterior without a license?" Roarke suggested as he strolled in. "Felonious reproduction of floral imagery?'' "You're getting a big charge out of this, aren't you?" Miffed, Eve snagged a robe off the hook. "Darling Eve, I thought I made it perfectly clear last night I was on your side of the issue. Didn't I do my best to chew it off? ~ J D Robb,

1041:(1) When a situation has become too frustrating, a quandary too persistently insolvable; when dealing with the issue is generating chronic discontent, infringing on freedom, and inhibiting growth, it may be time to quit beating one’s head against the wall, reach for a big fat stick of metaphoric dynamite, light the fuse, and blast the whole unhappy business nine miles past oblivion. (2) After making an extreme effort, after pulling out all the stops, one is still unable to score Tibetan peach pie, take it as a signal to relax, grin, pick up a fork, and go for a slice of the apple. ~ Tom Robbins,

1042:The civil rights movement didn't deal with the issue of political disenfranchisement in the Northern cities. It didn't deal with the issues that were happening in places like Detroit, where there was a deep process of deindustrialization going on. So you have this response of angry young people, with a war going on in Vietnam, a poverty program that was insufficient, and police brutality. All these things gave rise to the black power movement. The black power movement was not a separation from the civil rights movement, but a continuation of this whole process of democratization. ~ Danny Glover,

1043:Writing in African languages became a topic of discussion in conferences, in schools, in classrooms; the issue is always being raised - so it's no longer "in the closet," as it were. It's part of the discussion going on about the future of African literature. The same questions are there in Native American languages, they're there in native Canadian languages, they're there is some marginalized European languages, like say, Irish. So what I thought was just an African problem or issue is actually a global phenomenon about relationships of power between languages and cultures. ~ Ngugi wa Thiong o,

1044:There are two keys to this entire sequence. The first is knocking over the head pin, taking the beachhead, crossing the chasm (and chaining together three mixed metaphors to do it!). The size of the first pin is not the issue, but the economic value of the problem it fixes is. The more serious the problem, the faster the target niche will pull you out of the chasm. Once out, your opportunities to expand into other niches are immensely increased because now, having one set of pragmatist customers solidly behind you, you are much less risky for others to back as a new vendor. The ~ Geoffrey A Moore,

1045:The issue of false consciousness is a genuinely difficult problem that has no definite solution. We should not approve of an unequal and brutal society because surveys show that people are happy. But who has the right to tell those oppressed women or starving landless peasants that they shouldn’t be happy, if they think they are? Does anyone have the right to make those people feel miserable by telling them the ‘truth’? There are no easy answers to these questions, but they definitely tell us that we cannot rely on ‘subjective’ happiness surveys to decide how well people are doing. ~ Ha Joon Chang,

1046:If the book is finished—published and on the shelf—I do not think of revising it. But if I'm not finished psychologically with characters, they will recur, either as themselves or as new, slightly altered manifestations, and their same issues will reappear. It's a matter of the subject and emotional investment and my own obsessive thinking about various issues It's an unconscious process. To say that a single story is not done isn't quite true. A story can be finished and judged successful or not by somebody else, but if the issue is not done for me, I can count on its reappearance. ~ Antonya Nelson,

1047:I think (if I can make a judgement about writers coming into the business), I feel everybody is in a horrific hurry these days. You write one book and you're ready for fame and fortune. I don't know that people are spending the time and attention on learning how to write -- which takes years. Everybody sees the success stories. So instead of taking five years to learn how to write a decent sentence, they're writing a book proposal and asking who your editor and your agent are. So I find it a little infuriating that there is not more care given to the issue of being wonderful at writing. ~ Sue Grafton,

1048:If you don't want to-I mean, genuinely are not attracted to me, do not think of me that way, cannot stomach the thought of touching me-then I would understand and I would never press the issue again. But that's not how you feel.' 'How do you know?' I snap. 'Because I'm very pretty.' I whip my head around to glare at him; he's smiling like he couldn't be more amused. 'You aren't that pretty.' 'I am to you...' 'You are unbelievable.' 'I am, aren't I?' 'Unbelievable arrogant.' 'Not arrogant. Confident. There's a difference.' 'Which you clearly do not understand. ~ Kiersten White,

1049:People mistake self-love for thinking they must always like what they see in the mirror - and yes, of course, that is the goal; that all depends on perspective - but my argument is that you can still have self-love while wanting to make progress or improve things. The main issue is that we attach too much to an idea of what our perfect body may be or what self-love should be. But that's the issue. There is no right or wrong. We can love ourselves and feel bloated. We can love ourselves but feel uncomfortable in our skin. We are a work in progress and human and won't always feel amazing. ~ Danielle Tabor,

1050:Chase has told me about your efforts to get the church to recognize AIs as sentient creatures.” “Ah, yes. That’s not exactly how we phrased the issue, but it’s true. Yes.” “How did you phrase it?” “We’ve tried to make the point that they may have souls. And that even if we can’t be certain, we should assume that they do. An error in this matter should be made on the side of caution.” “You’re concerned,” he asked, “that they may be punished in an afterlife because they weren’t admitted to churches?” “No. I’m concerned that we may be judged negligent for the way in which we’ve treated them. ~ Jack McDevitt,

1051:complete extirpation of the concept of Jews.” For the Poles, Madagascar was an actual island in the actual Indian Ocean, an actual possession of the actual French empire, an actual site of an actual exploratory mission, a subject of actual political discussions, one of two places (along with Palestine) that were seriously considered as destination points for a mass migration of Polish Jewry. Polish leaders did not grasp that for the Nazis the issue was not the feasibility of one deportation plan, but the creation of general conditions under which Jews could be destroyed one way or another. ~ Timothy Snyder,

1052:People vote against their own interests that all the time. But when you do the polling in the U.S., it has gone from less than 50 percent who thought climate change was real to 70-odd percent. And if you listen to the Republicans in Congress, they used to say, "Oh, climate change doesn't exist." Then they switched to "Well, it exists, but it's not man-made," to "Well, I'm going to address the issue." Why? Because when they go home, the local constituent says, "Wait a second. What are you talking about? We just had a flood. We haven't had rain in a long time." They can't get away from it. ~ Michael Bloomberg,

1053:The central issue of Christianity is the issue of justification. It faces the dilemma squarely. The only possible way for an unjust person to stand in the presence of a just and holy God is to be justified. If we remain unjustified, we die in our sins. The only way we can be justified is by the righteousness of Christ. He alone has the merit necessary to cover us. That righteousness is received by faith. If we trust in Christ, we are covered by His righteousness and are justified by faith. If we do not trust in Christ, we will stand before God's judgment alone, unjust people before a just God. ~ R C Sproul,

1054:Deregulation is a popular term that's used across the political spectrum. And it's one of these terms like "choice," that corporate interests have used because they know their focus-group buzzword testing makes it sound like a popular word. Because, who can be against deregulation? Being free, having liberty, not having someone tell you what to do, being deregulated, hey, that sounds great. But deregulation is a non sequitur in the realm of media policy or media regulation. The issue is never regulation versus deregulation; our entire system is built on media policies and subsidies. ~ Robert Waterman McChesney,

1055:When it comes to solving problems, one of the best ways to start is by putting away your moral compass. Why? When you are consumed with the rightness or wrongness of a given issue—whether it’s fracking or gun control or genetically engineered food—it’s easy to lose track of what the issue actually is. A moral compass can convince you that all the answers are obvious (even when they’re not); that there is a bright line between right and wrong (when often there isn’t); and, worst, that you are certain you already know everything you need to know about a subject so you stop trying to learn more. ~ Steven D Levitt,

1056:Willing to take heat on the issue, Grant showed courage and fairness in endorsing merciful treatment for Lee. “Although it would meet with opposition in the North to allow Lee the benefit of Amnesty,” Grant told Halleck, “I think it would have the best possible effect towards restoring good feeling and peace in the South to have him come in.”33 Any chance for such a harmonious outcome was shattered in late May when federal judge John C. Underwood, a northern abolitionist, convened a grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia, for the express purpose of indicting Lee and other Confederate leaders for treason. ~ Ron Chernow,

1057:The point of public relations slogans like “Support our troops” is that they don’t mean anything. They mean as much as whether you support the people in Iowa. Of course, there was an issue. The issue was, Do you support our policy? But you don’t want people to think about that issue. That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? ~ Noam Chomsky,

1058:Although you will likely find your copy editor willing to restore almost everything you insist upon, it's usual for there to be a few matters she will want to discuss further. If there were places where you simply wrote "stet" without addressing the problem in the writing that she was trying to fix, the problem will still be there. She may write back explaining the problem and asking you to find a way to fix it. You maybe tempted to dismiss her perception of a problem as imaginary, but that would be a mistake. If one reader stumbles, others may, too, and you would do well to address the issue. ~ Carol Fisher Saller,

1059:At first, Lola was a little afraid of Serif, who was almost as old as her father. But his gentle, courtly manners soon put her at her ease. For a while, she couldn’t say what it was about him that was so different from other people she had known. And then one day, as he patiently drew her out on some subject or another, listening to her opinion as if it were worthy of his consideration, and then guiding her subtly to a fuller view of the issue, she realized what the difference was. Serif, the most learned person she had ever met, was also the only person who never let her feel the least bit stupid. ~ Geraldine Brooks,

1060:What does “hallowed be thy name” ask for? God’s “name” in the Bible regularly means the person he has revealed himself to be. “Hallowed” means known, acknowledged, and honored as holy. “Holy” is the Bible word for all that makes God different from us, in particular his awesome power and purity. This petition, then, asks that the praise and honor of the God of the Bible, and of him only, should be the issue of everything. The idea that “glory be to God alone” is a motto distinguishing John Calvin and his admirers is no discredit to them, but it is a damning sideswipe at all other versions of Christianity. ~ J I Packer,

1061:Calvinism, as we have seen, starts from a double decree of absolute predestination, which antedates creation, and is the divine program of human history. This program includes the successive stages of the creation of man, an universal fall and condemnation of the race, a partial redemption and salvation, and a partial reprobation and perdition: all for the glory of God and the display of his attributes of mercy and justice. History is only the execution of the original design. There can be no failure. The beginning and the end, God’s immutable plan and the issue of the world’s history, must correspond. ~ Philip Schaff,

1062:Let’s see what happens if we reframe the issue and define it as a problem of “illegal employers.” Now the problem becomes the employers who are hiring undocumented workers so they can pay workers less or skirt paying taxes. Employers are recognized as driving down wages, hurting American workers, and exploiting immigrants, many of whom have already fled oppressive circumstances. The possible solutions that flow from such framing are much different: Fine or punish employers for hiring undocumented workers or provide a way for these workers to get the proper documents and work with due protection of the law. ~ George Lakoff,

1063:As Elizabeth Blackmar and Ray Rosenzweig wrote in their magisterial history of [Central Park in NYC]: 'The issue of demoncratic access to the park has also been raised by the increasing number of homeless New Yorkers. Poor people--from the 'squatters' of the 1850s to the 'tramps' of the 1870s and 1890s to the Hooverville residents of the 1930s--have always turned to the park land for shelter...The growing visibility of homeless people in Central Park osed in the starkest terms the contradiction between Americans' commitment to democratic space and their acquiescence in vast disparities of wealth and power. ~ Rebecca Solnit,

1064:Democratic periodicals in the North warned that the governor’s stance would compromise highly profitable New York trade connections with Virginia and other slave states. Seward was branded “a bigoted New England fanatic.” This only emboldened Seward’s resolve to press the issue. He spurred the Whig-dominated state legislature to pass a series of antislavery laws affirming the rights of black citizens against seizure by Southern agents, guaranteeing a trial by jury for any person so apprehended, and prohibiting New York police officers and jails from involvement in the apprehension of fugitive slaves. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin,

1065:Some of the scientists on Dr. Molina’s committee like to point out that people can be pretty intelligent about managing risk in their personal lives. It is unlikely that your house will burn down, yet you spend hundreds of dollars a year on insurance. When you drive to work in the morning, the odds are low that some careless driver will slam into you, but it is possible, so we have spent tens of billions of dollars putting seatbelts and air bags in our cars. The issue of how much to spend on lowering greenhouse gases is, in essence, a question about how much insurance we want to buy against worst-case outcomes. ~ Anonymous,

1066:Moral posturing is part and parcel of temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil - no, that would be far too blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where we finally abandon our illusions and throw ourselves into the work of actually making the world a better place. It claims, moreover, to speak for true realism: What's real us what us right there in front of us - power and bread. By comparison, the things of God fade into unreality, into a secondary world that no one really needs. God is the issue: Is he real, reality itself, or isn't he? Is he good or do we have to invent the good ourselves? ~ Benedict XVI,

1067:The issue is the ethnocentric history that the New York task force, the Portland Baseline essayists, and other Afrocentric ideologues propose for American children. The issue is the teaching of bad history under whatever ethnic banner. Cn any historian justify the proposition that the five ethnic communities into which the New York state task force wishes to divide the country had equal influence on the development of the United States? Is it a function of schools to teach ethnic and racial pride? When does obsession with differences begin to threaten the idea of an overarching American nationality? ~ Arthur M Schlesinger Jr,

1068:But when it comes to solving problems, one of the best ways to start is by putting away your moral compass. Why? When you are consumed with the rightness or wrongness of a given issue—whether it's fracking or gun control or genetically engineered food—it's easy to lose track of what the issue actually is. A moral compass can convince you that all the answers are obvious (even when they're not); that there is a bright line between right and wrong (when often there isn't); and, worst, that you are certain you already know everything you need to know about a subject so you stop trying to learn more. ~ Steven D Levitt,

1069:Of course, the starting point for any discussion of motivation in the workplace is a simple fact of life: People have to earn a living. Salary, contract payments, some benefits, a few perks are what I call “baseline rewards.” If someone’s baseline rewards aren’t adequate or equitable, her focus will be on the unfairness of her situation and the anxiety of her circumstance. You’ll get neither the predictability of extrinsic motivation nor the weirdness of intrinsic motivation. You’ll get very little motivation at all. The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. ~ Daniel H Pink,

1070:As I suspect is true of many who write for a living, as I write I think about all sorts of things. I don’t necessarily write down what I’m thinking; it’s just that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts. And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths. No matter how much I write, though, I never reach a conclusion. And no matter how much I rewrite, I never reach the destination. Even after decades of writing, the same still holds true. All I do is present a few hypotheses or paraphrase the issue. Or find an analogy between the structure of the problem and something else. ~ Haruki Murakami,

1071:Newspapers are a bad habit, the reading equivalent of junk food. What happens to me is that I seize upon an issue in the news—the issue is the moral/philosophical, political/intellectual equivalent of a cheeseburger with everything on it; but for the duration of my interest in it, all my other interests are consumed by it, and whatever appetites and capacities I may have had for detachment and reflection are suddenly subordinate to this cheeseburger in my life! I offer this as self-criticism; but what it means to be "political" is that you welcome these obsessions with cheeseburgers—at great cost to the rest of your life. ~ John Irving,

1072:Most people who don’t feel content with their lives don’t know the reason why. Often they suspect that circumstances or other people are to blame. Even honest and self-aware individuals who know the problem lies inside of them still may have trouble getting to the root of the issue. They ask themselves, “Why am I this way?” They desire to change, but they don’t do anything differently so that they can change. They merely hope things will turn out all right—and they become frustrated when they don’t. Recognize that only when you make the right changes to your thinking do other things begin to turn out right in your life. ~ John C Maxwell,

1073:The idea that I might be sociopathic was nothing new to me—I’d known for a long time that I didn’t connect with other people. I didn’t understand them, and they didn’t understand me, and whatever emotional language they spoke seemed beyond my capacity to learn. Antisocial personality disorder could not be officially diagnosed until you were eighteen years old—prior to that it was just “conduct disorder.” But let’s be honest: conduct disorder is just a nice way of telling parents their kids have antisocial personality disorder. I saw no reason to dance around the issue. I was a sociopath, and it was better to deal with it now. ~ Dan Wells,

1074:The system is broken! And one of the reasons it’s broken down here is that it’s largely run by and for black people. They simply do not place a high cultural value on education, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise any longer.” I can’t believe it. Like so many Yankee transplants, Caitlin has had a dramatic change of heart on the issue of race. But though I’ve seen it before, I would never have expected it from her. “That’s a pretty racist view, Caitlin.” “I’m not a racist,” she asserts. “I’m a realist.” “If I said those things, I’d be labeled a racist. Does being from Boston make it all right for you to espouse those views? ~ Greg Iles,

1075:Lord Macon deposited his wife into a chair and then knelt next to her, clutching one of her hands. "Tell me truthfully - how are you feeling?" Alexia took a breath. "Truthfully? I sometimes wonder if I, like Madame Lefoux, should affect masculine dress." "Gracious me, why?" "You mean aside from the issue of greater mobility?" "My love, I don't think that's currently the result of your clothing." "Indeed, I mean after the baby." "I still don't see why should want to." "Oh no? I dare you to spend a week in a corset, long skirts and a bustle." "How do you know I haven't? ~ Gail Carriger,

1076:New Testament teaching does not focus on reforming and restructuring human systems, which are never the root cause of human problems. The issue is always the heart of man—which when wicked will corrupt the best of systems and when righteous will improve the worst. If men’s sinful hearts are not changed, they will find ways to oppress others regardless of whether or not there is actual slavery. On the other hand, Spirit-filled believers will have just and harmonious relationships with each other, no matter what system they live under. Man’s basic problems and needs are not political, social, or economic but spiritual. … ~ John F MacArthur Jr,

1077:Simply said, we have reached a moment in Western history when, despite all appearances, no meaningful public debate over belief and unbelief is possible. Not only do convinced secularists no longer understand what the issue is; they are incapable of even suspecting that they do not understand, or of caring whether they do. The logical and imaginative grammars of belief, which still informed the thinking of earlier generations of atheists and skeptics, are no longer there. In their place, there is now—where questions of the divine, the supernatural, or the religious are concerned—only a kind of habitual intellectual listlessness. ~ Anonymous,

1078:One thing is certain, however. The metaphysical 'rule', which is held as an ironclad conviction by those whom I have debated the issue of creation, namely that "out of nothing nothing comes," has no foundation in science. Arguing that it is self-evident, unwavering, and unassailable is like arguing, as Darwin falsely did, when he made the suggestion that the origin of life was beyond the domain of science by building an analogy with the incorrect claim that matter cannot be created or destroyed. All it represents is an unwillingness to recognize the simple fact that nature may be cleverer than philosophers or theologians. ~ Lawrence M Krauss,

1079:In terms of experience, we want to make this (referring to the self) very pleasant. We want this to be blissful, ecstatic. But, as I said before, even being ecstatic is not goal by itself. If you are blissful by your own nature, then the important thing is that you are no more the issue. There are other issues in this existence; we can look at those. But if you are an issue, what other issue will you take in your hands? You will not touch anything. When I am enough trouble myself, why do I want to take on this one or that one? When I am no more an issue, now I am willing to dig into the whole existence and see what it is all about. ~ Sadhguru,

1080:V-day is a movement: an organized effort to finally end violence against women. V-Day is a vision: we see a civilization where women live in freedom and safety. V-Day is a spirit: affirming that life should be live creating and thriving rather than surviving or recovering from terrible atrocities. V-Day is a catalyst: by raising wide public awareness of the issue, it will reinvigorates efforts already under way and commence new initiatives in publicity, education, and law. V-Day is a vital ongoing process: we proclaim Valentine's Day as V'day until the violence against women stops, and the it will become Victory Day. ~ Eve Ensler,

1081:As I suspect is true of many who write for a living, as I write I think about all sorts of things. I don’t necessarily write down what I’m thinking; it’s just that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts. And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths. No matter how much I write,a though, I never reach a conclusion. And no matter how much I rewrite, I never reach the destination. Even after decades of writing, the same still holds true. All I do is present a few hypotheses or paraphrase the issue. Or find an analogy between the structure of the problem and something else.” (118) ~ Haruki Murakami,

1082:The issue with an assumed gospel is that it is often too personal and, therefore, becomes private. People who live under the assumption of the gospel often know how it relates to their life, but nobody else does. Their kids never see how the gospel affects decisions, arguments, finances, etc. Their neighbors never hear of the hope within. Their coworkers are left to wonder about what makes them different. Those who live under the assumed gospel often find it awkward to bring it up and talk about the work of Christ. Why? Because they never bring it up and learn to articulate the implications of Christ’s atoning work and their life. ~ Matt Chandler,

1083:So, we're discussing the issue of Fairview." "No, we are not. This is a private conversation." Ronan sputtered and shot her looks of alarm. She ignored him. She'd spent enough time with Tyrus to take liberties - and to know he'd allow them, even enjoyed the informality. "How can the meeting be private," Tyrus said. "If you're holding it in a public place?" "Because I don't have a private place. Not even my suite. I was bathing yesterday and a maidservant brought in fresh towels." "They're very attentive." "Which is fine. Just not while I'm bathing." Tyrus grinned. "I don't mind them." She rolled her eyes. ~ Kelley Armstrong,

1084:During this time, I proved to myself that I was as good as other authors who had achieved the same stature. But I quickly learned that my outer accomplishments were not the issue and never had been. This journey into uncharted waters wasn’t about financial gain, accolades, or any other type of outer acceptance—although I achieved all of those too. I thought I was manifesting a different reality, one that was more authentic to who I was or wanted to be. But the more I settled into my new situation, the more my spirit became restless. My small self wasn’t any more certain or safe. Something had to change, and that something was me. ~ Colette Baron Reid,

1085:Is there too much complaining in your culture? The next time someone moans about something, try asking, “So what’s the next action?” People will complain only about something that they assume could be better than it currently is. The action question forces the issue. If it can be changed, there’s some action that will change it. If it can’t, it must be considered part of the landscape to be incorporated in strategy and tactics. Complaining is a sign that someone isn’t willing to risk moving on a changeable situation, or won’t consider the immutable circumstance in his or her plans. This is a temporary and hollow form of self-validation. ~ David Allen,

1086:If it was not intended as a veto, then it must have been intended for commanders to interpret as they saw fit, which brings the matter to that melting point of warfare—the temperament of the individual commander. When the moment of live ammunition approaches, the moment to which all his professional training has been directed, when the lives of men under him, the issue of the combat, even the fate of a campaign may depend upon his decision at a given moment, what happens inside the heart and vitals of a commander? Some are made bold by the moment, some irresolute, some carefully judicious, some paralyzed and powerless to act. ~ Barbara W Tuchman,

1087:I told him that my cat was on fire and he didn’t even hear me! On fire, Victoria! And he didn’t care!” “Aud, that is so fucking twisted that I don’t even know where to start.” “Okay, I know, but it had to be drastic.” “That’s not drastic, that’s sadistic. You’ve got your –tics mixed up.” “Will you please focus on the issue at hand? Evan doesn’t listen to what I’m saying!” “And this is news?” “Should I break up with him?” “Do you want to break up with him?” “I don’t know. Distract me from feeling miserable.” “Umm… ummm… I got new shoes.” “Woo.” “Wanna come over and try them on?” “I’ll be there in ten minutes. ~ Robin Benway,

1088:Then there’s the issue of cognitive capacity. Deep work is exhausting because it pushes you toward the limit of your abilities. Performance psychologists have extensively studied how much such efforts can be sustained by an individual in a given day.* In their seminal paper on deliberate practice, Anders Ericsson and his collaborators survey these studies. They note that for someone new to such practice (citing, in particular, a child in the early stages of developing an expert-level skill), an hour a day is a reasonable limit. For those familiar with the rigors of such activities, the limit expands to something like four hours, but rarely more. ~ Cal Newport,

1089:I put the issue from my mind. My mother had taken up the cause. She was strong. She had built that business, with all those people working for her, and it dwarfed my father’s business, and all the other businesses in the whole town; she, that docile woman, had a power in her the rest of us couldn’t contemplate. And Dad. He had changed. He was softer, more prone to laugh. The future could be different from the past. Even the past could be different from the past, because my memories could change: I no longer remembered Mother listening in the kitchen while Shawn pinned me to the floor, pressing my windpipe. I no longer remembered her looking away. ~ Tara Westover,

1090:So, how about spanking? After reading all this, do you think you are ready to know what science has to say about the issue? Here's the skinny: Psychologists are still studying the matter, but the current thinking says spanking generates compliance in children under seven if done infrequently, in private, and using only the hands. Now, here's a slight correction: Other methods of behavior modification, such as positive reinforcement, token economies, time out, and so on are also quite effective and don't require violence. Reading those words, you probably had a strong emotional response. Now that you know the truth, has your opinion changed? ~ David McRaney,

1091:I believe that the problem of quantum measurement should be faced and solved well before we can expect to make any real headway with the issue of consciousness in terms of physical action-and that the measurement problem must be solved in entirely physical terms. Once we are in possession of a satisfactory solution, then we may be in a better position to move towards some kind of answer to the question of consciousness. It is my view that solving the quantum measurement problem is a prerequisite for an understanding of mind and not at all that they are the same problem. The problem of mind is a much more difficult problem than the measurement problem! ~ Roger Penrose,

1092:Opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Greeks rejected the conditions attached to the bailout, but wanted to stay in the eurozone. Demonstrations spread throughout Greece advocating a “No” vote. So the Germans and French tried to frame the issue in a narrow way designed to get a “Yes” answer: Did voters want to be part of Europe? The aim was to avoid asking the really important question: Did Greek voters want to impose a decade of depression on themselves, cut public services, impose anti-union labor “reforms,” and sell off the Athenian water supply, its port, their beautiful islands and their gas rights in the Aegean to Germans and other creditors? ~ Michael Hudson,

1093:Perplexed Music EXPERIENCE, like a pale musician, holds A dulcimer of patience in his hand, Whence harmonies, we cannot understand, Of God; will in his worlds, the strain unfolds In sad-perplexed minors: deathly colds Fall on us while we hear, and countermand Our sanguine heart back from the fancyland With nightingales in visionary wolds. We murmur ' Where is any certain tune Or measured music in such notes as these ? ' But angels, leaning from the golden seat, Are not so minded their fine ear hath won The issue of completed cadences, And, smiling down the stars, they whisper-SWEET. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

1094:The main problem facing a parasite over the long term, Burnet noted, is the issue of transmission: how to spread its offspring from one individual host to another. Various methods and traits have developed toward that simple end, ranging from massive replication, airborne dispersal, environmentally resistant life-history stages (like the small form of C. burnetii), direct transfer in blood and other bodily fluids, behavioral influence on the host (as exerted by the rabies virus, for instance, causing infected animals to bite), passage through intermediate or amplifier hosts, and the use of insect and arachnid vectors as means of transportation and injection. ~ David Quammen,

1095:if you wish to be the author of reality, which is totally impossible anyway, you will insist on holding onto judgment. You will also use the term with considerable fear, believing that judgment will someday be used against you. To whatever extent it is used against you, it is due only to your belief in its efficacy as a weapon of defense for your own authority. The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has an “authority problem,” it is always because he believes he is the author of himself, projects his delusion onto others, and then perceives the situation as one in which people are literally fighting him for his authorship. ~ Helen Schucman,

1096:The way I see it, the issue really comes down to idolatry, which is the act of placing anything or anyone above Jesus as the ultimate source of worth, satisfaction, and identity. The problem with idolatry, thought, is that whatever you idolize, you then demonize the opposite. So you can tell if people idolize politics by whether or not they demonize the opposite side of the aisle. Sure, a Republican can disagree and dialogue with a Democrat, but if Republican thinks Democrats are the source of all evil, that's a sign of an idol, a worthless, fake god. If you idolize your self-righteousness, then you demonize those who are "evil" or "worldly" and not like you. ~ Jefferson Bethke,

1097:The way I see it, the issue really comes down to idolatry, which is the act of placing anything or anyone above Jesus as the ultimate source of worth, satisfaction, and identity. The problem with idolatry, though, is that whatever you idolize, you then demonize the opposite. So you can tell if people idolize politics by whether or not they demonize the opposite side of the aisle. Sure, a Republican can disagree and dialogue with a Democrat, but if a Republican thinks Democrats are the source of all evil, that's a sign of an idol, a worthless, fake god. If you idolize your self-righteousness, then you demonize those who are "evil" or "worldly" and not like you. ~ Jefferson Bethke,

1098:It requires emphasis that the states established the American Republic and, through the Constitution, retained for themselves significant authority to ensure the republic's durability. This is not to say that the states are perfect governing institutions. Many are no more respectful of unalienable rights than is the federal government. But the issue is how best to preserve the civil society in a world of imperfect people and institutions. The answer, the Framers concluded, is to diversify authority with a combination of governing checks, balances, and divisions, intended to prevent the concentration of unbridled power in the hands of a relative few imperfect people. ~ Mark R Levin,

1099:The whole ideological assembly line that Richard Fink and Charles Koch had envisioned decades earlier, including the entire conservative media sphere, was enlisted in the fight. Fox Television and conservative talk radio hosts gave saturation coverage to the issue, portraying climate scientists as swindlers pushing a radical, partisan, and anti-American agenda. Allied think tanks pumped out books and position papers, whose authors testified in Congress and appeared on a whirlwind tour of talk shows. “Climate denial got disseminated deliberately and rapidly from think tank tomes to the daily media fare of about thirty to forty percent of the U.S. populace,” Skocpol estimates. ~ Jane Mayer,

1100:John: What does it mean then to talk about God’s judgment? Dallas: Well, he eventually has to deal with where things come out, and that will simply be a matter of declaring the truth. That will get past all of our rationalizations and explanations, and we will look at that and say, “That is true. That’s what I was. That’s what I did.” Now, I don’t think the issue of whether you are going to heaven or hell is settled on that basis, but it’s an important one. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s not. But I believe that the only people who will not be in heaven are people who don’t want to be there. When you think about it, if you don’t really like God, you don’t want to be in heaven. ~ Dallas Willard,

1101:Hemorrhoids Go big or go home! That was my mental response to childbirth. You want me to push? Okay, awesome. I’m going to push so hard that I not only eject this baby from me, but I’m also going to turn my butthole inside out. When I explained the issue to my OB, she insisted hemorrhoids were totally normal, and if they didn’t go away, I could get a quick surgery to correct them, a suggestion that I met with a resounding “Nope!” I had already spent a month in elementary school sitting on a blowup pillow, and I’m not pulling my pants down as an adult to have surgery in my butt. So, here I am, five years out from my last birth and sitting in my chair a quarter of an inch taller. ~ Brittany Gibbons,

1102:The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don’t email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me. Then the guilt from my ignored responsibilities grows so large that merely carrying it around with me feels like a huge responsibility. It takes up a sizable portion of my capacity, leaving me almost completely useless for anything other than consuming nachos and surfing the Internet like an attention-deficient squirrel on PCP. ~ Allie Brosh,

1103:drawer next to the kitchen, where a child in search of scratch paper might end up pulling out the applications used by would-be customers of the Women’s Full Employment Network. The issue of paper was central to Heloise’s life long before various companies began begging its customers to go paperless and save the environment—along with their overhead. (Heloise has always been amused by the good causes that capitalism will embrace in order to save money. Paperless billing! No daily laundry in hotels! Adjusting thermostats! But ask them to reduce their actual dependence on fossil fuel? Impossible.) Heloise, like the best madams, keeps an enormous amount of information in her head, but ~ Laura Lippman,

1104:Notice something. God did not say, “What are you talking about? I have not been mean to you! I have given you everything you needed to be successful with your talent!” Nor did he say, “Gosh, you are right. It is tough to only have one talent. Here, I will do your work for you.” Neither what God had given this man nor what he had not given him was the issue. The issue was just one thing: what had he done with what was given him? How had he used it? How had he responded to the options that were available to him? Had he tried his best and failed, he would not have been graded on the failure. He was graded simply on whether or not he had acted responsibly with what had been dealt to him. ~ Henry Cloud,

1105:After an early legal and legislative life attempting to abolish slavery, Jefferson, now at midlife, made a calculated decision that he would no longer risk his “usefulness” in the arena by pressing the issue.55 (There was a partial victory later: The Northwest Ordinance of 178756 prohibited slavery north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi rivers.) In all, though, for Jefferson public life was about compromise and an unending effort to balance competing interests. To have pursued abolition, even when coupled, as it was in Jefferson’s mind, with deportation, was politically lethal. And Jefferson was not going to risk all for what he believed was a cause whose time had not yet come. ~ Jon Meacham,

1106:Idolatry isn’t just one of many sins; rather it’s the one great sin that all others come from. So if you start scratching at whatever struggle you’re dealing with, eventually you’ll find that underneath it is a false god. Until that god is dethroned, and the Lord God takes his rightful place, you will not have victory. Idolatry isn’t an issue; it is the issue. All roads lead to the dusty, overlooked concept of false gods. Deal with life on the glossy outer layers, and you might never see it; scratch a little beneath the surface, and you begin to see that it’s always there, under some other coat of paint. There are a hundred million different symptoms, but the issue is always idolatry. ~ Kyle Idleman,

1107:However, others are viewing the elections as a potential buying opportunity, arguing that a likely Syriza government would be less problematic for investors than initially feared, and may even be beneficial for Greece and for the euro-zone as a whole. “Greece could be the impetus to question the dogma of austerity,” said Krishna Memani, investment chief of Oppenheimer Funds. “Austerity in Europe is counterproductive and getting out of the deflationary spiral requires flexibility on the fiscal side. Portugal is not raising the issue, Spain is not raising it, or Italy. Greeks finally are so desperate they are bringing it to the forefront, and maybe it will rally more energy this time around. ~ Anonymous,

1108:Since the 1970s, analyses of the public debt have suffered from the fact that economists have probably relied too much on so-called representative agent models, that is, models in which each agent is assumed to earn the same income and to be endowed with the same amount of wealth (and thus to own the same quantity of government bonds). Such a simplification of reality can be useful at times in order to isolate logical relations that are difficult to analyze in more complex models. Yet by totally avoiding the issue of inequality in the distribution of wealth and income, these models often lead to extreme and unrealistic conclusions and are therefore a source of confusion rather than clarity. ~ Anonymous,

1109:Many try to blame the anger and cynicism of working-class whites on misinformation. Admittedly, there is an industry of conspiracy-mongers and fringe lunatics writing about all manner of idiocy, from Obama’s alleged religious leanings to his ancestry. But every major news organization, even the oft-maligned Fox News, has always told the truth about Obama’s citizenship status and religious views. The people I know are well aware of what the major news organizations have to say about the issue; they simply don’t believe them. Only 6 percent of American voters believe that the media is “very trustworthy.”21 To many of us, the free press—that bulwark of American democracy—is simply full of shit. ~ J D Vance,

1110:Amy."  He looked at her with his heart in his eyes.  "You say the wisest and most understanding things . . . What did I ever do to end up with someone like you?" She grinned, playfully.  "You lost your balance and hit your head on a stone wall, remember?  You made a mistake, Charles, which has worked out better than anything you could have planned.  I just wish you could see it that way for yourself.  Now — how about coming inside, eh?" From somewhere above their heads, came the sound of rain beginning to fall on the roof.  It was a light, gentle sound, full of comfort and healing. "Yes . . . I suppose I should," Charles murmured, but made no move to get up. Amy didn't pursue the issue.  ~ Danelle Harmon,

1111:In the end, as Dörnyei (2009: 236) points out, ‘comprehensive discussion of the age issue is never purely about age but also concerns a number of other important areas – quite frankly, we would be hard pressed to find a potentially more complex theme in SLA than the issue of age effects’. Among these other ‘important areas’ that Dörnyei alludes to are: the amount and type of exposure; affective factors, including motivation and attitudes; children’s cognitive development; first language support versus multilingualism; socioeconomic inequalities; teaching methodology and teacher education; and the role and purpose of foreign language learning within the broader remit of education in general. ~ Scott Thornbury,

1112:For two months, Dad, it would be like you had a son. Someone to pitch baseballs to--” “I pitch baseballs to you.” “Someone to hit fly balls to--” “I hit fly balls to you.” “You’d have a real boy--” “He’s not Geppetto,” Tiffany said, “waiting for the blue fairy to touch us with her magic wand.” Maybe not, but I knew Dad had always wanted a son. What father didn’t? But that wasn’t the issue. The issue was: I wanted a boyfriend this summer, and to have a boyfriend, I needed to meet boys, and the Lonestar League was guys, guys, guys. Honesty time. I released a big sigh. “All right, so maybe I’d like to have a brother for the summer.” Okay, not so honest. ~ Rachel Hawthorne,

1113:Then miracle is made the common rule,    One mighty deed can change the course of things;    A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.    All now seems Nature's massed machinery;    An endless servitude to material rule    And long determination's rigid chain,    Her firm and changeless habits aping Law,    Her empire of unconscious deft device    Annul the claim of man's free human will.    He too is a machine amid machines;    A piston brain pumps out the shapes of thought,    A beating heart cuts out emotion's modes;    An insentient energy fabricates a soul.    Or the figure of the world reveals the signs    Of a tied Chance repeating her old steps    In circles around Matter's binding-posts.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

1114:As the first entrees go out, there's a collective holding of breath in the kitchen. It isn't that the food we are serving is bad. I would have taken Tony's suggestion and induced a power failure long before I served food that was seriously compromised. The issue isn't the quality, but the fact that we are serving different food. Grappa's signature dishes feature simple food, perfectly grilled meats, poultry, and fish, straightforward braises, and earthy flavors- a branzino delicately grilled on the bone and adorned by little besides constrained by the small amount of meat and fish available, our menu is more reminiscent of Nonna's kitchen than what our well-heeled regulars are used to. ~ Meredith Mileti,

1115:It isn't a good idea to force young girls to marry," Stabo lectured, looking from one man to the other. “Marriage, in general, isn't a particularly desirable institution. It causes all sorts of trouble, from what I have observed over the centuries. In any case, a Princess shouldn't marry this young, the issue of the advisability of marriage aside. She should be free to grow up and spend time with more interesting creatures than prospective husbands. Dragons, for instance. We're much more interesting than you, Laphroig. Or you, Craswell. So be warned. If I hear any further attempts at forcing this girl to marry either one of you or anyone you know or even anyone I think you know, I will not be so lenient. ~ Terry Brooks,

1116:He saw that while he had much to lose by refraining from the duel, he had precious little to gain by facing it: “I shall hazard much and can possibly gain nothing by the issue of the interview.” 72 Why then did he fight? To maintain his sense of honor and capacity for leadership, he argued, he had to bow to the public’s belief in dueling: “The ability to be in future useful, whether in resisting mischief or effecting good, in those crises of our public affairs which seem likely to happen would probably be inseparable from a conformity with public prejudice in this particular.” 73 In other words, he had to safeguard his career to safeguard the country. His self-interest and America’s were indistinguishable. ~ Ron Chernow,

1117:Our coerced silence is the weapon that has been sharpened and brought to our throats. This is why Nawaz Sharif’s statement in defence of Ahmadis met with such an angry response. Because the heart of the issue isn’t whether Ahmadis are non-Muslims or not. The heart of the issue is whether Muslims can be silenced by fear. Because if we can be silenced when it comes to Ahmadis, then we can be silenced when it comes to Shias, we can be silenced when it comes to women, we can be silenced when it comes to dress, we can be silenced when it comes to entertainment, and we can even be silenced when it comes to sitting by ourselves, alone in a room, afraid to think what we think. That is the point. ~ Mohsin Hamid,

1118:Robert held back in the press, letting others go after the rebels fleeing before the charge. Their orders were to slaughter anyone found in the streets to provoke a quick surrender, after which mercy would be granted to those left alive. He had seen death throughout his life, but the duel he’d had with Guy was the closest he’d come to ending someone’s life and even then there had been rules imposed. There were no such boundaries here. The freedom to kill was a dizzying, precipitous feeling. But the veteran knights were pushing in behind him, forcing the issue. With a snarl of frustration at his own hesitation, Robert fixed on one man darting away down an alley and spurred his horse out of the crush in pursuit. ~ Robyn Young,

1119:The retreat of the state from the function on which its claims to legitimation were founded for the better part of the past century throws the issue of legitimation wide open again. A new citizenship consensus (‘constitutional patriotism’, to deploy Jürgen Habermas’s term) cannot be presently built in the way it used to be built not so long ago: through the assurance of constitutional protection against the vagaries of the market, notorious for playing havoc with social standings and for sapping rights to social esteem and personal dignity. The integrity of the political body in its currently most common form of a nation-state is in trouble, and so an alternative legitimation is urgently needed and sought. In ~ Zygmunt Bauman,

1120:Men often have grievances against prominent and powerful persons. Historically, the grievances of the powerless against the powerful have furnished the steam for the engines of revolutions. My point is that in many of the famous medicolegal cases involving the issue of insanity, persons of relatively low social rank openly attacked their superiors. Perhaps their grievances were real and justified, and were vented on the contemporary social symbols of authority, the King and the Queen. Whether or not these grievances justified homicide is not our problem here. I merely wish to suggest that the issue of insanity may have been raised in these trials to obscure the social problems which the crimes intended to dramatize. ~ Thomas Szasz,

1121:For each of his enemies—and, actually, for each of his friends—the issue for him came down, in many ways, to their personal press plan. The media was the battlefield. Trump assumed everybody wanted his or her fifteen minutes and that everybody had a press strategy for when they got them. If you couldn’t get press directly for yourself, you became a leaker. There was no happenstance news, in Trump’s view. All news was manipulated and designed, planned and planted. All news was to some extent fake—he understood that very well, because he himself had faked it so many times in his career. This was why he had so naturally cottoned to the “fake news” label. “I’ve made stuff up forever, and they always print it,” he bragged. ~ Michael Wolff,

1122:Opponents of abortion use the word baby to refer to the cluster of cells, the embryo, and the fetus alike. The very choice of the word baby imposes the idea of an independently existing human being. Whereas cluster of cells, embryo, and fetus keep discussion in the medical domain, baby moves the discussion to the moral domain. The issue of the morality of abortion is settled once the words are chosen. The purposeful removal of a cell group from the mother that does not constitute an independently existing, viable, or even a recognizable human being cannot be “murder.” The word “murder” is not defined as such a medical procedure. The purposeful killing of a “baby”—an independently existing human being—can be “murder.” Is ~ George Lakoff,

1123:Vulcan is long gone, almost completely forgotten. It may seem today to be merely a curiosity, just another mistake our ancestors made, about which we now know better. But the issue of what to do with failure in science was tricky right at the start of the Scientific Revolution, and it remains so now. We may—we do—know more than the folks back then. But we are not thus somehow immune to the habits of mind, the leaps of imagination, or the capacity for error that they possessed. Vulcan’s biography is one of the human capacity to both discover and self-deceive. It offers a glimpse of how hard it is to make sense of the natural world, and how difficult it is for any of us to unlearn the things we think are so, but aren’t. ~ Thomas Levenson,

1124:Hindus and Muslims are unlikely to resolve the issue of whether a temple or a mosque should be built at Ayodhya by building both, or neither, or a syncretic building that is both a mosque and a temple. Nor can what might seem to be a straightforward territorial question between Albanian Muslims and Orthodox Serbs concerning Kosovo or between Jews and Arabs concerning Jerusalem be easily settled, since each place has deep historical, cultural, and emotional meaning to both peoples. Similarly, neither French authorities nor Muslim parents are likely to accept a compromise which would allow schoolgirls to wear Muslim dress every other day during the school year. Cultural questions like these involve a yes or no, zero-sum choice. ~ Anonymous,

1125:Whereas At Morning In A Jeweled Crown Whereas at morning in a Jeweled Crown I bit my fingers and was hard to please, Having shook disaster till the fruit fell down I feel tonight more happy and at ease: Feet running in the corridors, men quick— Buckling their sword-belts, bumping down the stair, Challenge, and rattling bridge-chain, and the click Of hooves on pavement—this will clear the air. Private this chamber as it has not been In many a month of muffled hours; almost, Lulled by the uproar, I could lie serene And sleep, until all's won, until all's lost, And the door's opened and the issue shown, And I walk forth Hell's Mistress—or my own. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay,

1126:All these women will have higher blood sugar on average than women who remain lean and healthy; their triglycerides will be higher as well. This would explain why maternal obesity, as has been documented repeatedly, is a strong risk factor for childhood obesity and among the strongest predictors of metabolic syndrome and obesity in adulthood. This implies, of course, that if insulin-resistant, obese, and/or diabetic mothers give birth to children who are more predisposed to being insulin-resistant, obese, and diabetic when they, in turn, are of childbearing age, the problem will get worse with each successive generation—a “vicious cycle,” as it’s often described in the medical literature by researchers who pay attention to the issue. ~ Gary Taubes,

1127:AMONG TODAY’S CONSERVATIVE “Luntzspeak” practitioners, few have the lingo down better than the honorable James Inhofe, senator from Oklahoma. Recall from the previous chapter Luntz’s advice for tor from Oklahoma. Recall from the previous chapter Luntz’s advice for dealing with the issue of global warming, which includes the following precepts: (1) emphasize your commitment to “sound science”; (2) seize the remaining “window of opportunity” to challenge and dispute the scientific consensus; and (3) find experts “sympathetic to your view” and make them “part of your message.” It’s a cunning strategy, provided that you are not ashamed of following in the footsteps of the tobacco industry, and Inhofe doesn’t appear to have much shame. ~ Chris C Mooney,

1128:Surely you would have expected no less of a Roma. We take what we want. If a Roma desires a woman, he steals her for himself. Sometimes right out of her bed.” Even in the darkness he could see the rich renewal of her blush. “You just said you would never hurt me.” “If I carried you away with me…” The idea of it, her soft, struggling weight in his arms, sent his blood surging. He was caught by the primitive appeal of it, all reason crushed beneath the thumping heat of desire. “The last thing on my mind would be hurting you.” “You would never do such a thing.” She was trying very hard to sound matter-of-fact. “We both know you’re too civilized.” “Do we? Believe me, the issue of my civility is entirely open to question. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

1129:Your beliefs are rational, logical and fact-based, right? Well, consider a topic such as spanking. Is it right or wrong? Is it harmless or harmful? Is it lazy parenting or tough love? Science has an answer, but let’s get to that later. For now, savor your emotional reaction to the issue and realize you are willing to be swayed, willing to be edified on a great many things, but you keep a special set of topics separate. The last time you got into, or sat on the sidelines of, an argument online with someone who thought she knew all there was to know about health care reform, gun control, gay marriage, climate change, sex education, the drug war, Joss Whedon, or whether or not 0.9999 repeated to infinity was equal to one—how did it go? ~ David McRaney,

1130:Population control was a long-standing public-policy concern. “We need to make population and family planning household words,” Bush said. “The sensationalism needs to be taken out of the subject.” He urged the creation of a joint House-Senate panel on family planning and related issues. “Population control and family planning is too important to whisper and giggle about now,” Bush said. He credited his interest in the issue to his involvement with Planned Parenthood in Houston. Bush raised the stakes in the fall of 1969, proposing that the Department of the Interior become a new federal Department of Resources, Environment, and Population. His interest in legislation about “family-planning services” led Wilbur Mills to refer to Bush as ~ Jon Meacham,

1131:Holding one's self responsible is a critical feature in stigma and in the generation of shame since violation of standards, rules, and goals are insufficient in its elicitation unless responsibility can be placed on the self. Stigma may differ from other elicitors of shame and guilt, in part because it is a social appearance factor. The degree to which the stigma is socially apparent is the degree to which one must negotiate the issue of blame, not only for one's self but between one's self and the other who is witness to the stigma. Stigmatization is a much more powerful elicitor of shame and guilt in that it requires a negotiation not only between one's self and one's attributions, but between one's self and the attributions of others. ~ Michael Lewis,

1132:Moral indignation, even moral outrage, may on occasion be proof of love–love for the victim, love for the church of God, love for the truth, love for God and His glory. Not to be outraged may in such cases be evidence, not of gentleness and love, but of a failure of love. This is where our motives can become thoroughly confused, not to say corrupted. For the line between moral outrage for the sake of God and His people, and immoral outrage because I am on the opposite side of a debate, is painfully thin. On the issue I may even be right; in my heart I may be terribly wrong, precisely because I am less motivated by a passion for the glory of God and the good of His people than for vindication in a wretched squabble with a few individuals (p. 85). ~ D A Carson,

1133:The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald is one of the few journalists who has been willing to write about race and crime honestly, despite the unpopularity of doing so. In books, op-eds, and magazine articles she has picked apart the media’s disingenuous coverage of the issue. The New York Times, for example, regularly runs stories about racial disparities in police stops while glossing over the racial disparities in crime rates. “Disclosing crime rates—the proper benchmark against which police behavior must be measured—would demolish a cornerstone of the Times’s worldview: that the New York Police Department, like police departments across America, oppresses the city’s black population with unjustified racial tactics,” wrote Mac Donald. ~ Jason L Riley,

1134:Cat replied with a casual wryness. That settled the issue in Culley’s mind; if Chase Calder would oppose her decision, he was for it. The fact that it was what Cat wanted to do only added weight to his reasoning, tipping the scales. “It’s your life. You got to live it as you see fit,” Culley stated, hearing his words and liking the sense they made. “You’re a grown woman. It ain’t his place to be telling you what to do anymore. You can tell him I said so. And if he gives you any trouble, you have him talk to me.” The underlying thread of fierceness in his voice moved Cat. She turned to him with a look of affection. “I love you, Uncle Culley.” He reddened and ducked his head, embarrassed by her simple declaration. “Guess you’ll be sticking around ~ Janet Dailey,

1135:I looked more closely at what I considered to be the most significant information regarding the Great Pyramid, which was the accuracy with which it was built. It soon became obvious to me that the researchers on both sides of the issue were sympathetic to the craftspeople involved in building the pyramids. But the researchers were not craftspeople themselves, and they did not have the perspective gained through years of experience working with their hands and with machinery. Having that experience myself, I have some very strong opinions regarding the level of manufacturing expertise practiced by the ancient Egyptians. They were not primitive by any means, and their craftsmanship and precision would be an extreme challenge to duplicate today. ~ Christopher Dunn,

1136:It may be added, that the same change took place in dogmatic teaching, as in the exposition of Scripture. This indeed was still more to be expected, for the issue of controversies and the decrees of Councils had given to the doctrinal statements of the Fathers an authority, or rather prerogative, which was never claimed for their commentaries. Accordingly, S. John Damascene’s work on the Orthodox Faith in the viiith century is scarcely more than a careful selection and combination of sentences and phrases from the great theologians who preceded him, principally S. Gregory Nazianzen. A comment or scholia by the same author upon S. Paul’s Epistles have come down to us, which are mainly taken from S. Chrysostom, but with some use of other expositors. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas,

1137:Mr Lovell, to whom few things retained the force of novelty, and who misliked extremely the sensation when they did, as if firm ground underfoot had been replaced on the instant by a scrabbling fall in vacuo – was, at the moment the door opened on Broad Way, hesitating in his parlour. Flora was downstairs, commanding from Zephyra the supper that would have arrived whether she commanded it or not. Only Tabitha still sat on the sopha, her hands quite still in her lap. It had been his custom, since his wife died these three years past, to call from time to time on his elder daughter’s intelligence, in the same office her mother’s had served; but now, for particular reasons, the issue might touch on her own self in terms that made advice unwise to solicit. ~ Francis Spufford,

1138:There is no faith relation with Christ free of doctrinal content. The knower must have some knowledge of the known, or no relation exists. That seemingly redundant and self-evident statement should underline the issue. Jesus Christ and our knowledge of Him are not in any sense coextensive. But one cannot have a relation with Him without knowledge, and that knowledge represents incipient doctrine… If one does not believe the truths concerning the Christ as revealed in Holy Scripture, one cannot have any authentic relationship with Him. Doctrine, we eagerly concede, does not in itself save…But, on the other hand, one cannot truly worship Christ and seek to live as an authentic disciple and deny, denigrate, or neglect in any sense the biblical teachings concerning Him.13 ~ D A Carson,

1139:Human trafficking is a real issue. It happens everywhere, even quiet, ‘safe’ little towns like the one I live in. The more I researched, the more horrified I became. There are more slaves today than there were 100 years ago.  The average age of sex trafficked victims is 13-14. Trafficking victims have a life expectancy of two years. 100,000 to 300,000 people are trafficking in the United States every year. Girls as young as five have been forced into child prostitution. Every thirty seconds, someone becomes a victim of human trafficking. I didn’t set out to raise awareness or to be preachy about the issue of trafficking, but I do hope you can take away the fact that this isn’t an issue that should be ignored. There is only a supply of slaves because there is a demand. ~ Emily Goodwin,

1140:I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I’m ready to sit next to you rather than across from you; I’m willing to put the problem in front of us rather than between us (or sliding it toward you); I’m ready to listen, ask questions, and accept that I may not fully understand the issue; I want to acknowledge what you do well instead of picking apart your mistakes; I recognize your strengths and how you can use them to address your challenges; I can hold you accountable without shaming or blaming you; I’m willing to own my part; I can genuinely thank you for your efforts rather than criticize you for your failings; I can talk about how resolving these challenges will lead to your growth and opportunity; and I can model the vulnerability and openness that I expect to see from you. ~ Bren Brown,

1141:If an answer didn’t come to her during this learning phase, she let the subject settle inside her. She no longer thought about it consciously, allowing instead some dark and muscled lobe of her brain to take over. The issue was broken down into components and absorbed, images from the material occasionally appearing in her thoughts like neuronal burps. Every once in awhile she’d flip through her notes, having no expectations but going through the ritual in order to goose her brain along. After her mind had worked on the problem like this for long enough—a few days, a month, maybe a whole year—the answer would suddenly hit her. The solution glittering and fully realized, as obvious as though someone much smarter had handed it to her, frustrated with how long she was taking. ~ Audrey Schulman,

1142:The scientific study of suffering inevitably raises questions of causation, and with these, issues of blame and responsibility. Historically, doctors have highlighted predisposing vulnerability factors for developing PTSD, at the expense of recognizing the reality of their patients' experiences… This search for predisposing factors probably had its origins in the need to deny that all people can be stressed beyond endurance, rather than in solid scientific data; until recently such data were simply not available… When the issue of causation becomes a legitimate area of investigation, one is inevitably confronted with issues of man's inhumanity to man, with carelessness and callousness, with abrogation of responsibility, with manipulation and with failures to protect. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,

1143:But the risk, I think, is only that affection is personal. If it is not personal, it is nothing; we don’t, at least, have to worry about governmental or corporate affection. And one of the endeavors of human cultures, from the beginning, has been to qualify and direct the influence of emotion. The word “affection” and the terms of value that cluster around it—love, care, sympathy, mercy, forbearance, respect, reverence—have histories and meanings that raise the issue of worth. We should, as our culture has warned us over and over again, give our affection to things that are true, just, and beautiful. When we give affection to things that are destructive, we are wrong. A large machine in a large, toxic, eroded cornfield is not, properly speaking, an object or a sign of affection. ~ Wendell Berry,

1144:We are told again and again by patriarchal mass media, by sexist leaders, that feminism is dead, that it no longer has meaning. In actuality, females and males of all ages, everywhere, continue to grapple with the issue of gender equality, continue to seek roles for themselves that will liberate rather than restrict and confine; and they continue to turn towards feminism for answers. Visionary feminism offers us hope for the future. By emphasizing an ethics of mutuality and interdependency feminist thinking offers us a way to end domination while simultaneously changing the impact of inequality. In a universe where mutuality is the norm, there may be times when all is not equal, but the consequence of that inequality will not be subordination, colonization, and dehumanization. Feminism ~ bell hooks,

1145:Just as there are those who accept every UFO report at face value, there are also those who dismiss the idea of alien visitation out of hand and with great passion. It is, they say, unnecessary to examine the evidence, and “unscientific” even to contemplate the issue. I once helped to organize a public debate at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science between proponent and opponent scientists of the proposition that some UFOs were spaceships; whereupon a distinguished physicist, whose judgment in many other matters I respected, threatened to sic the Vice President of the United States on me if I persisted in this madness. (Nevertheless, the debate was held and published, the issues were a little better clarified, and I did not hear from Spiro T. Agnew.) ~ Carl Sagan,

1146:Perhaps suspense has been one of the most trying features of my case. Just as I have unclasped my hand from my dear Ernest's; just as I have let go my almost frantic hold of my darling children; just as heaven opened before me and I fancied my weariness over and my wanderings done; just then almost every alarming sympathy would disappear and life recall me from the threshold of heaven itself. Thus I have been emptied from vessel to vessel, till I have learned that he only is truly happy who has no longer a choice of his own and lies passive in God's hand. Even now, no one can foretell the issue of this sickness. We live a day at a time, not knowing what shall be on the morrow. But whether I live or die, my happiness is secure, and so, I believe, is that of my beloved ones. ~ Elizabeth Payson Prentiss,

1147:Why are you here?" His chest lifts on a deep breath. "I'm done." "Done with what?" "Done letting you avoid me." I cock my head. I hadn't run him off? Could it be so simple? So easy? Poof! He's here whether I like it or not. I didn't even need to convince him that I had changed my mind? "Are you sure that's a good idea?" Because I'm not. Like the truest coward, when presented with my self-professed goal, doubts assail me. I'm not sure I'm ready for him. Even if being with him gets me the information I need about other prides, I'm still left with the issue of manifesting whenever I'm too close to him. And I want to be close to him. Can I be with him without being with him? In my true form? Am I capable of that kind of control? "I'm sure," he answers in a firm voice. ~ Sophie Jordan,

1148:The full-on Townsend-Moon hooter. She only ever found this problematic in males who hadn’t become pop musicians; it seemed, then, in some weirdly inverted way, affected. It looked, to her, as though they’d grown large noses in order to look like rock musicians. More weirdly, perhaps, they all tended—certified accountants, radiologists, or whatever—to the flopping forelock that had traditionally gone with it, back in Muswell Hill or Denmark Street. This, she’d once reasoned, must be due in one of two ways to hairdressers. Either they saw the rock mega-nose and dressed the hair above it out of a call to historical tradition, or they weighed the issue in some instinctive, deeply hairdresserly way, arriving at that massive slash and heft of eye-obscuring forelock through some simple sense of balance. ~ William Gibson,

1149:Speaking before a joint session of Congress, President Johnson said: “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through . . . a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.” It’s remarkable to note that, more than fifty years ago, an American president was already aware of, and acknowledging, human-created climate change. Johnson had been briefed on the dangers of CO 2 increases by the famous climate scientists Charles Keeling and Roger Revelle, among others. So, not only was Johnson aware of the issue, but he was already concerned enough to raise it before Congress. That single sentence in his address gives the lie to the claims of so many climate-change deniers that global warming is some kind of recent hoax. ~ Adam Frank,

1150:His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him. But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future—haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth—ready to break the Enemy’s commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other—dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present. ~ C S Lewis,

1151:There’s a fascinating frailty of the human mind that psychologists know all about, called “argument from ignorance.” This is how it goes. Remember what the “U” stands for in “UFO”? You see lights flashing in the sky. You’ve never seen anything like this before and don’t understand what it is. You say, “It’s a UFO!” The “U” stands for “unidentified.” But then you say, “I don’t know what it is; it must be aliens from outer space, visiting from another planet.” The issue here is that if you don’t know what something is, your interpretation of it should stop immediately. You don’t then say it must be X or Y or Z. That’s argument from ignorance. It’s common. I’m not blaming anybody; it may relate to our burning need to manufacture answers because we feel uncomfortable about being steeped in ignorance. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson,

1152:The issue that divided liberals and democrats was plain: if the consent of the governed is to be at all meaningful, if they are to weight the acts of their governors and join in the making of laws through their representatives in a legislature that is better than a charade, they must be rational creatures capable of rising above willful self-interest. Was it reasonable to demand disinterested restraint from day laborers and peasants doomed to lives of unending drudgery on the edge of starvation? Could human nature overcome illiteracy, exhaustion, indifference, the centuries-old habit of submissiveness punctuated only by riots? Could one fashion into competent citizens the holders of a litter property or small craftsmen who work with their hands, men who read, if they read at all, the Bible or some scandal sheet? ~ Peter Gay,

1153:But the issue of children and who looks after them has become, in my view, profoundly political, and so it would be a contradiction to write a book about motherhood without explaining to some degree how I found the time to write it. For the first six months of Albertine’s life I looked after her at home while my partner continued to work. This experience forcefully revealed to me something to which I had never given much thought: the fact that after a child is born the lives of its mother and father diverge, so that where before they were living in a state of some equality, now they exist in a sort of feudal relation to each other. A day spent at home caring for a child could not be more different from a day spent working in an office. Whatever their relative merits, they are days spent on opposite sides of the world. ~ Rachel Cusk,

1154:Getting back to the issue of the child," Tina said, harshing our buzz as visual, "I really think you should reconsider. He—" The phone rang. She picked it up, glanced at the caller ID. "We're kind of busy," I said, a little sharply. The phone was a whole thing between Tina and me. "But—" "If it's important, they'll call back." "But it's your mother." I practically snarled. The phone, the fucking phone! People used it the way they used to use the cat-o'-nine-tails. You had to drop everything and answer the fucking thing. And God help you if you were home and, for whatever reason, didn't answer. "But I called!" Yeah, it was convenient for you so you called. But I'm in the shit because it wasn't convenient for me to drop everything and talk to you, on the spot, for whatever you needed to talk about. ~ MaryJanice Davidson,

1155:There were actual land sites all over the planet that should be very badly contaminated by lipofuscin, because their soil has been seeded with the stuff for generations. I speak, of course, of graveyards. Think about it: hundreds of bodies put into the ground—sometimes en masse, as happened throughout Europe during the horrors of the Plague, and more recently following acts of genocide in Rwanda and elsewhere. These soils should be chockablock with aggregates from their inhabitants’ decaying bodies. Yet, to my knowledge, there was no accumulation of lipofuscin in cemeteries—and if there were, we certainly ought to be aware of it, because lipofuscin is fluorescent. Months later, when I was discussing the issue with fellow Cambridge scientist John Archer, he would put the disconnect succinctly: “Why don’t graveyards glow in the dark? ~ Anonymous,

1156:I believe that we all have the potential to solve problems and express ourselves creatively. What stands in our way are these hidden barriers—the misconceptions and assumptions that impede us without our knowing it. The issue of what is hidden, then, is not just an abstraction to be bandied about as an intellectual exercise. The Hidden—and our acknowledgement of it—is an absolutely essential part of rooting out what impedes our progress: clinging to what works, fearing change, and deluding ourselves about our roles in our own success. Candor, safety, research, self-assessment, and protecting the new are all mechanisms we can use to confront the unknown and to keep the chaos and fear to a minimum. These concepts don’t necessarily make anything easier, but they can help us uncover hidden problems and, thus, enable us to address them. ~ Ed Catmull,

1157:Cultural relativists prefer to wrap the issue of sharia in the intellectual equivalent of a black jilbab or blue burqa and intone the old platitudes that we should be nonjudgmental about the religious practices of others. Why? The ancient Aztecs and other peoples practiced human sacrifice, tearing the still-beating hearts out of their sacrificial victims. We teach our children that this happened five hundred years ago, but we don’t condone it—and wouldn’t if the practice were suddenly revived in Mexico today. So why do we condone the “sacrifice” of women or homosexuals or lapsed Muslims for “crimes” such as apostasy, adultery, blasphemy, marrying outside of their faith, or simply wishing to marry the partner of their choice? Why, aside from the publication of reports by human rights organizations, is there no discernible reaction? In ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

1158:The mathematical proofs that Hilbert's tenth problem and the tiling problem are not soluble by computational means are difficult, and I shall certainly not attempt to give the argument here. The central point of each argument is to show, in effect, how any Turing-machine action can be coded into a Diophantine or tiling problem. This reduces the issue to one that Turing actually addressed in his original discussion: the computational insolubility of the halting problem-the problem of deciding those situations in which a Turing-machine action fails ever to come to a halt. In 2.3, various explicit computations that do not ever halt will be given; and in 2.5 a relatively simple argument will be presented-based essentially on Turing's original one-that shows, amongst other things, that the halting problem is indeed computationally insoluble. ~ Roger Penrose,

1159:Mike kissed him again, just as hard, hands going to Nate’s waist, fingers digging in as he moved his lips. Nate reached for Mike’s face, wanting to hold on, fully on board with whatever the hell was happening, the zing of want racing down his spine. Mike thrust his tongue in, no hesitancy. Delicious punishment for pushing the issue. Nate opened and realized he was taking steps back, reversed until the backs of his legs hit the armrest of the couch. Mike’s breath was warm against his face as he slid his hands down, skimming over Nate’s ass before pulling him closer. He could feel Mike. Like feel him. There’s no way Mike couldn’t feel the same. It spun his brain. Going from arguing, being damn mad, to pulling and pressing and sucking… “Do you know what you fucking look like?” Mike asked. “When you’re being such a self-righteous, mad little prick? ~ Anonymous,

1160:Mitch, it is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that. This is your time to be in your thirties. I had my time to be in my thirties, and now is my time to be seventy-eight. “You have to find what’s good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And, age is not a competitive issue.” He exhaled and lowered his eyes, as if to watch his breath scatter into the air. “The truth is, part of me is every age. I’m a three-year-old, I’m a five-year-old, I’m a thirty-seven-year-old, I’m a fifty-year-old. I’ve been through all of them, and I know what it’s like. I delight in being a child when it’s appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it’s appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own. ~ Mitch Albom,

1161:Of course, almost ali people, guided by the traditional manner of dealing with ethical precepts, peremptorily repudiate such an explanation of the issue. Social institutions, they assert, must be just. It is base to judge them merely according to their fitness to attain definite ends, however desirable these ends may be from any other point of view. What matters first is justice. The extreme formulation of this idea is to be found in the famous phrase: fiai fustitia, pereat mundus. Let justice be done, even if it destroys the world. Most supporters of the postulate of justice will reject this maxim as extravagant, absurd, and paradoxical. But it is not more absurd, merely more shocking, than any other reference to an arbitrary notion of absolute justice. It clearly shows the fallacies of the methods applied in the discipline of intuitive ethics. ~ Ludwig von Mises,

1162:Why are breakfast foods breakfast foods?” I asked them. “Like, why don’t we have curry for breakfast?” “Hazel, eat.” “But why?” I asked. “I mean, seriously: How did scrambled eggs get stuck with breakfast exclusivity? You can put bacon on a sandwich without anyone freaking out. But the moment your sandwich has an egg, boom, it’s a breakfast sandwich.” Dad answered with his mouth full. “When you come back, we’ll have breakfast for dinner. Deal?” “I don’t want to have ‘breakfast for dinner,’” I answered, crossing knife and fork over my mostly full plate. “I want to have scrambled eggs for dinner without this ridiculous construction that a scrambled egg–inclusive meal is breakfast even when it occurs at dinnertime.” “You’ve gotta pick your battles in this world, Hazel,” my mom said. “But if this is the issue you want to champion, we will stand behind you. ~ John Green,

1163:The avoidance or postponement of answering such deep and basic questions was traditionally the province of religion, which excelled at it. Every thinking person always knew that an insuperable mystery lay at the final square of the game board, and that there was no possible way of avoiding it. So, when we ran out of explanations and processes and causes that preceded the previous cause, we said, “God did it.” Now, this book is not going to discuss spiritual beliefs nor take sides on whether this line of thinking is wrong or right. It will only observe that invoking a deity provided something that was crucially required: it permitted the inquiry to reach some sort of agreed-upon endpoint. As recently as a century ago, science texts routinely cited God and “God’s glory” whenever they reached the truly deep and unanswerable portions of the issue at hand. ~ Robert Lanza,

1164:If either public or personal responses to the Berrigan witness are not to be some form of cop-out, the rubric for comprehending what they are saying and doing is supplied, manifestly, by the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Acts is the chronicle of the many arrests, trials, imprisonments, exiles, tortures, and executions suffered by the pioneer Christians at the behest of the ruling authorities. In those confrontations, the issue is not whether the apostles in their witness are ‘effective,’ or otherwise have prospects of what the world knows as ‘success’ or ‘victory.’ The issue, instead, is whether the apostles speak and act faithfully in the gospel, and thus exemplify in their living the truth and power of the Word of God transcending and disrupting the reign of death, and the idolatry of the power of death, in any and all regimes of this world. ~ William Stringfellow,

1165:A Democratic Hymn Republicans of differing views Are pro or con protection; If that's the issue they would choose, Why, we have no objection. The issue we propose concerns Our hearts and homes more nearly: A wife to whom the nation turns And venerates so dearly. So, confident of what shall be, Our gallant host advances, Giving three cheers for Grover C. And three times three for Frances! So gentle is that honored dame, And fair beyond all telling, The very mention of her name Sets every breast to swelling. She wears no mortal crown of gold-No courtiers fawn around her-But with their love young hearts and old In loyalty have crowned her-And so with Grover and his bride We're proud to take our chances, And it's three times three for the twain give we-But particularly for Frances! ~ Eugene Field,

1166:Stress causes the greatest number of doctors' visits annually. Yet we haven't noticed well enough that the issue is not just what is stressing us but also how poorly we are built to deal with that stress. We ask our experimental brain to work overtime to decide what line will sell next season, whether our son is drinking just a lot or has become an alcoholic, whether this passing feeling means that the universe has a purpose or that our medication is kicking in, where we should look to heal the hole in our heart and make life feel worthwhile . . . and everything else. Not knowing what else to do, we set our brain racing off, whether or not it has good brakes, whether or not it is equal to the task, and whether or not the task is reasonable. The smarter we are, the more likely we will use our brain in these ways, and the more painful pressure we are likely to produce. ~ Eric Maisel,

1167:In a newly conservative country, immigration now stood at the center of American politics. By the 1990s, the debate over immigration had grown as intense as the one that had raged in the 1910s and 1920s. The undocumented Mexican immigrant population of the United States rose from about one million in 1988 to more than six and a half million in 2008. The U.S.-Mexico border became more militarized, and more dangerous, with Operation Blockade in Texas in 1993 and Operation Gatekeeper in California in 1994. In 1997, the chair of a congressional Commission on Immigration Reform said that immigration “is about who and what we are as a Nation,” a common refrain. Few had answers. But immigration became, increasingly, the issue on which American politics turned. Between 2005 and 2013, at least one person a day on average died trying to cross into the United States from Mexico. ~ Jill Lepore,

1168:The most revolutionary change that hit the world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries was the liberation of women. The Bible and the Qur’an came from societies controlled by men. No surprise there. That’s how the world everywhere was run until fairly recently. And there is something worth noting before we go deeper into the issue. History shows that the men in charge never volunteer to give up their privileges. They don’t wake up one day and say, ‘I’ve suddenly realised that the way I control and dominate others is wrong. I must change my ways. So I’ll share my power with them. I’ll give them the vote!’ That’s never how it works. History shows that power always has to be wrested from those who have it. The suffragettes who fought for the vote or suffrage for women learned that lesson. Men didn’t volunteer to give women the vote. Women had to fight them for it. ~ Richard Holloway,

1169:This book is written to confront the issue of the often unhealthy shape of pastoral culture and to put on the table the temptations that are either unique to or intensified by pastoral ministry. This is a book of warning that calls you to humble self-reflection and change. It is written to make you uncomfortable, to motivate you toward change. At points it may make you angry, but I am convinced that the content of this book is a reflection of what God has called me to do. Perhaps we have become too comfortable. Perhaps we have quit examining ourselves and the culture that surrounds those of us who have been called to ministry in the local church. I think that, more than any other book I have written, I wrote this book because I could not live with not writing it. And I have launched myself on a ministry career direction to get help for pastors who have lost their way. ~ Paul David Tripp,

1170:hunting because of the 2004 Hunting Act. This is not a good advertisement for legislation. Yet, to appreciate the full force of the sham, recall, in wonder, the great ruptures between town and country, left and right, liberals and animal-welfare nuts, that preceded the ban. The march of 400,000 wax-jacketed pro-hunt protesters through London, the 700 hours of parliamentary debates devoted to the issue, the threat from Labour backbenchers to oppose all government business unless the ban was brought—it was madness. Even at the time, it seemed so: a dilettantish, illiberal, class-infused blot on what was otherwise a British golden age, for politics and the economy—as even the ban’s reluctant main architect, Tony Blair, later admitted. A man not given to regrets, the then prime minister considered the ban one of his biggest. “God only knows,” he reflected, what the point of it was. ~ Anonymous,

1171:We now realize that behind each person’s gridlocked position lies something deep and meaningful—something core to that person’s belief system, needs, history, or personality. It might be a strongly held value or perhaps a dream not yet lived. These people can no more yield and compromise on this issue than they can give up “the bones” of who they are and what they value about themselves. Compromise seems like selling themselves out, which is unthinkable.       But when a relationship achieves a certain level of safety and one partner clearly communicates that he or she wants to know about the underlying meaning of the other partner’s position, the other partner can finally open up and talk about his or her feelings, dreams, and needs. Persuasion and problem solving are postposed. The goal is for each partner to understand the other’s dreams behind the position on the issue. ~ John M Gottman,

1172:The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should not be cowed by exaggerated sensitivity to people's religious beliefs and fail to speak vigorously and pointedly when the devout put forth arguments manifestly contrary to all the acquired knowledge of the past two or three millennia. Those who advocate a piece of folly like the theory of an 'intelligent creator' should be held accountable for their folly; they have no right to be offended for being called fools until they establish that they are not in fact fools. Religiously inclined writers like Stephen L Carter may plead that 'respect' should be accorded to religious views in public discourse, but he neglects to demonstrate that those views are worthy of respect. All secularists -- scientists, literary figures, even politicians (if there are any such with the requisite courage) -- should speak out on the issue when the opportunity presents itself. ~ S T Joshi,

1173:THE NEXT day, the President and I announced a new small business lending initiative in the East Room. After I laid out the details in my usual colorless fashion, the President said he wanted to take a moment to discuss his outrage about the AIG bonuses. “I’ve asked Secretary Geithner to use [our] leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole,” he said. “I want everybody to be clear that Secretary Geithner has been on the case.” I read a draft of those remarks the morning of the event, and I wasn’t pleased. We didn’t think we could claw back the bonuses that had already been obligated, and even if we could modestly reduce future payouts, raising public expectations seemed unwise. I thought the President should stay as far away from the issue as possible. I didn’t see the need to remind everyone that I was “on the case,” either. But the country ~ Timothy F Geithner,

1174:There is a classic psychology experiment that seems to confirm Brewer's point. Children who enjoy drawing were given marker pens and allowed to go at it. Some were rewarded for drawing (they were given a certificate with a gold seal and a ribbon, and told ahead of time about this arrangement, whereas for others the issue of rewards was never raised. Weeks later, those who had been rewarded took less interest in drawing, and their drawings were judged to be lower in quality, whereas those who had not been rewarded continued to enjoy the activity and produced higher-quality drawings. The hypothesis is that the child begins to attribute his interest, which previously needed no justification, to the external reward, and this has the effect of reducing his intrinsic interest in it. That is, an external reward can affect one's interpretation of one's own motivation, an interpretation that comes to be self-fulfilling. ~ Matthew B Crawford,

1175:Within weeks of his arrival, the planet was hit by the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression. The crisis posed a conundrum for Lin: Officials from the United States, Europe, and the IMF called on China to raise the value of its currency, to boost the buying power of Chinese consumers and make products from other countries relatively cheaper. Sen. Charles Schumer, Democrat from New York, told reporters, “China’s currency manipulation is like a boot to the throat of our recovery.” But Lin saw the issue very differently. Forcing China to raise its currency “won’t help this imbalance and can deter the global recovery,” he told an audience in Hong Kong, arguing that such a move would only depress U.S. consumer demand, because raising the value of the currency would make Chinese exports more expensive, and it would not help the U.S. economy, because Americans don’t produce many of the things they buy from China. ~ Evan Osnos,

1176:When Mussolini was informed of this fact, he angrily gave orders to categorically repeat the announcement. A torrent of reviews naturally followed, first in the pompous Evening Courier (Corriere della Seraf and then in other important newspapers which had hardly bothered to mention my books in the past. In such a way, many people in Italy came to know me only as the author of a book on race, and I was soon labelled a 'racist' - this proving a rather sticky label - as if I had dealt with no other subject in the course of my career. As should be evident from what I have written so far, mine had been an attempt to engage with the issue of race from a superior, spiritual perspective. Racism I actually regarded as a secondary matter: my purpose was rather that of contrasting the errors of the materialist and primitive brand of racism which had surfaced in Germany, and which some people amateurishly sought to emulate in Italy. ~ Julius Evola,

1177:However we resolve the issue in our individual homes, the moral challenge is, put simply, to make work visible again: not only the scrubbing and vacuuming, but all the hoeing, stacking, hammering, drilling, bending, and lifting that goes into creating and maintaining a livable habitat. In an ever more economically unequal world, where so many of the affluent devote their lives to ghostly pursuits like stock trading, image making, and opinion polling, real work, in the old-fashioned sense of labor that engages hand as well as eye, that tires the body and directly alters the physical world tends to vanish from sight. The feminists of my generation tried to bring some of it into the light of day, but, like busy professional women fleeing the house in the morning, they left the project unfinished, the debate broken off in mid-sentence, the noble intentions unfulfilled. Sooner or later, someone else will have to finish the job. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich,

1178:Labelling a woman as a hypochondriac is the modern day way of labelling a woman hysterical – the insinuation is that it is all in her mind, she is unstable (mentally and perhaps physically) her opinion and feelings are not to be trusted. Her pain and her concerns are not real. But what if the hypochondriac, the highly sensitive woman, is picking up perfectly on the signs that something is wrong, she is registering the imbalance, that something is wrong, but she mistakes the issue as being in her own body, rather than the body of the world beyond her. She is told to quiet down, that nothing is wrong. But there is, she knows there is. This is why the constant reassurance does little to help her. She is feeling, deep in her bones, in her nerves, in her pulse that something is seriously wrong. Because it is. Her biological system may or may not have gotten sick from it yet, but the signs of a sick world are quickening within her. ~ Lucy H Pearce,

1179:Stage one—you’re caught in a second-dart reaction and don’t even realize it: your partner forgets to bring milk home and you complain angrily without seeing that your reaction is over the top. Stage two—you realize you’ve been hijacked by greed or hatred (in the broadest sense), but cannot help yourself: internally you’re squirming, but you can’t stop grumbling bitterly about the milk. Stage three—some aspect of the reaction arises, but you don’t act it out: you feel irritated but remind yourself that your partner does a lot for you already and getting cranky will just make things worse. Stage four—the reaction doesn’t even come up, and sometimes you forget you ever had the issue: you understand that there’s no milk, and you calmly figure out what to do now with your partner. In education, these are known succinctly as unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. They’re useful ~ Rick Hanson,

1180:It’s not that simple, Win.” “It is that simple, my friend. The fact that you insipidly choose to confuse the issue does not change the fact. I’ll demonstrate, if you’d like.” “I’m listening.” “You love your father, correct?” “You know the answer to that.” “I do,” Win said. “But what makes him your father? The fact that he once grunted on top of Mommy after a few drinks—or the way he has cared for you and loved you for the past thirty-five years?” Myron looked down at the can of Yoo-Hoo. “You owe this boy nothing,” Win continued, “and equally important, he owes you nothing. We will try to save his life, if that is what you wish, but that should be where it ends.” Myron thought about it. The only thing scarier than Win irrational was when Win made sense. “Maybe you’re right.” “But you still don’t think it’s that simple.” “I don’t know.” On the television, Archie approached the pulpit, a yarmulke on his head. “It’s a start,” Win said. ~ Harlan Coben,

1181:The home-field advantage created by you each and every Sunday at FedEx Field does not go unnoticed,” TJ wrote. He then told them, “In these difficult times, we understand our fans have been hit hard and we are here to work with you,” and asked the ticket holders to call back to talk through their “unique situation.” Though superficially simple, the changes TJ made in the script had a deep emotional resonance with the delinquent ticket holders. It mentioned their debt to the team but also acknowledged the team’s debt to them, and by labeling the tough economic times, and the stress they were causing, it diffused the biggest negative dynamic—their delinquency—and turned the issue into something solvable. The simple changes masked a complex understanding of empathy on TJ’s side. With the new script, TJ was able to set up payment plans with all the ticket holders before the Giants game. And the CFO’s next visit? Well, it was far less terse. ~ Chris Voss,

1182:Why Is It So Important to Remember? When you were abused, those around you acted as if it weren’t happening. Since no one else acknowledged the abuse, you sometimes felt that it wasn’t real. Because of this you felt confused. You couldn’t trust your own experience and perceptions. Moreover, others’ denial led you to suppress your memories, thus further obscuring the issue. You can end your own denial by remembering. Allowing yourself to remember is a way of confirming in your own mind that you didn’t just imagine it. Because the person who abused you did not acknowledge your pain, you may have also thought that perhaps it wasn’t as bad as you felt it was. In order to acknowledge to yourself that it really was that bad, you need to remember as much detail as possible. Because by denying what happened to you, you are doing to yourself exactly what others have done to you in the past: You are negating and denying yourself. ~ Beverly Engel,

1183:When a man fighteth against his sin only with arguments from the issue or the punishment due unto it, this is a sign that sin hath taken great possession of the will, and that in the heart there is a superfluity of naughtiness. Such a man as opposes nothing to the seduction of sin and lust in his heart but fear of shame among men or hell from God, is sufficiently resolved to do the sin if there were no punishment attending it; which, what it differs from living in the practice of sin, I know not. Those who are Christ’s, and are acted in their obedience upon gospel principles, have the death of Christ, the love of God, the detestable nature of sin, the preciousness of communion with God, a deep-grounded abhorrency of sin as sin, to oppose to any seduction of sin, to all the workings, strivings, fightings of lust in their hearts. So did Joseph. “How shall I do this great evil,” saith he, “and sin against the Lord ?” my good and gracious God. ~ John Owen,

1184:And as soon as you accepted that the man’s breakdown was a consequence of his war experience rather than his own innate weakness, then inevitably the war became the issue. And the therapy was a test, not only of the genuineness of the individual’s symptoms, but also of the validity of the demands the war was making on him. Rivers had survived partly by suppressing his awareness of this. But then along came Sassoon and made the justifiability of the war a matter for constant, open debate, and that suppression was no longer possible. At times it seemed to Rivers that all his other patients were the anvil and that Sassoon was the hammer. Inevitably there were times when he resented this. As a civilian, Rivers’s life had consisted of asking questions, and devising methods by which truthful answers could be obtained, but there are limits to how many fundamental questions you want to ask in a working day that starts before eight am and doesn’t end till midnight. ~ Pat Barker,

1185:Karimi crossed his arms, and with a look of irritation, said, “I assume Israel detonated a nuclear weapon, causing an EMP that shorted out everything on the surface. Then, as usual, the United Nations says some empty words, and life goes on as normal,” “Unfortunately, they detonated two nukes. The one that fried all the electronics and another that wiped out Tehran,” “So I no longer have a capitol city. You know, that’s really too bad. Besides, I wasn’t planning on basing my empire from there anyway,” “You’re not upset?” Evans asked, not sure he believed Karimi. “Upset? Hardly. Anyway, what did the United Nations do this time? Sit on their hands?” “They put sanctions on Israel and a naval blockade, with the United States Navy providing most of the ships for the blockade. The Israeli’s have already had one ship sunk after trying to push the issue, but they haven’t tried that stunt again. By the way, I took care of the Iraqis wanting your head for destroying Mosul, ~ Cliff Ball,

1186:The issue isn’t what makes me or Lisa happy; the issue is what makes God happy. We don’t direct our lives by what makes us comfortable; we try to order our lives by what brings the maximum glory to God and by what will fulfill our call to proclaim the message of God’s reconciliation. This has given us a joy that far surpasses any temporary happiness. Both of us have to regularly throw ourselves before God to ful-fill his calling in our lives. In the twenty-plus years we have been living this out as husband and wife, we have found that God is more than able. And we have discovered the truth of Ephesians 3:20 – 21: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” I challenge you: if you really want to move your man, begin by praying this prayer: “Lord, how can I help my husband today? ~ Gary L Thomas,

1187:career. This was the minimum price that I was prepared to pay.63 The interviewer followed up with the following intriguing question: 'Does the fact that Lenin gave Finland independence many decades ago give you an allergic reaction? Is Chechnya's secession possible in principle'? To which Putin answered: It is possible, but the issue is not secession. … Chechnya will not stop with its own independence. It will be used as a staging ground for a further attack on Russia … Why? In order to protect Chechen independence? Of course not. The purpose will be to grab more territory. They would overwhelm Dagestan. Then the whole Caucasus – Dagestan, Ingushetia, and then up along the Volga – Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, following this direction into the depths of the country … When I started to compare the scale of the possible tragedy with what we have there now, I had no doubt that we should act as we are acting, maybe even more firmly.64 Putin thus viewed the Chechen issue ~ Richard Sakwa,

1188:I grabbed a menu and looked at the selections. There were several tempting salads, including one with field greens, goat cheese, pecans, raisins, and fresh sliced apple. The tuna salad also looked good- albacore, diced celery, onion, capers, and mayonnaise, served on mixed greens. Capers? I'd never heard of putting capers in tuna salad. It sounded interesting. Farther down the menu I saw sandwiches. Rare roast beef and Brie with sliced tomato on a toasted French baguette. That sounded great, but I'd have to forgo the Brie- too much cholesterol. But then, without the Brie, what did you really have but just another roast beef sandwich? The chicken salad sandwich also looked good, with baby greens, tomato, sprouts, grapes, and crumbled Gorgonzola, but there was the issue of the cheese again. Then I saw something that really caught my eye- the Thanksgiving Special. Oven-roasted turkey breast, savory stuffing, and fresh cranberry sauce on whole wheat bread. Perfect. ~ Mary Simses,

1189:What we fail to understand is that we don’t have a hope problem; we have a sight problem. Hope has come. “What?” you say. “Where?” Hope isn’t a thing. Hope isn’t a set of circumstances. Hope isn’t first a set of ideas. Hope is a person, and his name is Jesus. He came to earth to face what you face and to defeat what defeats you so that you would have hope. Your salvation means that you are now in a personal relationship with the One who is hope. You have hope because he exists and is your Savior. You don’t have a hope problem; you have been given hope that is both real and constant. The issue is whether you see it. Paul captures the problem this way in Ephesians 1:18–19: “. . . having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might. ~ Paul David Tripp,

1190:Indeed, as I interviewed all twenty-four of the guests, this issue and sound problems came up all but three times. Of this small sample, nearly nine out of ten of the first-time guests did not return because they struggled with either the sound or lighting in the worship service. As I conducted hundreds of consultations over the next three decades, I heard many first-time guests mention the issues of light and sound. And while it’s not a challenge in all churches, the issue was sufficiently pervasive to deem it important. Sound and lighting. Color me surprised. In the event you are wondering why guests are hesitant to mention their problems with sound and lighting, I asked them. And they told me clearly. There were two common responses. First, they felt petty by mentioning it. Here is my best recollection of the words from my first interview with Linda. “I hate even saying it,” she began. “But I just have trouble worshipping when it’s so dark I can’t even see my Bible. ~ Thom S Rainer,

1191:In the leadup to the election of 1876, swing votes were tied to the issue of Chinese immigration in the same way that immigration was a hot topic during this election cycle. Rutherford Hayes endorsed Chinese exclusion and won the election. In the following election, James Garfield also carried the torch of anti-Chinese immigration into office. (From those days to now, every presidential election has fanned the flames of anti-immigration. This, Henry, shows that hate and fear are reliable, predictable, and effective political tools.) All of this led eventually to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred the entry of all Chinese immigrants to the United States except for those who were teachers, students, diplomats, ministers, or merchants. It also declared all Chinese totally ineligible for naturalized citizenship. This clause alone allowed the United States to join Nazi Germany and South Africa as the only nations every to withhold naturalization purely on racial grounds. ~ Lisa See,

1192:Radicals have value, at least; they can move the center. On a scale of 1 to 5, 3 is moderate, 1 and 5 the hardliners. But if a good radical takes it up to 9, then 5 becomes the new center. I already saw it working in the American Muslim community. For years women were neglected in mosques, denied entrance to the main prayer halls and relegated to poorly maintained balconies and basements. It was only after a handdful of Muslim feminists raised "lunatic fringe" demands like mixed-gender prayers with men and women standing together and even women imams giving sermons and leading men in prayer that major organizations such as ISNA and CAIR began to recognize the "moderate" concerns and deal with the issue of women in mosques. I've taken part in the woman-led prayer movement, both as a writer and as a man who prays behind women, happy to be the extremist who makes moderate reform seem less threatening. Insha'Allah, what's extreme today will not be extreme tomorrow. ~ Michael Muhammad Knight,

1193:Please, everyone, let us keep our calm!” The Chief Scientist of the Ant Coalition, Professor Joyah, waved her feelers to quell the uproar. “Recall that the symbiotic relationship of ants and dinosaurs has lasted for more than two millennia. In all those years, the alliance of dinosaurs and ants has been the backbone of our world's civilizations; it is what supports our own civilization. If this alliance should fall and dinosaurs are destroyed, ask yourselves if our society could really continue to exist on its own. You know it is very easy to see the concrete benefits that the ants bring to the ant dinosaur alliance. What the dinosaurs bring to the table beyond basic material goods, however, is far more immaterial; it is their ideas and scientific knowledge – and that is the core of the issue for us ants. We may make remarkable engineers, but we will never be scientists! The raw physiology of our brains ensures that we will never possess two of the dinosaurs' traits: Curiosity and imagination. ~ Liu Cixin,

1194:This is the crux of the issue, the crux of our story. For the shift in the American environmental movement from aesthetic environmentalism to regulatory environmentalism wasn’t just a change in political strategy. It was the manifestation of a crucial realization: that unrestricted commercial activity was doing damage—real, lasting, pervasive damage. It was the realization that pollution was global, not just local, and the solution to pollution was not dilution. This shift began with the understanding that DDT remained in the environment long after its purpose was served. And it grew as acid rain and the ozone hole demonstrated that pollution traveled hundreds or even thousands of kilometers from its source, doing damage to people who did not benefit from the economic activity that produced it. It reached a crescendo when global warming showed that even the most seemingly innocuous by-product of industrial civilization—CO2, the stuff on which plants depend—could produce a very different planet. ~ Naomi Oreskes,

1195:But although realism does not add anything to the catalogue of entities or properties that a subjectivist believes to exist in the world, it does hold that certain truths that subjectivists think have to be grounded in something else do not have to be so grounded, but are just true in their own right. After all, whatever one's philosophical views, so long as there is such a thing as truth there must be some truths that don't have to be grounded in anything else. Disagreement over which truths these are defines some of the deepest fault lines of philosophy. To philosophers of an idealist persuasion it is self-evident that physical facts can't just be true in themselves, but must be explained in terms of actual or possible experience, just as it is self-evident to those of a materialist persuasion that mental facts can't just be true in themselves, but must be explained in terms of actual or possible behavior, functional organization, or physiology. The issue over moral realism is of the same kind. ~ Thomas Nagel,

1196:The point to remember is that the issue is not nature versus nurture. It is the balance between nature and nurture. Genes do not make a man gay, or violent, or fat, or a leader. Genes merely make proteins. The chemical effect of these proteins may make the man's brain and body more receptive to certain environmental influences. But the extent of those influences will have as much to do with the outcome as the genes themselves. Furthermore, we humans are not prisoners of our genes or our environment. We have free will. Genes are overruled every time an angry man restrains his temper, a fat man diets, and an alocholic refuses to take a drink. On the other hand, the environment is overruled every time a genetic effect wins out, as when Lou Gehrig's athletic ability was overruled by his ALS. Genes and the environment work together to shape our brains, and we can manage them both if we want to. It may be harder for people with certain genes or surroundings, but "harder" is a long way from pedetermination. ~ John J Ratey,

1197:In the wake of his breakdown, Oswaldo had become hyperattuned to the way he, and people like him, were perceived. For his first three years at Yale, he'd been frustrated by these perceptions, feeling that they were inescapable, allowing that caged feeling to overwhelm him. The perspective granted him by two weeks of near total isolation had led him to believe that he––and in a much bigger way, Rob––had only propagated the ignorance of their peers. Because they did get stoned all the time, they did get angry, they did dress like thugs, they did talk shit about a college education that might set them up for fulfilling lives, they did set themselves apart. For Oswaldo, the issue had ceased to be a philosophical and historical one, and instead had come to revolve around a simple goal: to graduate from Yale without making that task harder than it needed to be. After all, that was the point of college––not freedom, not alcohol, not relationships, but to obtain a degree. ~ Jeff Hobbs,

1198:This is one of the most profoundly serious decisions we can make. Program a machine that can foreseeably lead to someone’s death,” Lin said. “When we make programming decisions, we expect those to be as right as we can be.” What right looks like may differ from company to company, but according to Lin, automakers have a duty to show that they have wrestled with these complex questions — and publicly reveal the answers they reach. Lin said he has discussed the ethics of driverless cars with Google, as well as automakers including Tesla, Nissan and BMW. As far as he knows, only BMW has formed an internal group to study the issue. Many automakers remain skeptical that cars will operate completely without drivers, at least not in the next five or 10 years. Uwe Higgen, head of BMW’s group technology office in Silicon Valley, said the automaker has brought together specialists in technology, ethics, social impact, and the law to discuss a range of issues related to cars that do ever-more driving instead of people. ~ Anonymous,

1199:Constantine, moreover, was not yet a Christian when he uttered the appeal to conquer in the sign of the cross; and while the warrior kings of Israel may have drawn strength from the old Covenant in their small and local wars, the Christians of the new Covenant were to agonise for centuries over the issue of whether warmaking was morally permissible or not. Christians, indeed, have never found unanimity in the belief that the man of war may also be a man of religion; the ideal of martyrdom has always been as strong as that of the justified struggle and remains strong to this day. The Arabs of the conquest years were not caught on that crux. Their new religion, Islam, was a creed of conflict, that taught the necessity of submission to its revealed teachings and the right of its believers to take arms against those who opposed them. It was Islam that inspired the Arab conquests, the ideas of Islam that made the Arabs a military people and the example of its founder, Muhammad, that taught them to become warriors. ~ John Keegan,

1200:Instead, the battle is joined at the level of pure abstraction. The issue, the newest Right tells us, is freedom itself, not the doings of the subprime lenders or the ways the bond-rating agencies were compromised over the course of the last decade. Details like that may have crashed the economy, but to the renascent Right they are almost completely irrelevant. What matters is a given politician’s disposition toward free markets and, by extension, toward the common people of the land, whose faithful vicar the market is. Now, there is nothing really novel about the idea that free markets are the very essence of freedom. What is new is the glorification of this idea at the precise moment when free-market theory has proven itself to be a philosophy of ruination and fraud. The revival of the Right is as extraordinary as it would be if the public had demanded dozens of new nuclear power plants in the days after the Three Mile Island disaster; if we had reacted to Watergate by making Richard Nixon a national hero. ~ Thomas Frank,

1201:He counseled vigilance, “because the possibility of abuse by government officials always exists. The issue is not going to be that there are new tools available; the issue is making sure that the incoming administration, like my administration, takes the constraints on how we deal with U.S. citizens and persons seriously.” This answer did not fill me with confidence. The next day, President-Elect Trump offered Lieutenant General Michael Flynn the post of national security adviser and picked Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama as his nominee for attorney general. Last February, Flynn tweeted, “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL” and linked to a YouTube video that declared followers of Islam want “80 percent of humanity enslaved or exterminated.” Sessions had once been accused of calling a black lawyer “boy,” claiming that a white lawyer who represented black clients was a disgrace to his race, and joking that he thought the Ku Klux Klan “was okay until I found out they smoked pot.” I felt then that I knew what was coming ~ Ta Nehisi Coates,

1202:He accused Democrats of attempting to “dehumanize the negro—to take away from him the right of ever striving to be a man…to make property, and nothing but property of the Negro in all the states of this Union.” In the rhetorical high point of the seven debates, he identified the long crusade against slavery with the global progress of democratic egalitarianism: That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world…. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings…. It is the same spirit that says, “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.30 While ~ Eric Foner,

1203:German socialism had to overcome this “private,” that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property. All property is common property. The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods. His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community.7 Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation’s economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property—so long as the state reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property. If “ownership” means the right to determine the use and disposal of material goods, then Nazism endowed the state with every real prerogative of ownership. What the individual retained was merely a formal deed, a contentless deed, which conferred no rights on its holder. ~ Leonard Peikoff,

1204:Nate fretted over the futility and unprofessionalism of their love affair — it was besperspektivnyak, a hopeless situation, a fruitless exercise. Dominika loved him passionately, and didn’t care about the rules. Dominika would tease him for acting like a dour Russian while she soared like a liberated American love child. The issue of her defection and resettlement was the tinder that always started the arguments. How do you feel about her now? he thought to himself, thankful that among Benford’s other vampiric skills, mind reading was probably not numbered. That was fortunate, since Nathaniel Nash at this minute knew, had always known, that he loved the beautiful Russian with the serious scowl that would melt into a dizzying smile from across the street when she saw him approach. He loved the way she breathed his name —Neyt, with the broad Russian vowel— when they made love and how her head went back, eyelids fluttering and chin trembling, groaning Ya zakanchivayu, I’m finishing (Russians never say “I’m cominng” in bed). ~ Jason Matthews,

1205:Throughout most of the twentieth century, however, and still today, the available data suggest that social mobility has been and remains lower in the United States than in Europe. One possible explanation for this is the fact that access to the most elite US universities requires the payment of extremely high tuition fees. Furthermore, these fees rose sharply in the period 1990–2010, following fairly closely the increase in top US incomes, which suggests that the reduced social mobility observed in the United States in the past will decline even more in the future.29 The issue of unequal access to higher education is increasingly a subject of debate in the United States. Research has shown that the proportion of college degrees earned by children whose parents belong to the bottom two quartiles of the income hierarchy stagnated at 10–20 percent in 1970–2010, while it rose from 40 to 80 percent for children with parents in the top quartile.30 In other words, parents’ income has become an almost perfect predictor of university access. ~ Thomas Piketty,

1206:Too many preachers have been like the cowed Israelites across the valley from Goliath, trembling at the reverberations of his authoritative voice. There have been, however, praise God, many Davids . . . who have picked up five smooth stones known as facts and hurled them with deadly aim and effect.4 He was delighted to see that his homiletic mentor confronted the issue of race: Jesus’ most effective sermon on race relations was not really a discourse on that subject at all. It was the parable of the Good Samaritan . . . the hero was a despised and unjustly treated member of another race, a Samaritan. That is indirect and superb preaching on appreciating and honoring other racial groups. Jesus did not make a frontal attack; he made a strategic flank movement. So a preacher often gets farther into the minds of his congregation, not by announcing and preaching another sermon on the Negro problem, but by using, as an illustration in his sermon on courage, a Negro performing an act of great courage. He will not have to look far for that!5 ~ William H Willimon,

1207:Restrictionism, however, demands positive sacrifices from the national exchequer when it is carried out by the withdrawal of notes from circulation (say through the issue of interest-bearing bonds or through taxation) and their cancellation. The unpopularity of restrictionism has other causes as well. Attempts to raise the objective exchange-value of money, in the circumstances that have existed, have necessarily been limited either to single States or to a few States and at the best have had only a very small prospect of simultaneous realization throughout the whole world. Now as soon as a single country or a few countries go over to a money with a rising purchasing power, while the other countries retain a money with a falling or stationary exchange-value, or one which although it may be rising in value is not rising to the same extent, then, as has been demonstrated above, the conditions of international trade are modified. In the country whose money is rising in value, exportation becomes more difficult and importation easier. ~ Ludwig von Mises,

1208:(on the word "fuck") 'Oh, come on, Mum,' I sighed at her protest. 'It's just an old Anglo-Saxon word for the female organ which has been adopted by an inherently misogynist language as a negative epithet. It's the same as "fuck", it basically means the same as copulate, but the latter is perfectly acceptable. Why? Because copulate has its roots in Latin and Latin reminds us that we are a sophisticated, learned species, not the rutting animals that these prehistoric grunts would have us appear to be, and isn't that really the issue here? We don't want to admit that we are essentially animals? We want to distinguish ourselves from the fauna with grand conceits and elaborate language; become angels worthy of salvation, not dumb creatures consigned to an earthly, terminal end. It's just a word, Mum; a sound meaning a thing; and your disgust is just denial of a greater horror: that our consciousness is not an indication of our specialness but the terrifying key to knowing how truly insignificant we are.' She told me to got fuck myself. ~ Simon Pegg,

1209:Those who have seriously criticized these arguments have certainly shown that there are ways to resist the design conclusion; but the general force of the negative part of the intelligent design position—skepticism about the likelihood of the orthodox reductive view, given the available evidence—does not appear to me to have been destroyed in these exchanges.9 At least, the question should be regarded as open. To anyone interested in the basis of this judgment, I can only recommend a careful reading of some of the leading advocates on both sides of the issue—with special attention to what has been established by the critics of intelligent design. Whatever one may think about the possibility of a designer, the prevailing doctrine—that the appearance of life from dead matter and its evolution through accidental mutation and natural selection to its present forms has involved nothing but the operation of physical law—cannot be regarded as unassailable. It is an assumption governing the scientific project rather than a well-confirmed scientific hypothesis. ~ Thomas Nagel,

1210:It was a crude drawing of a smiling, female stick figure with red hair and a T-shirt that read “Kerry.” Above Kerry’s head was a yellow dog. Those two elements alone, of course, would not have caused a problem. Unfortunately, there was a third element to the drawing: a shower of large brown clumps raining down from the yellow dog’s rear onto Kerry’s face. And just in case the viewer wasn’t sure how Kerry felt about that, a thought bubble protruding from her head read, “I like it.” “It’s very upsetting,” my teacher said. “Why is the dog above her head? That doesn’t even make sense. How’d he get above her head?” he asked, turning to me. “I don’t know,” I said. “You have to draw a hill or something under the dog. A dog can’t just float up into the atmosphere and take a shit on someone’s head. I mean, I know you’re six or seven or whatever, but that’s pretty basic physics right there,” he said. “Mr. Halpern, that’s really not the issue,” my teacher said. “I dunno, seems like a pretty big issue to me. At least we know we can cross artist off the list,” he said. ~ Justin Halpern,

1211:The issue was, strangely enough, the value of the "unegoistic" instincts, the instincts of pity, self-denial, and self-sacrifice which Schopenhauer had so persistently painted in golden colours, deified and etherealised, that eventually they appeared to him, as it were, high and dry, as "intrinsic values in themselves," on the strength of which he uttered both to Life and to himself his own negation. But against these very instincts there voiced itself in my soul a more and more fundamental mistrust, a scepticism that dug ever deeper and deeper: and in this very instinct I saw the great danger of mankind, its most sublime temptation and seduction—seduction to what? to nothingness?—in these very instincts I saw the beginning of the end, stability, the exhaustion that gazes backwards, the will turning against Life, the last illness announcing itself with its own mincing melancholy: I realised that the morality of pity which spread wider and wider, and whose grip infected even philosophers with its disease, was the most sinister symptom of our modern European civilisation; ~ Anonymous,

1212:And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even. And every thing that she lieth upon in her separation shall be unclean: every thing also that she sitteth upon shall be unclean. And whosoever toucheth her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. And whosoever toucheth any thing that she sat upon shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even. And if it be on her bed, or on any thing whereon she sitteth, when he toucheth it, he shall be unclean until the even. And if any man lie with her at all, and her flowers be upon him, he shall be unclean seven days; and all the bed whereon he lieth shall be unclean. And if a woman have an issue of her blood many days out of the time of her separation, or if it run beyond the time of her separation; all the days of the issue of her uncleanness shall be as the days of her separation: she shall be unclean. ~ Anonymous,

1213:Ironically, one concession Davis did make concerned the explosive question of turning slaves into Confederate soldiers. After dismissing as “too controversial” the entreaty by General Patrick Cleburne that slaves be armed and enlisted to fight for the South, Davis finally embraced the notion very late in the game. The Confederate Congress began debating the issue in the early months of 1865, creating a star-burst of vituperation in Richmond. The bombastic old General How-ell Cobb of Georgia roared, “If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong!” Davis rebuked him this way: “If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone, ‘Died of a Theory.’ ” In the end, less than a month before Lee’s surrender, the Confederate Congress approved a bill providing for the partial emancipation and enlistment of slaves in the Confederate armies. The lawyer in Cleburne might have found the debate interesting had he lived to see it, which he did not. He was slain leading his division during Hood’s charge on Franklin, Tennessee, in November 1864. ~ Winston Groom,

1214:Calvin: Today at school, I tried to decide whether to cheat on my test or not. I wondered, is it better to do the right thing and fail ... or is it better to do the wrong thing and succeed? On the one hand, undeserved success gives no satisfaction ... but on the other hand, well-deserved failure gives no satisfaction either. Of course, most everybody cheats some time or other. People always bend the rules if they think they can get away with it. Then again, that doesn't justify my cheating. Then I thought, look, cheating on one little test isn't such a big deal. It doesn't hurt anyone. But then I wondered if I was just rationalizing my unwillingness to accept the consequence of not studying. Still, in the real world, people care about success, not principles. Then again, maybe that's why the world is such a mess. What a dilemma! Hobbes: So what did you decide? Calvin: Nothing. I ran out of time and I had to turn in a blank paper. Hobbes: Anymore, simply acknowledging the issue is a moral victory. Calvin: Well, it just seemed wrong to cheat on an ethics test. ~ Bill Watterson,

1215:The Americans had been prepared to make friends with the Shah; now they were trying to cement ties with the regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Substantial military and economic support was given to an unsavoury group of characters in Afghanistan solely on the basis of long-standing US rivalry with the USSR. Saddam himself had been brought in from the cold when it suited policymakers in Washington –but then sacrificed when it no longer suited them. Putting American interests first was not in itself the problem; the issue was that conducting imperial-style foreign policy requires a more careful touch –as well as more thorough thinking about the long-term consequences. In each case, in the late twentieth-century struggle for control of the countries of the Silk Roads, the US was cutting deals and making agreements on the hoof, solving today’s problems without worrying about tomorrow’s –and in some cases laying the basis for much more difficult issues. The goal of driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan had been achieved; but little thought had been given to what might happen next. ~ Peter Frankopan,

1216:The issue concerned a minor matter of etiquette: How should the president be addressed by members of Congress? While hardly an earthshaking question, it had symbolic significance because of the obsessive American suspicion of monarchy, which haunted all conversations about the powers of the presidency under the recently ratified constituion...Anyone who favored a strong exective was vulnerable to the charge of being a quasi-monarchist...Adams was so confident in his own revolutionary credentials that he regarded himself as immune to such charges, but when he lectured the Senate on the need for elaborate trappings of authority and proposed the President Washington be addressed as 'His Majesty' or 'His Highness,'his remarks became the butt of serveral barbed jokes, including the suggestion that he had been seized by 'nobilimania' during his long sojourn in England and might prefer to be addressed as 'His Rotundity'or the 'Duke of Braintree.' Jefferson threw up his hands at the sheer stupidity of Adam's proposals, calling them 'the most superlatively ridiculous thing I ever heard of. ~ Joseph J Ellis,

1217:Another contentious issue concerned how to treat countries that, even after rigorous austerity, were unable to pay their debts. Should they be bailed out by other eurozone members and the International Monetary Fund? Or should private lenders, many of them European banks, bear some of the losses as well? The situation was analogous to the question of whether to impose losses on the senior creditors of Washington Mutual during the crisis. We (Tim, especially) had opposed that, because we feared that it would fan the panic and increase contagion. For similar reasons, we opposed forcing private creditors to bear losses if a eurozone country defaulted. Jean-Claude Trichet strongly agreed with us, though he opposed other U.S. positions. (In particular, he did not see much scope for monetary or fiscal policy to help the eurozone economy, preferring to focus on budget balancing and structural reforms.) On the issue of country default, though, Jean-Claude’s worry, like ours, was that, once the genie was out of the bottle, lenders’ confidence in other vulnerable European borrowers would evaporate. ~ Ben S Bernanke,

1218:This is precisely the nuanced distinction that the Apostle Paul refers to when he addresses the issue of food sacrificed to idols—that is, physical images of deities on earth. He considers idols as having “no real existence,” but then refers to other “gods” in the heavens or on earth who do exist, but are not the same as the One Creator God:   1 Cor. 8:4-6 Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.   1 Cor. 10:18-20 Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. ~ Brian Godawa,

1219:In projecting onto others their own moral sense, therapists sometimes make terrible errors. Child physical abusers are automatically labeled “impulsive," despite extensive evidence that they are not necessarily impulsive but more often make thinking errors that justify the assaults. Sexual and physical offenders who profess to be remorseful after they are caught are automatically assumed to be sincere. After all, the therapist would feel terrible if he or she did such a thing. It makes perfect sense that the offender would regret abusing a child. People routinely listen to their own moral sense and assume that others share it. Thus, those who are malevolent attack others as being malevolent, as engaging in dirty tricks, as being “in it for the money,“ and those who are well meaning assume others are too, and keep arguing logically, keep producing more studies, keep expecting an academic debate, all the time assuming that the issue at hand is the truth of the matter. Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998 p122 ~ Anna C Salter,

1220:Hobbes and Spinoza, in contrast, found the grounds of much interpersonal conflict in the emotions, and even diagnosed specific emotions as inherently disruptive to social order, e.g., glory for Hobbes. But by the same token, there are many passions that Hobbes stated “incline us to peace,” and Spinoza allowed that insofar as people agree in affects, they agree in nature. Eighteenth-century philosophers tended to evaluate the social effects of the emotions in terms of whether they were self- or other-directed, with Shaftesbury and Hutcheson arguing against Mandeville that our most natural emotions were other-directed. In his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1759), Edmund Burke distinguished between the passions directed at self-preservation and those belonging to society, but spends the lion's share of his time on the latter. The issue is somewhat more complicated in Hume, but he does seem to take the development of our emotions and their susceptibility to a standard of appropriateness to be indispensable to many of the “artifices” that make social life possible. ~ Anonymous,

1221:The family context promoting optimal experience could be described as having five characteristics. The first one is clarity: the teenagers feel that they know what their parents expect from them—goals and feedback in the family interaction are unambiguous. The second is centering, or the children’s perception that their parents are interested in what they are doing in the present, in their concrete feelings and experiences, rather than being preoccupied with whether they will be getting into a good college or obtaining a well-paying job. Next is the issue of choice: children feel that they have a variety of possibilities from which to choose, including that of breaking parental rules—as long as they are prepared to face the consequences. The fourth differentiating characteristic is commitment, or the trust that allows the child to feel comfortable enough to set aside the shield of his defenses, and become unselfconsciously involved in whatever he is interested in. And finally there is challenge, or the parents’ dedication to provide increasingly complex opportunities for action to their children. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,

1222:The issue is clear. It’s the difference between building brands and milking brands. Most managers want to milk. “How far can we extend the brand? Let’s spend some serious research money and find out.” Sterling Drug was a big advertiser and a big buyer of research. Its big brand was Bayer aspirin, but aspirin was losing out to acetaminophen (Tylenol) and ibuprofen (Advil). So Sterling launched a $116-million advertising and marketing program to introduce a selection of five “aspirin-free” products. The Bayer Select line included headache-pain relief, regular pain relief, nighttime pain relief, sinus-pain relief, and a menstrual relief formulation, all of which contained either acetaminophen or ibuprofen as the core ingredient. Results were painful. The first year Bayer Select sold $26 million worth of pain relievers in a $2.5 billion market, or about 1 percent of the market. Even worse, the sales of regular Bayer aspirin kept falling at about 10 percent a year. Why buy Bayer aspirin if the manufacturer is telling you that its “select” products are better because they are “aspirin-free”? Are consumers stupid or not? ~ Al Ries,

1223:On occasion Jobs would use the semi-abandoned Woodside home, especially its swimming pool, for family parties. When Bill Clinton was president, he and Hillary Clinton stayed in the 1950s ranch house on the property on their visits to their daughter, who was at Stanford. Since both the main house and ranch house were unfurnished, Powell would call furniture and art dealers when the Clintons were coming and pay them to furnish the houses temporarily. Once, shortly after the Monica Lewinsky flurry broke, Powell was making a final inspection of the furnishings and noticed that one of the paintings was missing. Worried, she asked the advance team and Secret Service what had happened. One of them pulled her aside and explained that it was a painting of a dress on a hanger, and given the issue of the blue dress in the Lewinsky matter they had decided to hide it. (During one of his late-night phone conversations with Jobs, Clinton asked how he should handle the Lewinsky issue. “I don’t know if you did it, but if so, you’ve got to tell the country,” Jobs told the president. There was silence on the other end of the line.) ~ Walter Isaacson,

1224:Decide you’ll only ask questions that help you move forward instead of feeling stuck in the reasons something happened. “What” questions increase our ability to become more self-aware, while “why” questions only focus on things out of our control. Pride loves to whisper, “It’s their issue. Not yours.” Insecurity loves to whisper, “You are a mess. You are the issue.” But what a tragedy it would be to suffer this hurt and refuse the precious and costly gifts of humility and maturity this situation could very well give you. Questions I’ve found helpful: What is one good thing I’ve learned from this? What was a downside to this situation that I can be thankful is no longer my burden to carry? What were the unrealistic expectations I had, and how can I better manage these next time? What do I need to do to boost my courage to pursue future opportunities? What is one positive change I could make in my attitude about the future? What are some lingering negative feelings about this situation that I need to pray through and shake off to be better prepared to move forward? What is one thing God has been asking me to do today to make tomorrow easier? ~ Lysa TerKeurst,

1225:The proposed legislation would use as its base internationally accepted body mass index standards to determine whether a model was too thin and would set criminal penalties for hiring models who fell below the standards determined by the law. The index suggests that a woman who is 5 feet 7 inches tall should weigh at least 120 pounds. But the final legal standards would be determined by the French health authorities, who could adjust them for factors such as bone size. Violators would have to pay a fine of about $83,000 and serve as many as six months in prison. The struggle over the appearance and health of fashion models is hardly a new one. It became more public in 2006 after the deaths of two models, a Brazilian and a Uruguayan, which set off a spate of voluntary standards in the industry and the effort in some places, including New York, to use healthier looking models. The death in 2010 of a French model and actress, Isabelle Caro, who at one point weighed just 55 pounds, fueled further calls for steps to address anorexia. So far the fashion industry has opposed legislation to address the issue, although a number of designers have spoken out ~ Anonymous,

1226:Then, on April 7, the bishop for the diocese of the four counties surrounding San Diego, representing some 512,000 Catholics, an activist in the city’s nonsectarian Pro-Life League, announced priests would refuse Holy Communion to any Catholic who “admits publicly” to membership in the National Organization for Women or any other group advocating abortion: “The issue at stake is not only what we do to unborn children but what we do to ourselves by permitting them to be killed.” He called abortion a “serious moral crime” that “ignores God and his love.” NOW proclaimed this year’s Mother’s Day a “Mother’s Day of Outrage”—in response, it said, to the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s “attempt to undermine the right of women to control their own bodies.” The president of Catholics for Free Choice and the Southern California coordinator for NOW’s Human Reproduction Task Force, Jan Gleeson, recently returned from Southeast Asia as an Operation Babylift volunteer, clarified the feminist group’s position: “It opposes compulsory pregnancy and reaffirms a woman’s right to privacy to control her own body as basic to her spiritual, economic, and social well-being. ~ Rick Perlstein,

1227:If you're anything like me, you don't make up your mind about important issues by doing original research, pounding over primary sources and coming to your own conclusions; you listen to people who claim to know what they're talking about - "experts" - and try to determine which of them is more credible. You do your best to gauge who's authentically well-informed and unbiased, who has an agenda and what it is - who's a corporate flack, a partisan hack, or a wacko. I believe that global warming is real and anthropogenic not because I've personally studied Antarctic ice core samples or run my own computer climate models, but because all the people who support the theory are climatologists with no evident investment in the issue, and all the people who dismiss it as alarmist claptrap are shills of the petro-chemical industry or just seem to like debunking things, from the Holocaust to the moon landing. We put our trust - our votes, our money, sometimes our lives - in someone else's authority. In other words, most of us decide not what to believe but whom to believe. And I say believe because for most people, such decisions are matters of faith rather than reason. ~ Tim Kreider,

1228:Just as each person has certain idiosyncracies in the way he or she walks, people have idiosyncracies in the way they think and feel and see things, and though you might want to correct them, it doesn’t happen overnight, and if you try to force the issue in one case, something else might go funny. He gave me a very simplified explanation, of course, and it’s just one small part of the problems we have, but I think I understand what he was trying to say. It may well be that we can never fully adapt to our own deformities. Unable to find a place inside ourselves for the very real pain and suffering that these deformities cause, we come here to get away from such things. As long as we are here, we can get by without hurting others or being hurt by them because we know that we are “deformed.” That’s what distinguishes us from the outside world: most people go about their lives there unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours the deformities themselves are a precondition. Just as Indians wear feathers on their heads to show which tribes they belong to, we wear our deformities in the open. And we live quietly so as not to hurt one another. ~ Haruki Murakami,

1229:Few chemicals confer maleness, but many take it away. Which, if any, are responsible for our own troubles is hard to say. The Pill changed men's lives in more ways than one. It caused reproductive hormones to leak into tap water and has been blamed both for the sex changes in freshwater fish and for the drop in our own sperm count. The jury is still out on the issue, but other hormones have had a disastrous effect. A drug called diethylstilbestrol was once thought - in error - to prevent miscarriage. Five million mothers took it and for a time it was even used as a chicken food supplement. A third of the boys exposed to the drug in the womb suffer from small testes or a reduced penis. In rats, the chemical causes prostate and testicular cancer (although there is as yet no sign of those problems in ourselves). To give a powerful steroid to pregnant women was at best unwise, but the effects of other chemicals were harder to foresee. The 1950s saw a wonderful new chemical treatment for banana pests. Soon the substance was much used. Twenty years later the workers noticed something odd: they had almost no children. Their sperm count had dropped by five hundred times. ~ Steve Jones,

1230:I’m a rare fox-human, with the souls of witches inside me. Can you imagine what a certain mindset would like to do with me? I’ll give you a clue; it’s not to re-create a cherished Roald Dahl novel.” I could imagine. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. “And to make matters worse, there was a movie with a talking fucking raccoon in it. Did you know that Camelot has a cinema? That they import movies from Earth? Well, they fucking well do. For months all I heard was how maybe for the sequel they could have me be his stunt double, or that they should paint me brown and make me a star. I began to get angry with the rabid little fucker. And he’s not even real! I was angry at a fucking comic book character.” I didn’t really know what else to say. “Good film though.” Remy stared at me. “You’re sort of missing the point of my anger, here.” “No, I get it. You know, even for my life it’s a little weird that I’m talking to a fox about how unhappy he is that people compared him to a raccoon in a science fiction film about a bunch of comic book characters saving the galaxy.” “When you put it like that, I sound downright silly.” “Yeah, wording, that’s the issue here.” Remy chuckled for a moment, ~ Steve McHugh,

1231:Trying to prove how good we are, trying to prove we’re good enough, trying to show someone how much he or she has hurt us, trying to show someone we’re understanding, are warning signs that we may be into our self-defeating behaviors. They can be an indication that we are trying to control someone. They can be an indication that we are not believing how good we are, that we’re good enough, that someone is hurting us. They can be a warning that we’ve allowed ourselves to get hooked into a dysfunctional system. They may indicate that we’re stuck in that cloudy fog of denial or doing something that is not good for us. Trying excessively to make a point with another may mean that we have not yet made that point with ourselves. Once we make that point with ourselves, once we understand, we will know what to do. The issue is not about others understanding and taking us seriously. The issue is not about others believing we’re good and good enough. The issue is not about others seeing and believing how responsible or loving or competent we are. The issue is not about whether others realize how deeply we are feeling a particular feeling. We are the ones that need to see the light. ~ Melody Beattie,

1232:Consider how challenging it is to negotiate or compromise with a man who operates on the following tenets (whether or not he ever says them aloud): 1. “An argument should only last as long as my patience does. Once I’ve had enough, the discussion is over and it’s time for you to shut up.” 2. “If the issue we’re struggling over is important to me, I should get what I want. If you don’t back off, you’re wronging me.” 3. “I know what is best for you and for our relationship. If you continue disagreeing with me after I’ve made it clear which path is the right one, you’re acting stupid.” 4. “If my control and authority seem to be slipping, I have the right to take steps to reestablish the rule of my will, including abuse if necessary.” The last item on this list is the one that most distinguishes the abuser from other people: Perhaps any of us can slip into having feelings like the ones in numbers one through three, but the abuser gives himself permission to take action on the basis of his beliefs. With him, the foregoing statements aren’t feelings; they are closely held convictions that he uses to guide his actions. That is why they lead to so much bullying behavior. ~ Lundy Bancroft,

1233:Consider the source. Criticism from your parents or in-laws can be a delicate problem, as can criticism from anyone whose opinion you value. Feelings run deep, especially between mother and daughter, and gaining your parents’ approval of your parenting style may mean a lot to you. It helps to put yourself in your mother’s place and realize that she may think you are criticizing her when you make choices different from the ones she made. Remind yourself that she did the best she could given the information available to her. Your mother (or mother-in-law) means well. What you perceive as criticism is motivated by love and a desire to pass on experiences that she feels will help you and your children. Be careful not to imply that you are doing a better job than your own mother did. Don’t be surprised if your parents don’t buy AP. It’s not because they’re against it; they probably don’t understand it. If you think it would be helpful, share information with them and explain why you care for your baby in the way you do. But don’t argue or try to prove that you’re right. When you anticipate a disagreement, the best course is to avoid the issue and steer the conversation toward a more neutral topic. ~ William Sears,

1234:Cultural relativists prefer to wrap the issue of sharia in the intellectual equivalent of a black jilbab or blue burqa and intone the old platitudes that we should be nonjudgmental about the religious practices of others. Why? The ancient Aztecs and other peoples practiced human sacrifice, tearing the still-beating hearts out of their sacrificial victims. We teach our children that this happened five hundred years ago, but we don't condone it -- and wouldn't if the practice were suddenly revived in Mexico today. So why do we condone the 'sacrifice' of women or homosexuals or lapsed Muslims for 'crimes' such as apostasy, adultery, blasphemy, marrying outside of their faith, or simply wishing to marry the partner of their choice? Why, aside from the publication of reports by human rights organizations, is there no discernible reaction? In the twenty-first century, I believe that all decent human beings can agree that such barbarous acts should not be tolerated. They can and must be condemned and prosecuted as crimes, not accepted as legitimate punishments. The abuses carried out under sharia are irrefutable. If we are to have any hope for a more peaceful, more stable planet, these punishments must be set aside. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

1235:Don’t come to someone with feedback (or a problem) unless you have one or more solutions—In this approach the responsibility lies with the person giving the feedback to also come up with the best solution for acting on the feedback. That sounds totally reasonable and helpful: you’re telling people about the problem and the solution in one bite. • The feedback sandwich—You know this one. You open with good news, slip in some bad news, and then close with good news. That way, the person in front of you is opened up for the bad news by hearing the good news and still likes you in the end because you’ve closed with something good.6 And we’re supposed to give more positive feedback than negative feedback (the best ratio is at least 3:17), so this puts us well on our way to that. • Socratic questioning—Here, you leave people to draw their own conclusions by simply asking a set of helpful questions to take them to the realization that there’s an issue (and the hope is that they’ll then ask you for a solution or even stumble on your solution and offer it up as if it were their own). This, we’re told, increases ownership of the issue because the other person—the person needing to change—came up with the idea himself. ~ Jennifer Garvey Berger,

1236:or to what we hope they are. The more we work through our family of origin issues, the less we will find ourselves needing to work through them with the people we’re attracted to. Finishing our business from the past helps us form new and healthier relationships. The more we overcome our need to be excessive caretakers, the less we will find ourselves attracted to people who need to be constantly taken care of. The more we learn to love and respect ourselves, the more we will become attracted to people who will love and respect us and who we can safely love and respect. This is a slow process. We need to be patient with ourselves. The type of people we find ourselves attracted to does not change overnight. Being attracted to dysfunctional people can linger long and well into recovery. That does not mean we need to allow it to control us. The fact is, we will initiate and maintain relationships with people we need to be with until we learn what it is we need to learn—no matter how long we’ve been recovering. No matter who we find ourselves relating to, and what we discover happening in the relationship, the issue is still about us, and not about the other person. That is the heart, the hope, and the power of recovery. ~ Melody Beattie,

1237:Yes, the issue was courage. It always had been, even as a kid. Things scared him. He couldn't help it. Noise scared him, dark scared him. Tunnels scared him: the time he almost won the Silver Star for valor. But the real issue was courage. It had nothing to do with the Silver Star...Oh, he would've liked winning it, true, but that wasn't the issue. He would've liked showing the medal to his father, the heavy feel of it, looking his father in the eye to show he had been brave, but even that wasn't the real issue. The real issue was the power of will to defeat fear. A matter of figuring a way to do it. Somehow working his way into that secret chamber of the human heart, where, in tangles, lay the circuitry for all that was possible, the full range of what a man might be. He believed, like Doc Peret, that somewhere inside each man is a biological center for the exercise of courage, a piece of tissue that might be touched and sparked and made to respond, a chemical maybe, or a lone chromosome that when made to fire would produce a blaze of valor that even the biles could not extinguish. A filament, a fuse, that if ignited would release the full energy of what might be. There was a Silver Star twinkling somewhere inside him. ~ Tim O Brien,

1238:This neo-liberal establishment would have us believe that, during its miracle years between the 1960s and the 1980s, Korea pursued a neo-liberal economic development strategy. The reality, however, was very different indeed. What Korea actually did during these decades was to nurture certain new industries, selected by the government in consultation with the private sector, through tariff protection, subsidies and other forms of government support (e.g., overseas marketing information services provided by the state export agency) until they 'grew up' enough to withstand international competition. The government owned all the banks, so it could direct the life blood of business-credit. Some big projects were undertaken directly by state-owned enterprises-the steel maker, POSCO, being the best example-although the country had a pragmatic, rather than ideological, attitude to the issue of state ownership. If private enterprises worked well, that was fine; if they did not invest in important areas, the government had no qualms about setting up state-owned enterprises (SOEs); and if some private enterprises were mismanaged, the government often took them over, restructured them, and usually (but not always) sold them off again. ~ Ha Joon Chang,

1239:Most couples are willing to spend an hour a week talking about their relationship. I suggest that emotional attunement can take place (at a minimum) in that weekly “state of the union” meeting. That means that at least an hour a week is devoted to the relationship and the processing of negative emotions. Couples can count on this as a time to attune. Later, after the skill of attunement is mastered, they can process negative emotions more quickly and efficiently as they occur. If the couple is willing, they take turns as speaker and listener. They get two clipboards, yellow pads, and pens for jotting down their ideas when they become a speaker, and for taking notes when they become a listener. It’s not a very high-tech solution, but the process of taking notes also helps people stay out of the flooded state. I suggest that at the start of the state of the union meeting, before beginning processing a negative event, each person talks about what is going right in the relationship, followed by giving at least five appreciations for positive things their partner has done that week. The meeting then continues by each partner talking about an issue in the relationship. If there is an issue they can use attunement to fully process the issue. ~ John M Gottman,

1240:In retrospect, it is evident that highlighting abortion rather than reproductive rights as a whole reflected the class biases of the women who were at the forefront of the movement. While the issue of abortion was and remains relevant to all women, there were other reproductive issues that were just as vital which needed attention and might have served to galvanize masses. These issues ranged from basic sex education, prenatal care, preventive health care that would help females understand how their bodies worked, to forced sterilization, unnecessary cesareans and/or hysterectomies, and the medical complications left in their wake. Of all these issues individual white women with class privilege identified most intimately with the pain of unwanted pregnancy. And they highlighted the abortion issue. They were not by any means the only group in need of access to safe, legal abortions. As already stated, they were far more likely to have the means the to acquire an abortion than poor and working-class women. In those days poor women, black women included, often sought illegal abortions. The right to have an abortion was not a white-women-only issue; it was simply not the only or even most important reproductive concern for masses of American women. ~ bell hooks,

1241:His will be done, as done it surely will be, whether we humble ourselves to resignation or not. The impulse of creation forwards it; the strength of powers, seen and unseen, has its fulfillment in charge. Proof of a life to come must be given. In fire and in blood, if needful, must that proof be written. In fire and in blood do we trace the record throughout nature. In fire and in blood does it cross our own experience. Sufferer, faint not through terror of this burning evidence. Tired wayfarer, gird up thy loins, look upward, march onward. Pilgrims and brother mourners, join in friendly company. Dark through the wilderness of this world stretches the way for most of us: equal and steady be our tread; be our cross our banner. For staff we have His promis, whose 'word is tried, whose way perfect": for present hope His providence, 'who gives the shield of salvation, whose gentleness makes great'; for final home His bosom, who 'dwells in the height of Heaven'; for crowning prize a glory exceeding and eternal. Let us so run that we may obtain: let us endure hardness as good soldiers; let us finish our course, and keep the faith, reliant in the issue to come off more than conquerors: 'Art though not from everlasting mine Holy One? WE SHALL NOT DIE! ~ Charlotte Bront,

1242:Peel pressed ahead, eager to impose central control on policing. For those anxious about the threat to individual liberty, government commissions considered the issue. A 1839 Royal Commission on the Criminal Law concluded that rights could be pruned for the greater good without undue harm. Another report the following year judged "that all specific laws for the security of persons or property would be unavailing, unless the due operation of such laws were protected by imposing efficient restraints upon forcible violations of public order." The 1839 Royal Commission on the County Constabulary admitted that police might intrude upon individual liberty but explained: "the [criminal] evils we have found in existence in some districts, and the abject subjection of the population to fears [of crime] which might be termed a state of slavery ... form a condition much worse in all respects than any condition that could be imposed by any government that could exist in the present state of society in this country." His study of the development of this "policeman-state" convinced V. A. C. Gatrell that with it "the protection not of natural rights but of social and political order-equated with the state itself-was elevated into law's primary objective."78 ~ Joyce Lee Malcolm,

1243:If she had to choose which aspect of the suite she despised most, it would have been a hard call between the lock and the garden, though these days she nursed a particular grudge against the curtains. She hid behind them to watch Arin leave the house, and return--very often on her horse. Despite the way he had looked after the battle, his injuries weren’t serious. His limp lessened, the bandage on his neck disappeared, and the raging bruises muted into ugly greens and violets. Several days passed without any words between him and her, and that set Kestrel on edge. It was hard to rub out the memory of his smile--exhausted, sweet. And then that waterfall of relief. Kestrel sent him a letter. Jess was likely to recover, she wrote. She asked to visit Ronan, who was being held in the city prison. Arin’s reply was a curt note: No. She decided not to press the issue. Her request had been due to a sense of obligation. She dreaded seeing Ronan--even if he agreed to speak with her. Even if he did not loathe her now. Kestrel knew that to look upon Ronan would be to come face-to-face with her failure. She had done everything wrong…including not being able to love him. She folded the one-word letter and set it aside. ~ Marie Rutkoski,

1244:To pay attention to the American political process, and what the candidates for this nation’s highest office have to say and not say about the issues that are of importance to them and thus we are to presume importance to the Nation, you would get the impression that the issue of race, that the issue of racism, that the issue of discrimination, and certainly that the issue of white racial privilege were non existent issues; that they were of really no importance, or that of very little importance, because you will not hear and have not heard any of the candidates for the presidency of the United States, in either party, of whatever political ideology, make this an issue. Yes,they talk about poverty and occasionally they talk about schooling and education. They talk about healthcare. They talk about all of those things, but not once have any of those candidates tried to directly connect the role that racism, the role that racial discrimination, the role that institutional racial oppression and white privilege play in regard to health care, in regard to housing, in regard to schooling. It is as if those issues exist in a vacuum and have no relationship to color, have no relationship to race, have no relationship to a history of racial subordination. ~ Tim Wise,

1245:If all art is conceptual, the issue is rather simple. For concepts, like pictures, cannot be true or false. They can only be more or less useful for the formation of descriptions. The words of a language, like pictorial formulas, pick out from the flux of events a few signposts which allow us to give direction to our fellow speakers in that game of "Twenty Questions" in which we are engaged. Where the needs of users are similar, the signposts will tend to correspond. We can mostly find equivalent terms in English, French, German, and Latin, and hence the idea has taken root that concepts exist independently of language as the constituents of "reality." But the English language erects a signpost on the roadfork between "clock" and "watch" where the German has only "Uhr." The sentence from the German primer, "Meine Tante hat eine Uhr," leaves us in doubt whether the aunt has a clock or watch. Either of the two translations may be wrong as a description of a fact. In Swedish, by the way, there is an additional roadfork to distinguish between aunts who are "father's sisters," those who are "mother's sisters," and those who are just ordinary aunts. If we were to play our game in Swedish we would need additional questions to get at the truth about the timepiece. ~ E H Gombrich,

1246:Then you don't think there will be any more permanent world heroes?" "Yes—in history—not in life. Carlyle would have difficulty getting material for a new chapter on 'The Hero as a Big Man.'" "Go on. I'm a good listener to-day." "People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over." "Then you blame it on the press?" "Absolutely. Look at you; you're on The New Democracy, considered the most brilliant weekly in the country, read by the men who do things and all that. What's your business? Why, to be as clever, as interesting, and as brilliantly cynical as possible about every man, doctrine, book, or policy that is assigned you to deal with. The more strong lights, the more spiritual scandal you can throw on the matter, the more money they pay you, the more the people buy the issue. You, Tom d'Invilliers, a blighted Shelley, changing, shifting, clever, unscrupulous, represent the critical consciousness of the race—Oh, ~ F Scott Fitzgerald,

1247:many people argue that the key problem has been the financial incentives: we pay doctors to give chemotherapy and to do surgery but not to take the time required to sort out when to do so is unwise. This certainly is a factor. But the issue isn’t merely a matter of financing. It arises from a still unresolved argument about what the function of medicine really is—what, in other words, we should and should not be paying for doctors to do. The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don’t want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can’t, someone who understands that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter end. More often, these days, medicine seems to supply neither Custers nor Lees. We are increasingly the generals who march the soldiers onward, saying all the while, “You let me know when you want to stop.” All-out treatment, we tell the incurably ill, is a train you can get off at any time—just say when. ~ Atul Gawande,

1248:An availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may start from media reports of a relatively minor event and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. On some occasions, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried. This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by “availability entrepreneurs,” individuals or organizations who work to ensure a continuous flow of worrying news. The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media compete for attention-grabbing headlines. Scientists and others who try to dampen the increasing fear and revulsion attract little attention, most of it hostile: anyone who claims that the danger is overstated is suspected of association with a “heinous cover-up.” The issue becomes politically important because it is on everyone’s mind, and the response of the political system is guided by the intensity of public sentiment. The availability cascade has now reset priorities. Other risks, and other ways that resources could be applied for the public good, all have faded into the background. ~ Daniel Kahneman,

1249:An Ode To Himself Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps doth die; And this security, It is the common moth That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both. Are all th' Aonian springs Dried up? lies Thespia waste? Doth Clarius' harp want strings, That not a nymph now sings? Or droop they as disgrac'd, To see their seats and bowers by chatt'ring pies defac'd? If hence thy silence be, As 'tis too just a cause, Let this thought quicken thee: Minds that are great and free Should not on fortune pause; 'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause. What though the greedy fry Be taken with false baites Of worded balladry, And think it poesy? They die with their conceits, And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits. Then take in hand thy lyre, Strike in thy proper strain, With Japhet's line aspire Sol's chariot for new fire, To give the world again; Who aided him will thee, the issue of Jove's brain. And since our dainty age Cannot endure reproof, Make not thyself a page To that strumpet, the stage, 29 But sing high and aloof, Safe from the wolf's black jaw and the dull ass's hoof. ~ Ben Jonson,

1250:Oromis - What is the most important mental tool a person can possess? Eragon - Detrrmination. Oromis - [...] no. I meant the tool most necessary to choose the best course of action in any given situation. Determination is as common among men who are dull and foolish as it is among those who are brilliant intellects [...] Eragon - Wisdom, wisdom is the most important for a person to possess. Oromis- A fair guess, but, again, no. the answer is logic. Or, to put it another way, the ability to reason analytically.Applied properly it can overcome any lack of wisdom, which one only gains through age and experience. Eragon - yes but isn't having a good heart more important than logic. pure logic can lead you to conclusions that are ethically wrong, whereas if you are moral and righteous, that will ensure you don't act shamefully. Oromis - you confuse the issue. All I wanted to know isq what is the most useful 'tool'ma person can have [...] I agree that it is important to be of a virtous nature, but I would also conted that if you had to choose between giving a man a noble disposition or teaching him to think clearly, you'd do better to teach him to think clearly. Too many problems in this world are caused by men with noble dispositions and clouded minds. ~ Christopher Paolini,

1251:And the mighty wildness of the primitive earth And the brooding multitude of patient trees And the musing sapphire leisure of the sky And the solemn weight of the slowly-passing months Had left in her deep room for thought and God. There was her drama's radiant prologue lived. A spot for the eternal's tread on earth Set in the cloistral yearning of the woods And watched by the aspiration of the peaks Appeared through an aureate opening in Time, Where stillness listening felt the unspoken word And the hours forgot to pass towards grief and change. Here with the suddenness divine advents have, Repeating the marvel of the first descent, Changing to rapture the dull earthly round, Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death. Well might he find in her his perfect shrine. Since first the earth-being's heavenward growth began, Through all the long ordeal of the race, Never a rarer creature bore his shaft, That burning test of the godhead in our parts, A lightning from the heights on our abyss. All in her pointed to a nobler kind. Near to earth's wideness, intimate with heaven, Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Issue,

1252:Capitalist realism insists on treating mental health as if it were a natural fact, like weather (but, then again, weather is no longer a natural fact so much as a political-economic effect). In the 1960s and 1970s, radical theory and politics (Laing, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, etc.) coalesced around extreme mental conditions such as schizophrenia, arguing, for instance, that madness was not a natural, but a political, category. But what is needed now is a politicization of much more common disorders. Indeed, it is their very commonness which is the issue: in Britain, depression is now the condition that is most treated by the NHS. In his book The Selfish Capitalist, Oliver James has convincingly posited a correlation between rising rates of mental distress and the neoliberal mode of capitalism practiced in countries like Britain, the USA and Australia. In line with James’s claims, I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill? ~ Mark Fisher,

1253:You are all soldiers of Christ," he said, "and now is an opportunity given to you to show that you are worthy soldiers. When the troops of a worldly monarch go into battle they do so with head erect, with proud and resolute bearing, with flashing eye, and with high courage, determined to bear aloft his banner and to crown it with victory, even though it cost them their lives. Such is the mien that soldiers of Christ should bear in the mortal strife now raging round us. Let them show the same fearlessness of death, the same high courage, the same unlimited confidence in their Leader. What matter if they die in His service? He has told them what their work should be. He has bidden them visit the sick and comfort the sorrowing. What if there be danger in the work? Did He shrink from the Cross which was to end His work of love, and is it for His followers to do so? 'Though you go down into the pit,' He has said, 'I am there also'; and with His companionship one must be craven indeed to tremble. This is a noble opportunity for holding high the banner of Christ. There is work to be done for all, and as the work is done, men should see by the calm courage, the cheerfulness, and the patience of those that do it, that they know that they are doing His work, and that they are content to leave the issue, whatever it be, in His hands. ~ G A Henty,

1254:Very devout like his great-grandfather St. Louis, though not his equal in intelligence or will, Philip was fascinated by the all-absorbing question of the Beatific Vision: whether the souls of the blessed see the face of God immediately upon entering Heaven or whether they have to wait until the Day of Judgment. The question was of real concern because the intercession of the saints on behalf of man was effective only if they had been admitted into the presence of God. Shrines possessing saints’ relics relied for revenue on popular confidence that a particular saint was in a position to make a personal appeal to the Almighty. Philip VI twice summoned theologians to debate the issue before him and fell into a “mighty choler” when the papal legate to Paris conveyed Pope John XXII’s doubts of the Beatific Vision. “The King reprimanded him sharply and threatened to burn him like an Albigensian unless he retracted, and said further that if the Pope really held such views he would regard him as a heretic.” A worried man, Philip wrote to the Pope that to deny the Beatific Vision was to destroy belief in the intercession of the Virgin and saints. Fortunately for the King’s peace of mind, a papal commission decided after thorough investigation that the souls of the Blessed did indeed come face to face with the Divine Essence. ~ Barbara W Tuchman,

1255:We did as we were told, staying outdoors, and not bothering Jeremy and Peter. Yet that could be done while sitting outside the study window, where we could listen to the conversation within. Kids who don’t eavesdrop on adult conversations are doomed to a childhood of ignorance. Of what I heard that afternoon, I understood only one key point: that Peter was leaving the Pack. Why he was leaving, what that meant for his life, how difficult that decision was for him to make, all that I wouldn’t fully understand for years to come. From the tone of the conversation, though, I knew that this decision marked the end of a long personal struggle with the issue of Pack-hood. I knew too that this was a decision Jeremy had both known and feared was coming. Roughly half of all Pack youth left the group in their early twenties. It was like membership in any regimented segment of human society—children stay with the group because they have to, then when they hit adulthood, they realize that they have a choice. Some, like Antonio, chafe at the rules, but not enough to consider leaving. Some, like Jeremy, disagree with many of the principles, but believe in the institution itself enough to stay and try to effect change from within. Others look around and say ‘”I don’t belong here”, and this was the case with Peter. ~ Kelley Armstrong,

1256:One day, however, they had an experience that revealed just how fragile their life had become. Bella developed a cold, causing fluid to accumulate in her ears. An eardrum ruptured. And with that she became totally deaf. That was all it took to sever the thread between them. With her blindness and memory problems, the hearing loss made it impossible for Felix to achieve any kind of communication with her. He tried drawing out letters on the palm of her hand but she couldn’t make them out. Even the simplest matters—getting her dressed, for instance—became a nightmare of confusion for her. Without sensory grounding, she lost track of time of day. She grew severely confused, at times delusional and agitated. He couldn’t take care of her. He became exhausted from stress and lack of sleep. He didn’t know what to do, but there was a system for such situations. The people at the residence proposed transferring her to a skilled nursing unit—a nursing home floor. He couldn’t bear the thought of it. No, he said. She needed to stay at home with him. Before the issue was forced, they got a reprieve. Two and a half weeks into the ordeal, Bella’s right eardrum mended and, although the hearing in her left ear was lost permanently, the hearing in her right ear came back. “Our communication is more difficult,” Felix said. “But at least it is possible. ~ Atul Gawande,

1257:Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it...We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be 'healing.' A Certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to 'get through it,' rise to the occasion, exhibit the 'strength' that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself. ~ Joan Didion,

1258:Here’s what I would say is the issue he is trying to address. Often in churches, we try to get people to affirm the right beliefs, the right points of view. The real test of what I actually believe is “Does it guide what I do?” For example, if I am up on a skyscraper, I would never step off, because I believe in gravity. I don’t have to force myself to believe in gravity. I don’t have to hype myself. I just believe in gravity. So I won’t step off that roof unless I am trying to hurt myself. My actions are always a result of my intentions and my perceptions of how things are. Sometimes in churches we work to get people to affirm stuff, even though they don’t believe in it like they believe in gravity. So somebody will say, “I believe that the Bible is the inspired, authoritative Word of God.” But the Bible says it is more blessed to give than to receive, yet they are not giving. So, do they really believe that the Bible is the authoritative, inspired Word of God? Well, at one level, they think they do, but the most important level of belief is their mental map of reality. What are those perceptions that actually guide how we live, what we do? Because that is simply how reality looks to us. What we want to do is not simply teach doctrine and get people to affirm it. We want to help people have the same mental map that Jesus had of how things are. ~ Dallas Willard,

1259:For Sayonara, literally translated, 'Since it must be so,' of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by any bravado 'Till we meet again,' any sedative to postpone the pain of separation. It does not evade the issue like the sturdy blinking Farewell. Farewell is a father's good-by. It is - 'Go out in the world and do well, my son.' It is encouragement and admonition. It is hope and faith. But it passes over the significance of the moment; of parting it says nothing. It hides its emotion. It says too little. While Good-by ('God be with you') and Adios say too much. They try to bridge the distance, almost to deny it. Good-by is a prayer, a ringing cry. 'You must not go - I cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, unwatched. God will be with you. God's hand will over you' and even - underneath, hidden, but it is there, incorrigible - 'I will be with you; I will watch you - always.' It is a mother's good-by. But Sayonara says neither too much nor too little. It is a simple acceptance of fact. All understanding of life lies in its limits. All emotion, smoldering, is banked up behind it. But it says nothing. It is really the unspoken good-by, the pressure of a hand, 'Sayonara. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh,

1260:In Iowa, the American Future Fund began airing an ad created by Larry McCarthy that Geoff Garin, the Democratic pollster, described as perhaps “the most egregious of the year.” The ad accused the then congressman Bruce Braley, an Iowa Democrat and a lawyer, of supporting a proposed Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, which it misleadingly called a “mosque at Ground Zero.” As footage of the destroyed World Trade Center rolled, a narrator said, “For centuries, Muslims built mosques where they won military victories.” Now it said a mosque celebrating 9/11 was to be built on the very spot “where Islamic terrorists killed three thousand Americans”; it was, the narrator suggested, as if the Japanese were to build a triumphal monument at Pearl Harbor. The ad then accused Braley of supporting the mosque. In fact, Braley had taken no position on the issue. No surprise for a congressman from Iowa. But an unidentified video cameraman had ambushed him at the Iowa State Fair and asked him about it. Braley replied that he regarded the matter as a local zoning issue for New Yorkers to decide. Soon afterward, he says, the attack ad “dropped on me like the house in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ ” Braley, who won his seat by a margin of 30 percent in 2008, barely held on in 2010. The American Future Fund’s effort against Braley was the most expensive campaign that year by an independent group. ~ Jane Mayer,

1261:PRESCRIPTION 5 Low Back and Trunk   This prescription can be used to treat these symptoms and restrictions: Abdominal pain Compromised breathing Hip extension range of motion Hip pain Low back pain Sciatica Spinal rotation, flexion and extension range of motion   Overview Methods: Contract and relax Pressure wave Smash and floss Tools: Small ball Large ball Small bouncy ball or under-inflated soccer/volleyball Total time:  14 minutes   This prescription is great for treating low back pain and supporting the hardworking muscles of your trunk. We’ve established that poor spinal mechanics and sitting can cause adaptive stiffness and irritation in the discs, ligaments, and muscles around your spine and trunk. And when that happens, low back pain is often the result. Although there are other contributing factors to consider, like previous injuries, arthritis, obesity, and stress, we would argue that one of the leading causes of low back pain and trunk-related problems stems from poor posture, prolonged sitting, and a lack of basic self-maintenance. Having spent the majority of this book outlining a protocol for preventing and resolving the issue from a mechanical standpoint, let’s turn our attention to the maintenance side of things. This prescription targets the muscles that are responsible for keeping your spine braced, as well as the muscles that may get stiff when you move poorly or sit for too long. ~ Kelly Starrett,

1262:WHEN beginners become aware of their own fervor and diligence in their spiritual works and devotional exercises, this prosperity of theirs gives rise to secret pride—though holy things tend of their own nature to humility—because of their imperfections; and the issue is that they conceive a certain satisfaction in the contemplation of their works and of themselves. From the same source, too, proceeds that empty eagerness which they display to some extent, and occasionally very much,1 in speaking before others of the spiritual life, and sometimes as teachers rather than learners. They condemn others in their heart when they see that they are not devout in their way. Sometimes also they say it in words, showing themselves herein to be like the Pharisee, who in the act of prayer boasted of his own works and despised the Publican.2 2. Their fervor, and desire to do these and other works, is frequently fed by Satan in order that they may grow in pride and presumption: he knows perfectly well that all their virtue and works are not only nothing worth, but rather tending to sin. Some of them go so far as to desire none should be thought good but themselves,3 and so, at all times, both in word and deed fall into condemnation and detraction of others. They see the mote in the eye of their brother, but not the beam which is in their own.4 They strain out the gnat in another man’s cup, and swallow the camel in their own.5 3. ~ Juan de la Cruz,

1263:My father was taking me as seriously as the Ringolds were, but not with Ira’s political fearlessness, with Murray’s literary ingenuity, above all, with their seeming absence of concern for my decorum, for whether I would or would not be a good boy. The Ringolds were the one-two punch promising to initiate me into the big show, into my beginning to understand what it takes to be a man on the larger scale. The Ringolds compelled me to respond at a level of rigor that felt appropriate to who I now was. Be a good boy wasn’t the issue with them. The sole issue was my convictions. But then, their responsibility wasn’t a father’s, which is to steer his son away from the pitfalls. The father has to worry about the pitfalls in a way the teacher doesn’t. He has to worry about his son’s conduct, he has to worry about socializing his little Tom Paine. But once little Tom Paine has been let into the company of men and the father is still educating him as a boy, the father is finished. Sure, he’s worrying about the pitfalls—if he wasn’t, it would be wrong. But he’s finished anyway. Little Tom Paine has no choice but to write him off, to betray the father and go boldly forth to step straight into life’s very first pit. And then, all on his own—providing real unity to his existence—to step from pit to pit for the rest of his days, until the grave, which, if it has nothing else to recommend it, is at least the last pit into which one can fall. ~ Philip Roth,

1264:Clinging to politics is one way of avoiding the confrontation with the devouring logic of civilization, holding instead with the accepted assumptions and definitions. Leaving it all behind is the opposite: a truly qualitative change, a fundamental paradigm shift. This change is not about: • seeking "alternative" energy sources to power all the projects and systems that should never have been started up in the first place; • being vaguely "post-Left", the disguise that some adopt while changing none of their (leftist) orientations; • espousing an "anti-globalization" orientation that's anything but, given activists' near-universal embrace of the totalizing industrial world system; • preserving the technological order, while ignoring the degradation of millions and the systematic destruction of the earth that undergird the existence of every part of the technoculture; • claiming-as anarchists-to oppose the state, while ignoring the fact that this hypercomplex global setup couldn't function for a day without many levels of government. The way is open for radical change. If complex society is itself the issue, if class society began with division of labor in the Neolithic, and if the Brave New World now moving forward was born with the shift to domesticated life, then all we've taken for granted is implicated. We are seeing more deeply, and the explorations must extend to include everyone. A daunting, but exciting opportunity! ~ John Zerzan,

1265:Thank you,” I managed to say. Replying with a nod, he approached my horse. “Here, let me help you—” I slipped down myself before he could lend a hand, keeping the fur hide in my possession. “I’m not suddenly incapable because I wear a dress, Thaddeus.” “I wasn’t suggesting….” Wisely, he let the issue drop. Lifting an arm, he offered it to me. That’s when I noticed my sword in sheath belted to his waist. “That’s mine!” I declared, reaching for the hilt. Thaddeus managed a quick side-step. He hardened his jaw at my look of incredulity. I would only wait momentarily for an explanation. “I know the sword is yours, Catherine, everyone knows that. But you’re too beautiful tonight to ruin that radiant look with an ugly, leather belt strapped about you.” I was starting to think the man was using compliments as a weapon to defend himself against me. It did work to temper my anger somewhat. “I brought the sword as a cautionary act, just in case those nasty werewolves show up. Seeing how I’ll be standing beside you all evening, the blade will be at your disposal if needed.” I accepted his reasoning and stood down. “Besides,” Thaddeus added, apparently feeling safe, “what’s yours is mine now anyway.” I glared at the fool. “That works both ways, you know.” He rolled his eyes and shrugged. “If it must.” Again, he offered me his arm which I grudgingly accepted. ~ Richelle E Goodrich,

1266:You’ve probably had a similar experience with someone you know. I’ve already recounted the stories of three of my closest friends—one in high school, one in college, and one in seminary—who seemed so dedicated to serving the Lord, and yet all of them eventually turned their backs on Him. One became a dope-smoking rock-concert promoter, and another became a Buddhist. These were not casual acquaintances, but friends at a very close level. I was sure they shared my passion for the true gospel as much as they shared my love for sports. These three young men proved to me that you can profess Christ and not know Him. You can think you’re a Christian and later see clearly that you’re not; you can certainly deceive other people. Seeing these seemingly intelligent, dedicated, strong Christians abandon their beliefs forced me to think about who is really a Christian and what being a Christian really means. Their actions portrayed them as fellow soldiers of Christ, but in the end their hearts exposed them as traitors. Spiritual defectors are an integral part of the story of Christianity, both past and present. They’re in your life and mine, just as they were in Jesus’ life. They shouldn’t surprise you, defeat you, disappoint you, or cause you to despair. Jesus’ insights on spiritual defectors in John 6, and the reaction to His teaching about the issue, give us one of the most compelling and enlightening stories of His ministry. It’s worth considering closely. ~ John F MacArthur Jr,

1267:Not long after this attempt, the issue arose again. A conference on November 8 instructed Joseph Smith to review the commandments and 'correct those errors or mistakes which he may discover by the holy Spirit.' Correcting 'errors' in language supposedly spoken by God again raised the question of authenticity. If from God, how could the language be corrected? Correction implied Joseph's human mind had introduced errors; if so, were the revelations really his productions? The editing process uncovered Joseph's anomalous assumptions about the nature of revealed words. He never considered the wording infallible. God's language stood in an indefinite relationship to the human language coming through the Prophet. The revealed preface to the Book of Commandments specified that the language of the revelations was Joseph Smith's: 'These commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding.' They were couched in language suitable to Joseph's time. The idioms, the grammar, even the tone had to be combrehensible to 1830s Americans. Recognizing the pliability of the revealed words, Joseph freely edited the revelations 'by the Holy Spirit,' making emendations with each new edition. He thought of his revelations as imprinted on his mind, not graven in stone. With each edition, he patched pieces together and altered the wording to clarify meaning. The words were both his and God's. ~ Richard L Bushman,

1268:When will you be married?” “Married?” Portia exclaimed. Cecily sighed. Just like Denny, to take his responsibilities as her third cousin twice removed—and only male relation in the vicinity—so seriously. But did he have to force the issue now? Certainly, she hoped that she and Luke might one day— “As soon as possible.” Luke’s arm slid around her waist. Cecily’s gaze snapped up to his. Are you certain? she asked him silently. He answered her with a quick kiss. “Well, then. When can we be married?” Brooke directed his question to Portia. “Married!” Blushing furiously, Portia made a dismissive gesture with both hands. “Why, I’m only just learning to enjoy being a widow. I don’t want to be married. I want to write scandalous novels and take dozens of lovers.” Brooke raised an eyebrow. “Can that be negotiated to lover, singular?” “That,” she said, giving him a coy smile, “would depend on your skill at negotiation.” “What an evening you’ve had, Portia,” Cecily said. “A brush with death, a proposal of marriage, an indecent proposition . . . Surely you have sufficient inspiration for your gothic novel?” “Too much inspiration!” Portia wailed, gesturing toward her bandaged foot. “I am done with gothics completely. No, I shall take a cue from my insipid wallpaper and write a bawdy little tale about a wanton dairymaid and her many lovers.” “Lover, singular.” Brooke flopped on the divan and settled her feet in his lap. “Oh,” she sighed, as he massaged her uninjured foot. “Oh, very well.” Luke ~ Tessa Dare,

1269:The thinking of the past has been binary when it comes to the question of our origins. If evolution is not our story, the go-to alternative has automatically been assumed to be the story told by creationists of a divine beginning similar to the biblical account. With this kind of thinking, all the “baggage” of religious doctrine from the creationism side of the issue, and all the “baggage” of the science zealots who are clinging to fundamentalist evolutionary theory, has made it nearly impossible to explore a third possibility. Nevertheless, DNA studies are telling us that a third possibility exists. The scientific fact of the mutation that made our FOXP2 gene and complex speech possible, and the DNA fusion that created human chromosome 2 and enabled the advanced brain functions associated with it, as well as the evidence that suggests these mutations cannot be attributed to evolution alone, all invite us to consider something beyond creationism and evolution when it comes to our species’ origin. For the purposes of this discussion, and to honor the fact that mutations did occur, while acknowledging that something more than evolution contributed to the mutations, let’s call our third possibility directed mutation. The name says it all. Some force that is not presently accounted for in the scientific story is responsible for the precision, timing, and refining of the mutations that makes us who we are. That unknown force directed the mutations that science has now proven to exist. ~ Gregg Braden,

1270:prevents them from deducting their rent, employee salaries, or utility bills, forcing them to pay taxes on a far larger amount of income than other businesses with the same earnings and costs. They also say the taxes, which apply to medical and recreational marijuana sellers alike, are stunting their hiring, or even threatening to drive them out of business. The issue reveals a growing chasm between the 23 states, plus the District of Columbia, that allow medical or recreational marijuana and the federal bureaucracy, from national forests in Colorado where possession is a federal crime to federally regulated banks that turn away marijuana businesses, and the halls of the IRS. The tax rule, an obscure provision known as 280E, catches many marijuana entrepreneurs by surprise, often in the form of an audit notice from the IRS. Some marijuana businesses in Colorado, California, and other marijuana-friendly states have taken the IRS to tax court. This year, Allgreens, a marijuana shop in Colorado, successfully challenged an IRS policy that imposed about $30,000 in penalties for paying its payroll taxes in cash — common in an industry in which businesses cannot get bank accounts. “We’re talking about legal businesses, licensed businesses,’’ said Rachel Gillette, the executive director of Colorado’s chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and the lawyer who represented Allgreens. “There’s no reason that they should be taxed out of existence by the federal government. ~ Anonymous,

1271:A good example is overflow detection on arithmetic, or providing bignums instead of just letting 32-bit integers wrap around. Now, implementing those is more expensive but I believe that providing full-blown bignums is a little less error-prone for some kinds of programming. A trap that I find systems programmers and designers of operating-systems algorithms constantly falling into is they say, "Well, we need to synchronize some phases here so we're going to use a take-a-number strategy. Every time we enter a new phase of the computation we'll increment some variable and that'll be the new number and then the different participants will make sure they're all working on the same phase number before a certain operation happens." And that works pretty well in practice, but if you use a 32-bit integer it doesn't take that long to count to four billion anymore. What happens if that number wraps around? Will you still be OK or not? It turns out that a lot of such algorithms in the literature have that lurking bug. What if some thread stalls for 2 to the 32nd iterations? That's highly unlikely in practice, but it's a possibility. And one should either mitigate that correctness problem or else do the calculation to show that, yeah, it's sufficiently unlikely that I don't want to worry about it. Or maybe you're willing to accept one glitch every day. But the point is you should do the analysis rather than simply ignoring the issue. And the fact that counters can wrap around is a lurking pitfall ~ Peter Seibel,

1272:"So," she said. "I've been thinking of it as a computing problem. If the virus or nanomachine or protomolecule or whatever was designed, it has a purpose, right?" "Definitely," Holden said. "And it seems like it's trying to do something-something complex. It doesn't make sense to go to all that trouble just to kill people. Those changes it makes look intentional, just... not complete, to me." "I can see that," Holden said. Alex and Amos nodded along with him but stayed quiet. "So maybe the issue is that the protomolecule isn't smart enough yet. You can compress a lot of data down pretty small, but unless it's a quantum computer, processing takes space. The easiest way to get that processing in tiny machines is through distribution. Maybe the protomolecule isn't finishing its job because it just isn't smart enough to. Yet." "Not enough of them," Alex said. "Right," Naomi said, dropping the towel into a bin under the sink. "So you give them a lot of biomass to work with, and see what it is they are ultimately made to do." "According to that guy in the video, they were made to hijack life on Earth and wipe us out," Miller said. "And that," Holden said, "is why Eros is perfect. Lots of biomass in a vacuum-sealed test tube. And if it gets out of hand, there's already a war going on. A lot of ships and missiles can be used for nuking Eros into glass if the threat seems real. Nothing to make us forget our differences like a new player butting in." ~ James S A Corey, Leviathan Wakes,

1273:In other ways, however, Nick was an unexpectedly tender and generous husband. He coaxed her to tell him all the rules that had been drilled into her at school, and then he proceeded to make her break every single one of them. There were nights when he launched a gentle assault on her modesty, undressing her in the lamplight and making her watch as he kissed her from head to toe… and others when he made love to her in exotic ways that shamed and excited her beyond bearing. He could arouse her with a single glance, a brief caress, a soft word whispered in her ear. It seemed to Lottie that entire days passed in a haze of sexual desire, her awareness of him simmering beneath everything they did. After the crates of books she had ordered arrived, she read to Nick in the evenings, as she sat in bed and he lounged beside her. Sometimes while he listened, Nick would pull her legs into his lap and massage her feet, running his thumbs along her instep and playing gently with her toes. Whenever Lottie paused in her reading, she always found his gaze fastened securely on her. He never seemed to tire of staring at her… as if he were trying to uncover some mystery that was hidden in her eyes. One evening he taught her to play cards, claiming sexual liberties as forfeits each time she lost. They ended up on the carpeted floor in a tangle of limbs and clothing, while Lottie breathlessly accused him of cheating. He only grinned in reply, thrusting his head beneath her skirts until the issue was entirely forgotten. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

1274:Ah, nei mah-tao-yo,” he whispered. “You tremble.” His mouth continued its downward path, lips like silk nibbling her collarbone. Acutely aware that the generous neckline of her shirt provided little barrier against him, she abandoned her hold on his wrist and caught his face between her hands. Forcing his head up, she met his gaze, disconcerted even more by the longing she saw in his eyes. “You’re frightening me.” “It is boisa, this fear.” Beneath her shirt, his warm hand stilled on her ribs. “You are my woman.” “And that’s exactly why you frighten me. You can’t buy a woman.” She twisted to one side, wedging one arm against his larynx. She had no delusions. If he pressed the issue, her strength was no match. “Why can’t you understand that? A woman must come freely.” Lowering his hand to her waist, he leaned away from her, his dark eyes searching, thoughtful. “And when you come freely, you will have no fear?” “I--” She stared at him. “I suppose if I--not that I ever would, mind you--but if I came to you freely, then, no, I probably wouldn’t.” Loretta knew she was babbling. He looked confused, and she didn’t blame him. She broke off, and her gaze chased away from his. “It’s so completely unlikely that I--but if I did, I don’t suppose I would be afraid. I wouldn’t come if I were.” His arm relaxed around her. After studying her for what seemed an eternity, he said, “Then this Comanche will wait. Until the Great Ones lead you in a great circle back to him. ~ Catherine Anderson,

1275:Matthew 22:4 (“Everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast”), he addresses the issue of “those to whom the offer is made”: It is not one or two, or some few that are called, not the great only, nor the small only, not the holy only, nor the profane only, but ye are all bidden; the call comes to all and every one of you in particular, poor and rich, high and low, holy and profane. Then Durham continues: We make this offer to all of you, to you who are Atheists, to you that are Graceless, to you that are Ignorant, to you that are Hypocrites, to you that are Lazy and Lukewarm, to the civil and to the profane, we pray, we beseech, we obtest you all to come to the wedding; Call (saith the Lord) the blind, the maimed, the halt, &c and bid them all come, yea, compel them to come in. Grace can do more and greater wonders than to call such; it can not only make the offer of marriage to them, but it can make up the match effectually betwixt Christ and them. We will not, we dare not say, that all of you will get Christ for a Husband; but we do most really offer him to you all, and it shall be your own fault if ye want him and go without him. And therefore, before we proceed any further, we do solemnly protest, and before God and his Son Jesus Christ, take instruments this day, that this offer is made to you and that it is told to you in his name, that the Lord Jesus is willing to match with you, even the profanest and most graceless of you, if ye be willing to match with him, and he earnestly invites you to come to the wedding.28 ~ Sinclair B Ferguson,

1276:My friend was aboard Sewee, untying his vessel from an ancient sunken post. “Ben?” No response. I slipped off my shoes and waded to the runabout. Pulled myself up the tiny ladder. Found Ben’s hand waiting at the rail. He effortlessly hoisted me into the boat, maneuvering my weight like it was nothing. I sometimes forgot how strong Ben was. How warm his hands could feel. Ben released me. Went back to coiling line. “Are you okay?” I immediately realized it was the wrong thing to say. “Of course I’m okay.” Gruff. Distant. I stood watching him, unsure what to say next. Unbidden, the image of a bench sprang to mind. The two of us, huddled close. Me crying in his arms. I felt blood rush to my face, was grateful for the concealing darkness. “No one expects you to like Chance,” I said finally. “Good.” Not looking up. “Because I don’t.” Another awkward silence. Then Ben huffed, “You like him enough for both of us.” I straightened, surprised. Was that what was bothering him? Jealousy? Why would Ben be jealous of Chance? After everything that spoiled boy had done to me? Did Ben think I was some ditz? That my memory reset with every pretty smile? Am I? I felt a nervous twinge in my stomach. Felt it grow. Ben. Jealous. Because of his feelings for me. The issue would not simply go away. “Ben. I . . .” Words failed. My face grew hot. Ben’s hands stopped moving. He stared at the deck, his long black hair fanning his face. He sucked in a breath, as if on the verge of something. ~ Kathy Reichs,

1277:Precisely how much do you know about hog killing, Mrs. Prescott?” the Captain asked. “I believe the question should be, Captain Winston, how much do I want to know about it?” “And your answer would be?” “As little as possible.” He laughed and she found herself smiling a little, too, sensing an olive branch in his demeanor. “I remember my first hog killing.” He looked down. “My father found me crying behind the barn.” “How old were you?” His brow furrowed. “Twenty-two, I think.” The seriousness of his tone coaxed a laugh from her. And even without addressing the issue wedged squarely between them, she felt the tension between them lessening. “I was about four years old,” he continued. “Maybe five. I don’t remember much more about that day, other than what my father said to me.” She found herself waiting, wanting to hear what he said next. “He told me that, as a boy, he’d had much the same reaction as I’d had. And that while he didn’t cry anymore when it came to the task of the day, he told me it was crucial, before we started anything, that we thank God for those animals’ deaths and what they meant to us as a family. It meant we would eat for the winter. That we wouldn’t go hungry. Although, after that first hog killing, my parents said I refused to eat pork for weeks.” She smiled at the image in her mind of him as a little boy. “But eventually”—a touch of humor tipped one side of his mouth—“bacon won out, and I gave in.” She couldn’t help but laugh. “Bacon is a force to be reckoned with.” “Yes, ma’am, it is. Especially fried up good and crisp. ~ Tamera Alexander,

1278:Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. The issue concerns the very laws of nature themselves. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient "coincidences" and special features in the underlying laws of the universe that seem to be necessary in order for life, and hence conscious beings, to exist. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle, the distinguished cosmologist, once said it was as if "a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics". To see the problem, imagine playing God with the cosmos. Before you is a designer machine that lets you tinker with the basics of physics. Twiddle this knob and you make all electrons a bit lighter, twiddle that one and you make gravity a bit stronger, and so on. It happens that you need to set thirtysomething knobs to fully describe the world about us. The crucial point is that some of those metaphorical knobs must be tuned very precisely, or the universe would be sterile. Example: neutrons are just a tad heavier than protons. If it were the other way around, atoms couldn't exist, because all the protons in the universe would have decayed into neutrons shortly after the big bang. No protons, then no atomic nucleuses and no atoms. No atoms, no chemistry, no life. Like Baby Bear's porridge in the story of Goldilocks, the universe seems to be just right for life. ~ Paul Davies,

1279:Music is a form that tends to give shape to rules, social mores, social attitudes, feelings—it does this in a very beautiful, fluid way. To me the issue of form and formlessness is most strong in the theme of mortality versus a human wish for immortality of a sort. Take, for example, the definition of beauty in fashion. Remember what Alison says at the beginning? She says when she was young she didn’t know what beautiful was. She looked at this woman who everyone was saying was beautiful and she didn’t even know what they were talking about. I experienced that when I was a child. If I loved someone I thought they were really beautiful. And then eventually, I began to get it, the social concept of beauty. Not that I think beautiful is completely imaginary, but beauty is so wide ranging and fluid. Yet there’s a need to say: “This is what it is, and it’s not changing; we’re taking a picture of it to hold it still.” It’s like an impulse to put up a building meant to last forever. An urge to grab and hold something in place when nothing human can be grabbed and held in place. We come into these physical bodies . . . whatever we are takes this shape that is so particular and distinct—eyes, nose, mouth—and then it gradually begins to disintegrate. Eventually it’s going to dissolve completely. It’s a huge problem for people; we can understand it, but it breaks our hearts. And so we’re constantly trying to pin something down or leave a trace that will last forever. “And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita . . .” What other immortality will anyone share? ~ Mary Gaitskill,

1280:PART TWO FACING DEATH AND DYING The issue of facing death in a peaceful manner is a very difficult one. According to common sense, there seem to be two ways of dealing with the problem and the suffering. The first is simply to try to avoid the problem, to put it out of your mind, even though the reality of that problem is still there and it is not minimized. Another way of dealing with this issue is to look directly at the problem and analyse it, make it familiar to you and make it clear that it is a part of all our lives. Illness happens. It is not something exceptional; it is part of nature and a fact of life. Of course we have every right to avoid illness and pain, but in spite of that effort, when illness happens it is better to accept it. While you should make every effort to cure it as soon as possible, you should have no extra mental burden. As the great Indian scholar Shantideva has said: ‘If there is a way to overcome the suffering, then there is no need to worry; if there is no way to overcome the suffering, then there is no use in worrying.’ That kind of rational attitude is quite useful. Death is a part of all our lives. Whether we like it or not, it is bound to happen. Instead of avoiding thinking about it, it is better to understand its meaning. We all have the same body, the same human flesh, and therefore we will all die. There is a big difference, of course, between natural death and accidental death, but basically death will come sooner or later. If from the beginning your attitude is, ‘Yes, death is part of our lives’, then it may be easier to face. ~ Dalai Lama XIV,

1281:Starting probably with those conversations so long ago with Aunt Sarah Jane, I have learned to understand the old structure of racism as a malevolent convention, the malevolence of which is hard to locate in the conscious intentions of most people. It was a circumstance that was mostly taken for granted. It was inexcusable, and yet we had the formidable excuse of being used to it. It was an injustice both accommodated and varyingly obscured not only by daily custom, but also by the exigencies and preoccupations of daily life. We left the issue alone, not exactly by ignoring it, but by observing an elaborate etiquette that permitted us to ignore it. White people who wished to think well of themselves did not use the language of racial insult in front of black people. But the problem for us white people, as we had finally to understand, was that we could not be selectively complicit. To be complicit at all, even thoughtlessly by custom, was to be complicit in the whole extent and reach of the injustice. It is hard for a customary indifference to unstick itself from the abominations to which it tacitly consents. But we were used to it. What is hardest to get used to maybe, once you are aware, is the range of things humans are able to get used to. I was more used to this once than I am now. Aunt Sarah Jane’s plain talk of racial injustice as she knew it, thereby introducing the fester of it into the conscience of a small boy, who knew it only as the accepted way and a mandatory etiquette, was by the measure of that time remarkable. To the extent that her talk was a discomfort and an instruction, it was a service. ~ Wendell Berry,

1282:Getting in touch with the lovelessness within and letting that lovelessness speak its pain is one way to begin again on love's journey. In relationships, whether heterosexual or homosexual, the partner who is hurting often finds that their mate is unwilling to 'hear' the pain. Women often tell me that they feel emotionally beaten down when their partners refuse to listen or talk. When women communicate from a place of pain, it is often characterized as 'nagging.' Sometimes women hear repeatedly that their partners are 'sick of listening to this shit.' Both cases undermine self-esteem. Those of us who were wounded in childhood often were shamed and humiliated when we expressed hurt. It is emotionally devastating when the partners we have chosen will not listen. Usually, partners who are unable to respond compassionately when hearing us speak our pain, whether they understand it or not, are unable to listen because that expressed hurt triggers their own feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Many men never want to feel helpless or vulnerable. They will, at times, choose to silence a partner with violence rather than witness emotional vulnerability. When a couple can identify this dynamic, they can work on the issue of caring, listening to each other's pain by engaging in short conversations at appropriate times (i.e., it's useless to try and speak your pain to someone who is bone weary, irritable, reoccupied, etc.). Setting a time when both individuals come together to engage in compassionate listening enhances communication and connection. When we are committed to doing the work of love we listen even when it hurts. ~ bell hooks,

1283:One way of approaching the question about what makes a human being the same person over time would be to point out that we are living things. You are the same individual animal that you were as a baby. Locke used the word ‘man’ (meaning by that ‘man or woman’) to refer to the ‘human animal’. He thought it was true to say that over a life each of us remains the same ‘man’ in that sense. There is a continuity of the living human being that develops in the course of its life. But for Locke being the same ‘man’ was very different from being the same person. According to Locke, I could be the same ‘man’, but not the same person I was previously. How could that be? What makes us the same person over time, Locke claimed, is our consciousness, our awareness of our own selves. What you can't remember isn't part of you as a person. To illustrate this he imagined a prince waking up with a cobbler's memories; and a cobbler with a prince's memories. The prince wakes up as usual in his palace, and to outside appearances is the same person he was when he went to sleep. But because he has the cobbler's memories instead of his own, he feels that he is the cobbler. Locke's point was that the prince is right to feel that he is the cobbler. Bodily continuity doesn't decide the issue. What matters in questions about personal identity is psychological continuity. If you have the prince's memories, then you are the prince. If you have the cobbler's memories, you are the cobbler, even if you have the body of a prince. If the cobbler had committed a crime, it would be the one with the prince's body that we should hold responsible for it. Of ~ Nigel Warburton,

1284:Only optimists thought this possible at the time and even the leaders of the anti-slavery movement did not at first attempt the direct abolition of the institution of slavery itself, hoping instead that stopping the buying and selling of human beings would dry up the source and cause slavery as an institution to wither on the vine. At this juncture in history, Britain was the world's largest slave trader and the powerful vested interests which this created were able to roundly defeat early attempts to get Parliament to ban the trade. In the long run, however, such powerful opposition to the proposed ban, combined with equal tenacity on the other side, simply dragged out the political struggle for decades, making ever wider circles of people aware of the issue. Something that had never been a public issue before now became a subject of inescapable and heated controversy for years on end. Slavery could no longer be accepted as simply one of those facts of life that most people do not bother to think about. The long, drawn-out political controversy meant that more and more people had to think about it—and many who began to think about slavery turned against it. Eventually, such strong feelings were aroused among the British public that anti-slavery petitions with unprecedented numbers of signatures poured into Parliament from around the country, from people in all walks of life, until the mounting political pressures forced not only a banning of the international slave trade in 1808, but eventually swept the anti-slavery forces on beyond their original goals toward the direct abolition of the institution of slavery itself. ~ Thomas Sowell,

1285:Later that day, Kestrel sat with Arin in the music room. She played her tiles: a pair of wolves and three mice. Arin turned his over with a resigned sigh. He didn’t have a bad set, but it wasn’t good enough, and beneath his usual level of skill. He stiffened in his chair as if physically bracing himself for her question. Kestrel studied his tiles. She was certain he could have done better than a pair of wasps. She thought of the tiles he had shown earlier in the game, and the careless way in which he had discarded others. If she didn’t know how little he liked to lose against her, she would have suspected him of throwing the game. She said, “You seem distracted.” “Is that your question? Are you asking me why I am distracted?” “So you admit that you are distracted.” “You are a fiend,” he said, echoing Ronan’s words during the match at Faris’s garden party. Then, apparently annoyed at his own words, he said, “Ask your question.” She could have pressed the issue, but his distraction was a less interesting mystery compared to one growing in her mind. She didn’t think Arin was who he appeared to be. He had the body of someone born into hard work, yet he knew how to play a Valorian game, and play it well. He spoke her language like someone who had studied it carefully. He knew--or pretended to know--the habits of a Herrani lady and the order of her rooms. He had been relaxed and adept around her stallion, and while that might not mean anything--he had not ridden Javelin--Kestrel knew that horsemanship among the Herrani before the war had been a mark of high class. Kestrel though that Arin was someone who had fallen far. ~ Marie Rutkoski,

1286:In Iowa, the American Future Fund began airing an ad created by Larry McCarthy that Geoff Garin, the Democratic pollster, described as perhaps “the most egregious of the year.” The ad accused the then congressman Bruce Braley, an Iowa Democrat and a lawyer, of supporting a proposed Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, which it misleadingly called a “mosque at Ground Zero.” As footage of the destroyed World Trade Center rolled, a narrator said, “For centuries, Muslims built mosques where they won military victories.” Now it said a mosque celebrating 9/11 was to be built on the very spot “where Islamic terrorists killed three thousand Americans”; it was, the narrator suggested, as if the Japanese were to build a triumphal monument at Pearl Harbor. The ad then accused Braley of supporting the mosque. In fact, Braley had taken no position on the issue. No surprise for a congressman from Iowa. But an unidentified video cameraman had ambushed him at the Iowa State Fair and asked him about it. Braley replied that he regarded the matter as a local zoning issue for New Yorkers to decide. Soon afterward, he says, the attack ad “dropped on me like the house in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ ” Braley, who won his seat by a margin of 30 percent in 2008, barely held on in 2010. The American Future Fund’s effort against Braley was the most expensive campaign that year by an independent group. After the election, Braley accused McCarthy, the ad maker, of “profiting from Citizens United in the lowest way.” As for those who hired McCarthy, he said, they “are laughing all the way to the bank. It’s a good investment for them…They’re the winners. The losers are the American people, and the truth. ~ Jane Mayer,

1287:WHAT Is GRACE? Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. ROMANS 5:20) What, then, is the grace by which we're saved and under which we live? Grace is God's free and unmerited favor shown to guilty sinners who deserve only judgment. It's the love of God shown to the unlovely. It is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against Him. Grace stands in direct opposition to any supposed worthiness on our part. To say it another way: Grace and works are mutually exclusive. As Paul said in Romans 11:6, "If it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace." Our relationship with God is based on either works or grace. There's never a works-plus-grace relationship with Him. Furthermore, grace doesn't first rescue us from the penalty of our sins, furnish us with some new spiritual abilities, then leave us on our own to grow in spiritual maturity. Rather, as Paul said, "He who began a good work in you [by His grace] will [also by His grace] carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6, NIV). Paul asks us today, as he asked the Galatian believers, "After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to obtain your goal by human effort?" (Galatians 3:3, Niv). Although the issue of circumcision was the specific problem Paul was addressing, notice that he didn't say, "Are you trying to attain your goal by circumcision?" He generalized his question and dealt not with the specific issue of circumcision, but with the broader problem of trying to please God by human effort, any effort - even good Christian activities and disciplines performed in a spirit of legalism. Transforming Grace ~ Jerry Bridges,

1288:Before we move on to the stuffer who collects retaliation rocks, I want to address the issue of impossible people. We know that all things are possible with God. But all things are not possible with people who refuse to be led by the Holy Spirit. I’ve had to get really honest about certain people in my life. It isn’t productive or possible to confront them and expect anything good to come from it. If someone has told me over and over through their actions and reactions that they will make my life miserable if I confront them, at some point I have to back away. But I don’t want to stuff and allow bitterness toward them to poison me. So, how do I back away and not stuff? I acknowledge that I can control only myself. I can’t control how another person acts or reacts. Therefore, I shift my focus from trying to fix the other person and the situation to allowing God to reveal some tender truths to me. I typically pray something like this: God, I’m so tired of being hurt. I’m so tired of feeling distracted and discouraged by this situation. Pour Your lavish mercy on my heart and into this hard relationship. Help me to see the obvious hurt they must have in their life that makes them act this way. Help me to have compassion for their pain. Help me to see anything I’m doing or have done that has negatively affected this situation. And please help me to know how to separate myself graciously from this constant source of hurt in my life. It all feels impossible. Oh God, speak to me. Reveal clearly how I can best honor You, even in this. My job isn’t to fix the difficult people in my life or enable them to continue disrespectful or abusive behaviors. My job is to be obedient to God in the way I act and respond to those people. ~ Lysa TerKeurst,

1289:Miss Hathaway.” Cam spoke gently, while she fidgeted before him. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her until she quieted. “Do I make you nervous?” She brought herself to look up at him, her eyes harboring the blue-black glitter of a moonlit lake. “No,” she said immediately. “No, of course you … yes. Yes, you do.” The vehement honesty of her answer surprised both of them. The night deepened—one of the torches had burned out—and the conversation devolved into something halting and broken and delicious, like pieces of barley sugar melting on the tongue. “I would never hurt you,” Cam said in a low voice. “I know. It’s not that—” “It’s because I kissed you, isn’t it?” “You … you said you didn’t remember.” “I remember.” “Why did you do it?” she asked in a half-whisper. “Impulse. Opportunity.” Aroused by her nearness, Cam tried to ignore the coursing readiness of his own body. “Surely you would have expected no less of a Roma. We take what we want. If a Roma desires a woman, he steals her for himself. Sometimes right out of her bed.” Even in the darkness he could see the rich renewal of her blush. “You just said you would never hurt me.” “If I carried you away with me…” The idea of it, her soft, struggling weight in his arms, sent his blood surging. He was caught by the primitive appeal of it, all reason crushed beneath the thumping heat of desire. “The last thing on my mind would be hurting you.” “You would never do such a thing.” She was trying very hard to sound matter-of-fact. “We both know you’re too civilized.” “Do we? Believe me, the issue of my civility is entirely open to question.” “Mr. Rohan,” she asked unsteadily, “are you trying to make me nervous?” “No.” As if the word required emphasis, he repeated softly, “No. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

1290:GRACE FOR GLORY My grace is sufficient for you. (2 CORINTHIANS 12:9)   God’s grace is not given to make us feel better but to glorify Him. Modern society’s subtle, underlying agenda is good feelings. We want the pain to go away. We want to feel better in difficult situations. But God wants us to glorify Him in those circumstances. Good feelings may or may not come, but that’s not the issue. The issue is whether we honor God by the way we respond to our circumstances. God’s grace — the enabling power of the Holy Spirit — is given to help us respond in such a way. God’s grace is sufficient. The Greek verb for is sufficient in 2 Corinthians 12:9 is translated “will be content” in 1 Timothy 6:8: “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (NIV). This helps us understand what sufficient means. Food and clothing refer to life’s necessities, not luxuries. If we have the necessities, we’re to be content, realizing they’re sufficient. So it is with God’s grace in the spiritual realm. God always gives us what we need, perhaps sometimes more, but never less. The spiritual equivalent of food and clothing is simply the strength to endure in a way that honors God. Receiving that strength, we’re to be content. We would like the “luxury” of having our particular thorn removed, but God often says, “Be content with the strength to endure that thorn.” We can be confident He always gives that. John Blanchard said, “So he [God] supplies perfectly measured grace to meet the needs of the godly. For daily needs there is daily grace; for sudden needs, sudden grace; for overwhelming need, overwhelming grace. God’s grace is given wonderfully, but not wastefully; freely but not foolishly; bountifully but not blindly.”77   Transforming Grace ~ Jerry Bridges,

1291:As late I rambled in the happy fields, What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew From his lush clover covert;when anew Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields; I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields, A fresh-blown musk-rose; 'twas the first that threw Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew As is the wand that Queen Titania wields. And, as I feasted on its fragrancy, I thought the garden-rose it far excelled; But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me, My sense with their deliciousness was spelled: Soft voices had they, that with tender plea Whispered of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquelled. 'This sonnet was addressed to Charles Wells, the author of Stories After Nature, Joseph and His Brethren, and a few fugitive compositions. His great dramatic poem, Joseph and His Brethren, probably came out late in 1823 .... The book was left in oblivion till within the last few years. Wells, however, lived to find himself famous in 1876, on the issue of a revised edition. ... He died at Marseilles on the 17th of February 1879, in his 78th year, having finally corrected and interpolated a copy of the new edition of his great work for some future re-edition. In Tom Keats's copy-book this sonnet is headed "To Charles Wells on receiving a bunch of roses," and dated "June 29, 1816." In this heading the word 'full-blown' stands cancelled before roses. The only variation beyond spelling and pointing is in the last line, which is -- Whispered of truth, Humanity and Friendliness unquell'd.' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895. by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes ~ John Keats, Sonnet V. To A Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses ,

1292:Poppy . . . Are you . . .” He was forced to pause, as if he were fumbling to speak in a foreign language. Which he was, in a way. Poppy knew what Harry wanted to ask, and yet she didn’t want him to. He was forcing the issue—it was too soon—she wanted to beg him to be patient, for both their sakes. He managed to get the words out. “Are you starting to care for me, Poppy?” “No,” she said firmly, but that didn’t seem to put him off at all. Harry leaned his face against hers, his lips parting against her cheek in a nuzzling half kiss. “Not even a little?” he whispered. “Not the slightest bit.” He pressed the side of his cheek to hers, his lips playing with the wisps of hair at her ear. “Why won’t you say it?” He was so large and warm, and everything in her wanted to surrender to him. A fine trembling started inside her, radiating outward from her bones to her skin. “Because if I did, you wouldn’t be able to run from me fast enough.” “I would never run from you.” “Yes, you would. You’d turn distant and push me away, because you’re not nearly ready to take such a risk yet.” Harry pressed the front of his body all along hers, his forearms braced on either side of her head. “Say it,” he urged, tender and predatory. “I want to hear what it sounds like.” Poppy had never thought it was possible to be amused and aroused at the same time. “No, you don’t.” Slowly, her arms went around his lean waist. If only Harry knew the extent of what she felt for him. The very second she judged that he was ready, the moment she was certain it wouldn’t cause their marriage to lose ground, she would tell him how dearly she loved him. She could hardly wait. “I’ll make you say it,” Harry said, his sensuous mouth covering hers, his hands going to the fastenings of her bodice. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

1293:The Iranian reaction after 9/11 shows in high relief the apparent paradox in Iranian attitudes to the West, in general, and to the United States, in particular. As we have seen, Iranians have real historical grounds for resentment that are unique to Iran and that go beyond the usual postures of nationalism and anti-Americanism. But among many ordinary Iranians there is also a liking and respect for Europeans and Americans that goes well beyond what one finds elsewhere in the Middle East. To some extent this is again a function of the Iranians’ sense of their special status among other Middle Eastern nations. Plainly, different Iranians combine these attitudes in different ways, but the best way to explain this paradox is perhaps to say that many Iranians (irrespective of their attitude to their own government, which they may also partly blame for the situation) feel snubbed, abused, misunderstood, and let down by the Westerners they think should have been their friends. This emerges in different ways—including in the rhetoric of politics, as is illustrated by a passage from a televised speech by Supreme Leader Khamenei on June 30, 2007: Why, you may ask, should we adopt an offensive stance? Are we at war with the world? No, this is not the meaning. We believe that the world owes us something. Over the issue of the colonial policies of the colonial world, we are owed something. As far as our discussions with the rest of the world about the status of women are concerned, the world is indebted to us. Over the issue of provoking internal conflicts in Iran and arming with various types of weapons, the world is answerable to us. Over the issue of proliferation of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and biological weapons, the world owes us something. ~ Michael Axworthy,

1294:Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect the shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be "healing." A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to "get through it," rise to the occasion, exhibit the "strength" that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves the for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief was we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself. ~ Joan Didion,

1295:Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be “healing.” A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to “get through it,” rise to the occasion, exhibit the “strength” that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.           A ~ Joan Didion,

1296:Three major points are: You get probabilities, not definite answers. You don't get access to the wave function itself, but only a peek at processed versions of it. Answering different questions may require processing the wave function in different ways. Each of those three points raises big issues. The first raises the issue of determinism. Is calculating probabilities really the best we can do? The second raises the issue of many worlds. What does the full wave-function describe, when we're not peeking? Does it represent a gigantic expansion of reality, or is it just a mind tool, no more real than a dream? The third raises the issue of complementarity. To address different questions, we must process information in different ways. In important examples, those methods of processing prove to be mutually incompatible. Thus no one approach, however clever, can provide answers to all possible questions. To do full justice to reality, we must engage it from different perspectives. That is the philosophical principle of complementarity. It is a lesson in humility that quantum theory forces to our attention. We have, for example, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: You can't measure both the position and the momentum of particles at the same time. Theoretically, it follows from the mathematics of wave functions. Experimentally, it arises because measurement requires active involvement with the object being measured. To probe is to interact, and to interact is potentially to disturb. Each of these issues is fascinating, and the first two have gotten a lot of attention. To me, however, the third seems especially well-grounded and meaningful. Complementarity is both a feature of physical reality and a lesson in wisdom, to which we shall return. ~ Frank Wilczek,

1297:All those beings who revealed truths to me and who were no longer there, seemed to me to have lived a life from which I alone profited and as though they had died for me. It was sad for me to think that in my book, my love which was once everything to me, would be so detached from a being that various readers would apply it textually to the love they experienced for other women. But why should I be horrified by this posthumous infidelity, that this man or that should offer unknown women as the object of my sentiment, when that infidelity, that division of love between several beings began with my life and long before I began writing? I had indeed suffered successively through Gilberte, through Mme de Guermantes, through Albertine. Successively also I had forgotten them and only my love, dedicated at different times to different beings, had lasted. I had anticipated the profanation of my memories by unknown readers. I was not far from being horrified with myself as, perhaps, some nationalist party might be in whose name hostilities had been provoked and who alone had benefited from a war in which many noble victims had suffered and died without even knowing the issue of the struggle which, for my grandmother, would have been such a complete reward. And the single consolation she never knew, that at last I had set to work, was, such being the fate of the dead, that though she could not rejoice in my progress she had at least been spared consciousness of my long inactivity, of the frustrated life which had been such a pain to her. And certainly there were many others besides my grandmother and Albertine from whom I had assimilated a word, a glance, but of whom as individual beings I remembered nothing; a book is a great cemetery in which, for the most part, the names upon the tombs are effaced. ~ Marcel Proust,

1298:I want to go with you, Dom,” Jane said. Her uncle put his arm about her shoulders. “Let the men do their work, my dear. You should stay here with your fiancé.” The reminder of her still-standing betrothal made Dom want to smash something. But her uncle was right--she would only get in the way if she joined them. And there was the problem of her riding off unchaperoned with two gentlemen. “Listen to your uncle,” Dom said. “It’s best if you remain here with your…friends.” He couldn’t bring himself to use the word fiancé. Her eyes sparked fire. “So you mean to just go rushing off with your mind set? You’ll almost certainly put Nancy in danger if you continue assuming she’s part of the scheme.” “You must trust me, Jane.” When the word must made her flinch, he cursed his quick tongue and deliberately softened his tone. “I know it’s hard for you to believe sometimes, but I do know what I’m doing. No matter what my opinions, I’ll let the facts stand for themselves. I promise I won’t harm her or allow anyone else to harm her, sweeting.” Only after a stunned silence fell on the room did he realize what he’d called Jane. She did, too, for her eyes went wide and a blush stained her cheeks again. Blakeborough’s eyes glittered like sleet on slate as he strode over to Dom and thrust the piece of paper at him. “Here’s the list of Samuel’s haunts. You’d best go if you mean to catch them.” They stared each other down, silently acknowledging their status as rivals for Jane’s hand. How Dom wished he could set everyone straight, tell them that he and Jane were going to be married, and to blazes with Sadler and Blakeborough and anyone who stood in their way. But he’d tried to force the issue once and that had only muddied the waters. It was time to let Jane make up her own mind. ~ Sabrina Jeffries,

1299:How about writing to your brother?” Oria asked at last. “Bran is good, and kind, and as honest as the stars are old,” I said, “but the more I read, the more I realize that he has no political sense at all. He takes people as he finds them. I don’t think he’d have the first notion about what makes a good or bad ruler.” Oria nodded slowly. “In fact, I suspect he would not even like being asked.” She gave me a straight look. “There is one person you could ask, and that is the Marquis of Shevraeth.” “Ask the putative next king to evaluate his rival? Not even I would do that,” I said with a grimace. “No.” “Then you could go to Court and evaluate them yourself,” she stated. “Why not? Everything is finished here, or nearly. We have peace in the county, and as for the house, you made me steward. Will you trust me to carry your plans forward?” “Of course I will,” I said impatiently. “But that’s not the issue. I won’t go to Court. I don’t want to…” “Don’t want to what?” Oria persisted. I sighed. “Don’t want to relive the old humiliations.” “What humiliations?” she asked, her eyes narrowed as she studied me. “Mel, the whole country thinks you a heroine for facing down Galdran.” “Not everyone,” I muttered. Oria crossed her arms. “Which brings us right back,” she said, “to that Marquis.” I sighed again. “If I never see him again, I will be content--” “You’ll not,” Oria said firmly. I shook my head and looked out sightlessly at the snow, my mind instead reliving memories of the year before. I could just picture how he must have described our encounters--always in that drawling voice, with his courtier’s wit--for the edification of the sophisticates at Court. How much laughter had every noble in the kingdom enjoyed at the expense of the barefoot, ignorant Countess Meliara Astiar of Tlanth? ~ Sherwood Smith,

1300:The advice process: From the start, make sure that all members of the organization can make any decision, as long as they consult with the people affected and the people who have expertise on the matter. If a new hire comes to you to approve a decision, refuse to give him the assent he is looking for. Make it clear that nobody, not even the founder, “approves” a decision in a self-managing organization. That said, if you are meaningfully affected by the decision or if you have expertise on the matter, you can of course share your advice. A conflict resolution mechanism: When there is disagreement between two colleagues, they are likely to send it up to you if you are the founder or CEO. Resist the temptation to settle the matter for them. Instead, it’s time to formulate a conflict resolution mechanism that will help them work their way through the conflict. (You might be involved later on if they can’t sort the issue out one-on-one and if they choose you as a mediator or panel member.) Peer-based evaluation and salary processes: Who will decide on the compensation of a new hire, and based on what process? Unless you consciously think about it, you might do it the traditional way: as a founder, you negotiate and settle with the new recruit on a certain package (and then probably keep it confidential). Why not innovate from the start? Give the potential hire information about other people’s salaries and let them peg their own number, to which the group of colleagues can then react with advice to increase or lower the number. Similarly, it makes sense right from the beginning to choose a peer-based mechanism for the appraisal process if you choose to formalize such a process. Otherwise, people will naturally look to you, the founder, to tell them how they are doing, creating a de facto sense of hierarchy within the team. ~ Frederic Laloux,

1301:I am cross with Christopher,” Beatrix told Amelia in the afternoon, as they strolled arm in arm along the graveled paths behind Ramsay House. “And before I tell you about it, I want to make it clear that there is only one reasonable side of the issue. Mine.” “Oh, bother,” Amelia said sympathetically. “Husbands do make one cross at times. Tell me your side, and I will agree completely.” Beatrix began by explaining about the calling card left by the Colonel Fenwick, and Christopher’s subsequent behavior. Amelia sent Beatrix a wry sideways smile. “I believe these are the problems that Christopher took pains to warn you about.” “That’s true,” Beatrix admitted. “But that doesn’t make it any easier to contend with. I love him madly. But I see how he struggles against certain thoughts that jump into his head, or reflexes that he tries to suppress. And he won’t discuss any of it with me. I’ve won his heart, but it’s like owning a house in which most of the doors are permanently locked. He wants to shield me from all unpleasantness. And it’s not really marriage--not like the marriage you have with Cam--until he’s willing to share the worst of himself as well as the best of himself.” “Men don’t like to put themselves at risk in that way,” Amelia said. “One has to be patient.” Her tone became gently arid, her smile rueful. “But I can assure you, dear…no one is ever able to share only the best of himself.” Beatrix gave her a brooding glance. “No doubt I’ll provoke him into some desperate act before long. I push and pry, and he resists, and I’m afraid that will be the pattern of our marriage for the rest of my life.” Amelia smiled at her fondly. “No marriage stays in the same pattern forever. It is both the best feature of marriage and the worst, that it inevitably changes. Wait for your chance, dear. I promise it will come. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

1302:...I had spent hours talking with people who had trouble believing. For some, the issue was that they believed less than they thought they should about Jesus. They were not trouble by the idea that he may have had two human parents instead of one or that his real presence with his disciples after his death might have been more metaphysical than physical. The glory they beheld in him had more to do with the nature of his being than with the number of his miracles, but they had suffered enough at the hands of true believers to learn to keep their mouths shut. For others, the issue was that they believed more than Jesus. Having beheld his glory, they found themselves running into God's glory all over the place, including places where Christian doctrine said that it should not be. I knew Christians who had beheld God's glory in a Lakota sweat lodge, in a sacred Celtic grove, and at the edge of a Hawaiian volcano, as well as in dreams and visions that they were afraid to tell anyone else about at all. These people not only feared being shunned for their unorthodox narratives, they also feared sharing some of the most powerful things that had ever happened to them with people who might dismiss them. Given the history of Christians as a people who started out beholding what was beyond belief, this struck me as a lamentable state of affairs, both for those who have learned to see no more than they are supposed to see as well as for those who have excused themselves from traditional churches because they see too little or too much. If it is true that God exceeds all our efforts to contain God, then is it too big a stretch to declare that dumbfoundedness is what all Christians have most in common? Or that coming together to confess all that we do not know is at least as sacred an activity as declaring what we think we do know? ~ Barbara Brown Taylor,

1303:1. State the situation. “You go right in and hit them with how you see it in the cold light of day, without being too inflammatory or dramatic,” says Rosenberg. She made it clear to the A.M.A. that (a) having no women speakers was wrong, and (b) hiring her would be a step in the right direction. It makes sense that before you can speak persuasively—that is, before you speak from a position of passion and personal knowledge—you need to know where you stand. 2. Communicate your feelings. We downplay the influence of emotions in our day-to-day contacts, especially in the business world. We’re told that vulnerability is a bad thing and we should be wary of revealing our feelings. But as we gain comfort using “I feel” with others, our encounters take on depth and sincerity. Your emotions are a gift of respect and caring to your listeners. 3. Deliver the bottom line. This is the moment of truth when you state, with utter clarity, what it is you want. If you’re going to put your neck on the line, you’d better know why. The truth is the fastest route to a solution, but be realistic. While I knew Phil Knight of Nike wasn’t going to buy anything based on one five-minute conversation on a bus in Davos, Switzerland, I did make sure to get his e-mail and tell him that I’d like to follow up with him again sometime. Then I did so. 4. Use an open-ended question. A request that is expressed as a question—one that cannot be answered by a yes or no—is less threatening. How do you feel about this? How can we solve this problem? The issue has been raised, your feelings expressed, your desires articulated. With an open-ended suggestion or question, you invite the other person to work toward a solution with you. I didn’t insist on a specific lunch date at a specific time with Phil. I left it open and didn’t allow our first exchange to be weighted down by unnecessary obligations ~ Keith Ferrazzi,

1304:In my own professional work I have touched on a variety of different fields. I’ve done work in mathematical linguistics, for example, without any professional credentials in mathematics; in this subject I am completely self-taught, and not very well taught. But I’ve often been invited by universities to speak on mathematical linguistics at mathematics seminars and colloquia. No one has ever asked me whether I have the appropriate credentials to speak on these subjects; the mathematicians couldn’t care less. What they want to know is what I have to say. No one has ever objected to my right to speak, asking whether I have a doctor’s degree in mathematics, or whether I have taken advanced courses in the subject. That would never have entered their minds. They want to know whether I am right or wrong, whether the subject is interesting or not, whether better approaches are possible… the discussion dealt with the subject, not with my right to discuss it. But on the other hand, in discussion or debate concerning social issues or American foreign policy…. The issue is constantly raised, often with considerable venom. I’ve repeatedly been challenged on grounds of credentials, or asked, what special training do I have that entitles you to speak on these matters. The assumption is that people like me, who are outsiders from a professional viewpoint, are not entitled to speak on such things. Compare mathematics and the political sciences… it’s quite striking. In mathematics, in physics, people are concerned with what you say, not with your certification. But in order to speak about social reality, you must have the proper credentials, particularly if you depart from the accepted framework of thinking. Generally speaking, it seems fair to say that the richer the intellectual substance of a field, the less there is a concern for credentials, and the greater is the concern for content. ~ Noam Chomsky,

1305:Suppose that, through legislation (an artificial means) and through a government-run school voucher program (an artificially created market), public schools are privatized. "Natural evolution" will then take place: Schools will have to compete, only the best competitors will survive, and those schools that cannot compete will cease to exist. The surviving schools, by the Folk Theory of the Best Result, will be the best schools. It is an argument entirely based on two metaphors and a folk theory, all of which derive from Strict Father morality. Many people do not notice that Evolution Is Survival Of The Best Competitor is, indeed, a metaphor, much less a Strict Father metaphor. One way to reveal its metaphorical character is to contrast it with a metaphor for evolution that takes the perspective of Nurturant Parent morality: Evolution Is The Survival Of The Best Nurtured. Here "best nurtured" is taken to include both literal nurturing by parents and others and metaphorical nurturing by nature itself. Where fitting an ecological niche is being metaphorized as winning a competition in one case, it is metaphorized as being cared for by nature in the other. Both are metaphors for evolution, but they have very different entailments, especially when combined with the metaphor Natural Change Is Evolution and the folk theory that evolution yields the best result. Putting these together yields a very different composite metaphor for natural change, namely, Natural Change Is The Survival Of The Best Nurtured, which produces the best result. Applied to the issue of whether public schools should be privatized, this metaphor would entail that they should not be. Rather, public schools need to be "better nurtured," that is, given the resources they need to improve: better-trained and better-paid teachers, smaller classes, better facilities, programs for involving parents, community involvement, and so on. ~ George Lakoff,

1306:I mean, if you accept the framework that says totalitarian command economies have the right to make these decisions, and if the wage levels and working conditions are fixed facts, then we have to make choices within those assumptions. Then you can make an argument that poor people here ought to lose their jobs to even poorer people somewhere else... because that increases the economic pie, and it's the usual story. Why make those assumptions? There are other ways of dealing with the problem. Take, for example rich people here. Take those like me who are in the top few percent of the income ladder. We could cut back our luxurious lifestyles, pay proper taxes, there are all sorts of things. I'm not even talking about Bill Gates, but people who are reasonably privileged. Instead of imposing the burden on poor people here and saying "well, you poor people have to give up your jobs because even poorer people need them over there," we could say "okay, we rich people will give up some small part of our ludicrous luxury and use it to raise living standards and working conditions elsewhere, and to let them have enough capital to develop their own economy, their own means." Then the issue will not arise. But it's much more convenient to say that poor people here ought to pay the burden under the framework of command economies—totalitarianism. But, if you think it through, it makes sense and almost every social issue you think about—real ones, live ones, ones right on the table—has these properties. We don't have to accept and shouldn't accept the framework of domination of thought and attitude that only allows certain choices to be made... and those choices almost invariably come down to how to put the burden on the poor. That's class warfare. Even by real nice people like us who think it's good to help poor workers, but within a framework of class warfare that maintains privilege and transfers the burden to the poor. It's a matter of raising consciousness among very decent people. ~ Noam Chomsky,

1307:Parker?” “Yeah?” He’d gotten up now, gone after his bottle of cough syrup. With one smooth motion he scooped it up, unscrewed the top, and took a satisfied gulp. “Parker, I…” Something…I know it’s there…I want to remember…“I want you to take me home.” Parker froze, the bottle at his lips, poised for another swallow. He shot her a sidelong glance. “This is so sudden, Miranda. I mean, we hardly know each other, and I do have a girlfriend. And there is, of course, the issue of my extremely high moral standards. But…okay. What the hell. I’ll take you home with me.” “Not your home. My home. Hayes House.” “What? Hayes House? Oh! Sure! Hayes House! Did you think I meant--that I wanted to--hey, I was just kidding!” The irreverence was there again, the cocky grin back in place. As Miranda climbed into the passenger seat, Parker slid behind the wheel, then gunned the engine to breakneck speed. In less than five minutes they were squealing into the driveway of Hayes House. But even when Parker reached across and shoved open her door, Miranda made no move to get out. “Let me guess.” Parker watched her expectantly. “You really do want to go home with me. You were just playing hard to get.” Slowly Miranda shook her head. She gazed down at the envelope in her lap. “I forgot to give this to Ashley.” “Forget it. Why the big rush to get here?” The sound…the rolling sound…it’s close…it’s important. “I’m not sure, Parker. There’s…something--” “No. Don’t tell me. Whatever it is, I don’t want to see it, hear it, or go through it ever again.” Getting out of the car, Miranda walked a few steps before turning back to face him. “But aren’t you even curious about what happened to you out in the storm? Don’t you even want to explore all the--” “Stop right there. There’s lots of things I want to explore, and things I most definitely will explore. But ghosts aren’t one of them. See you later. ~ Richie Tankersley Cusick,

1308:BERENGER: And you consider all this natural? DUDARD: What could be more natural than a rhinoceros? BERENGER: Yes, but for a man to turn into a rhinoceros is abnormal beyond question. DUDARD: Well, of course, that's a matter of opinion ... BERENGER: It is beyond question, absolutely beyond question! DUDARD: You seem very sure of yourself. Who can say where the normal stops and the abnormal begins? Can you personally define these conceptions of normality and abnormality? Nobody has solved this problem yet, either medically or philosophically. You ought to know that. BERENGER: The problem may not be resolved philosophically -- but in practice it's simple. They may prove there's no such thing as movement ... and then you start walking ... [he starts walking up and down the room] ... and you go on walking, and you say to yourself, like Galileo, 'E pur si muove' ... DUDARD: You're getting things all mixed up! Don't confuse the issue. In Galileo's case it was the opposite: theoretic and scientific thought proving itself superior to mass opinion and dogmatism. BERENGER: [quite lost] What does all that mean? Mass opinion, dogmatism -- they're just words! I may be mixing everything up in my head but you're losing yours. You don't know what's normal and what isn't any more. I couldn't care less about Galileo ... I don't give a damn about Galileo. DUDARD: You brought him up in the first place and raised the whole question, saying that practice always had the last word. Maybe it does, but only when it proceeds from theory! The history of thought and science proves that. BERENGER: [more and more furious] It doesn't prove anything of the sort! It's all gibberish, utter lunacy! DUDARD: There again we need to define exactly what we mean by lunacy ... BERENGER: Lunacy is lunacy and that's all there is to it! Everybody knows what lunacy is. And what about the rhinoceroses -- are they practice or are they theory? ~ Eug ne Ionesco,

1309:Alone, [Chamcha] all at once remembered that he and Pamela had once disagreed, as they disagreed on everything, on a short-story they’d both read, whose theme was precisely the nature of the unforgivable. Title and author eluded him, but the story came back vividly. A man and a woman had been intimate friends (never lovers) for all their adult lives. On his twenty-first birthday (they were both poor at the time) she had given him, as a joke, the most horrible, cheap glass vase she could find, in colours a garish parody of Venetian gaiety. Twenty years later, when they were both successful and greying, she visited his home and quarrelled with him over his treatment of a mutual friend. In the course of the quarrel her eye fell upon the old vase, which he still kept in pride of place on his sitting-room mantelpiece, and, without pausing in her tirade, she swept it to the floor, crushing it beyond hope of repair. He never spoke to her again; when she died, half a century later, he refused to visit her deathbed or attend her funeral, even though messengers were sent to tell him that these were her dearest wishes. ‘Tell her,’ he said to the emissaries, 'that she never knew how much I valued what she broke.’ The emissaries argued, pleaded, raged. If she had not known how much meaning he had invested in the trifle, how could she in all fairness be blamed? And had she not made countless attempts, over the years, to apologize and atone? And she was dying, for heaven’s sake; could not this ancient, childish rift be healed at last? They had lost a lifetime’s friendship; could they not even say goodbye? 'No,’ said the unforgiving man. – 'Really because of the vase? Or are you concealing some other, darker matter?’ – 'It was the vase,’ he answered, 'the vase, and nothing but.’ Pamela thought the man petty and cruel, but Chamcha had even then appreciated the curious privacy, the inexplicable inwardness of the issue. 'Nobody can judge an internal injury,’ he had said, 'by the size of the superficial wound, of the hole. ~ Salman Rushdie,

1310:BERENGER: And you consider all this natural? DUDARD: What could be more natural than a rhinoceros? BERENGER: Yes, but for a man to turn into a rhinoceros is abnormal beyond question. DUDARD: Well, of course, that's a matter of opinion ... BERENGER: It is beyond question, absolutely beyond question! DUDARD: You seem very sure of yourself. Who can say where the normal stops and the abnormal begins? Can you personally define these conceptions of normality and abnormality? Nobody has solved this problem yet, either medically or philosophically. You ought to know that. BERENGER: The problem may not be resolved philosophically -- but in practice it's simple. They may prove there's no such thing as movement ... and then you start walking ... [he starts walking up and down the room] ... and you go on walking, and you say to yourself, like Galileo, 'E pur si muove' ... DUDARD: You're getting things all mixed up! Don't confuse the issue. In Galileo's case it was the opposite: theoretic and scientific thought proving itself superior to mass opinion and dogmatism. BERENGER: [quite lost] What does all that mean? Mass opinion, dogmatism -- they're just words! I may be mixing everything up in my head but you're losing yours. You don't know what's normal and what isn't any more. I couldn't care less about Galileo ... I don't give a damn about Galileo. DUDARD: You brought him up in the first place and raised the whole question, saying that practice always had the last word. Maybe it does, but only when it proceeds from theory! The history of thought and science proves that. BERENGER: [more and more furious] It doesn't prove anything of the sort! It's all gibberish, utter lunacy! DUDARD: There again we need to define exactly what we mean by lunacy ... BERENGER: Lunacy is lunacy and that's all there is to it! Everybody knows what lunacy is. And what about the rhinoceroses -- are they practice or are they theory? ~ Eug ne Ionesco,

1311:Politicians seldom if ever get [into public office] by merit alone, at least in democratic states. Sometimes, to be sure, it happens, but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged… Will any of them venture to tell the plain truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the situation of the country, foreign or domestic? Will any of them refrain from promises that he knows he can’t fulfill — that no human being could fulfill? Will any of them utter a word, however obvious, that will alarm or alienate any of the huge pack of morons who cluster at the public trough, wallowing in the pap that grows thinner and thinner, hoping against hope? Answer: maybe for a few weeks at the start… But not after the issue is fairly joined, and the struggle is on in earnest… They will all promise every man, woman and child in the country whatever he, she or it wants. They’ll all be roving the land looking for chances to make the rich poor, to remedy the irremediable, to succor the unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the undephlogisticable. They will all be curing warts by saying words over them, and paying off the national debt with money no one will have to earn. When one of them demonstrates that twice two is five, another will prove that it is six, six and a half, ten, twenty, n. In brief, they will divest themselves from their character as sensible, candid and truthful men, and simply become candidates for office, bent only on collaring votes. They will all know by then, even supposing that some of them don’t know it now, that votes are collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense, and they will apply themselves to the job with a hearty yo-heave-ho. Most of them, before the uproar is over, will actually convince themselves. The winner will be whoever promises the most with the least probability of delivering anything. ~ H L Mencken,

1312:During a meeting with Deng in the Great Hall of the People, Kissinger and Bush received word that Mao himself was ready to see them. “You will meet with the Chairman at six-thirty,” Deng said after reading a note that had been handed to him. It would be Bush’s first encounter with the legendary Mao. In the chairman’s villa, they found the eighty-one-year-old barely able to speak. Kissinger asked how he was doing. Pointing to his head, Mao replied, “This part works well. I can eat and sleep.” Tapping his legs, he said, “These parts do not work well. They are not strong when I walk. I also have some trouble with my lungs. In a word, I am not well.” With a smile, he added, “I am a showcase for visitors.” Bush sat next to Kissinger, who was at Mao’s left hand. “I am going to heaven soon,” Mao said. “I have already received an invitation from God.” “Don’t accept it soon,” said Kissinger. “I accept the orders of the Doctor,” Mao replied, a wry allusion to Kissinger’s PhD. Kissinger then turned serious. “I attach great significance to our relationship,” he said. Mao held up one hand in a fist and the little finger of his other hand. “You are this,” he said, gesturing to the fist, “and we are that,” waving the little finger. Yet we have common foes, Kissinger said. Yes, Mao wrote, in English, on a piece of paper. They spoke of Taiwan; Mao said the issue would be settled eventually, in “a hundred” or perhaps “several hundred” years. By now Bush understood the vernacular in which Mao was speaking. The Chinese, Bush noted, “see time and their own cultural patience as allies in dealing with impatient Westerners.” They spoke, too, of a current problem in the relationship that Mao dismissed as a fang go pi, or a “dog fart.” It was an expression, Bush thought, that might have even impressed Harry Truman. Bush saw Mao just once more, during Ford’s 1975 visit to China. Receiving the president late on a December afternoon, Mao noticed Bush standing nearby. “You’ve been promoted,” Mao remarked to Bush, telling Ford: “We hate to see him go. ~ Jon Meacham,

1313:You have no idea where Anne’s office is?” I asked, grouchy and beyond footsore, seriously envying Jack’s completely healed feet. We’d already been here for an hour and had nothing to show for it other than a few close calls with security patrols. I’d figured since I couldn’t check every room for Raquel, searching Anne-Whatever Whatever’s office for records was my next best bet. “Surprisingly enough, I do not make a habit of concerning myself with the locations of offices of people I neither know nor care anything for.” “I thought you had some big vendetta against IPCA for controlling you.” “Have you seen anyone who ever once used my name against me? Present company excepted.” I frowned, checking around a corner to a hall that was, as usual, empty. This was so much less exciting than I had been afraid it would be. Reth walked calmly forward, never pausing, never frantically checking over his shoulder. I wondered what he did to those poor suckers who had trapped him with his true name. I almost asked, but honestly, I didn’t really want to know. “Wait—you didn’t do anything to Raquel.” I inwardly cringed. Raquel had used his name against him, and there I went reminding him. “Hmm. An uncharacteristic oversight.” I snorted. “Yeah, mister always has a plan, you’re constantly missing details.” I shouldn’t push the issue lest I convince him that he still had some vengeance waiting, but I couldn’t help it. It was so unlike him. He waved an elegant hand through the air as though brushing off my observation. “Some things are beneath my attention.” “Liar.” He stopped short, and I walked a few paces before realizing he wasn’t beside me anymore. I turned and found myself sucked into his golden gaze. “You are quite blind sometimes, my love.” “What do you mean by that?” I snapped. Then my jaw dropped as he actually rolled his perfect, gigantic-bordering-on-anime golden eyes. That was so not a faerie gesture. “You just rolled your eyes!” “It would appear you are a negative influence after all. ~ Kiersten White,

1314:Although thrilled that the era of the personal computer had arrived, he was afraid that he was going to miss the party. Slapping down seventy-five cents, he grabbed the issue and trotted through the slushy snow to the Harvard dorm room of Bill Gates, his high school buddy and fellow computer fanatic from Seattle, who had convinced him to drop out of college and move to Cambridge. “Hey, this thing is happening without us,” Allen declared. Gates began to rock back and forth, as he often did during moments of intensity. When he finished the article, he realized that Allen was right. For the next eight weeks, the two of them embarked on a frenzy of code writing that would change the nature of the computer business.1 Unlike the computer pioneers before him, Gates, who was born in 1955, had not grown up caring much about the hardware. He had never gotten his thrills by building Heathkit radios or soldering circuit boards. A high school physics teacher, annoyed by the arrogance Gates sometimes displayed while jockeying at the school’s timesharing terminal, had once assigned him the project of assembling a Radio Shack electronics kit. When Gates finally turned it in, the teacher recalled, “solder was dripping all over the back” and it didn’t work.2 For Gates, the magic of computers was not in their hardware circuits but in their software code. “We’re not hardware gurus, Paul,” he repeatedly pronounced whenever Allen proposed building a machine. “What we know is software.” Even his slightly older friend Allen, who had built shortwave radios, knew that the future belonged to the coders. “Hardware,” he admitted, “was not our area of expertise.”3 What Gates and Allen set out to do on that December day in 1974 when they first saw the Popular Electronics cover was to create the software for personal computers. More than that, they wanted to shift the balance in the emerging industry so that the hardware would become an interchangeable commodity, while those who created the operating system and application software would capture most of the profits. ~ Walter Isaacson,

1315:How long do you intend for us to wait? Obviously you’re not perfect, but--” “‘Not perfect’ is having a bald spot or pockmarks. My problems are a bit more significant than that.” Beatrix answered in an anxious tumble of words. “I come from a family of flawed people who marry other flawed people. Every one of us has taken a chance on love.” ‘I love you too much to risk your safety.” “Love me even more, then,” she begged. “Enough to marry me no matter what the obstacles are.” Christopher scowled. “Don’t you think it would be easier for me to take what I want, regardless of the consequences? I want to hold you every night. I want to make love to you so badly I can’t even breathe. But I won’t allow any harm to come to you, especially from my hands.” “You wouldn’t hurt me. Your instincts wouldn’t let you.” “My instincts are those of a madman.” Beatrix wrapped her arms around her bent knees. “You’re willing to accept my problems,” she said dolefully, “but you won’t allow me to accept yours.” She buried her face in her arms. “You don’t trust me.” “You know that’s not the issue. I don’t trust myself.” In her volatile state, it was difficult not to cry. The situation was so vastly unfair. Maddening. “Beatrix.” Christopher knelt beside her, drawing her against him. She stiffened. “Let me hold you,” he said near her ear. “If we don’t marry, when will I see you?” she asked miserably. “On chaperoned visits? Carriage drives? Stolen moments?” Christopher smoothed her hair and stared into her swimming eyes. “It’s more than we’ve had until now.” “It’s not enough.” Beatrix wrapped her arms around him. “I’m not afraid of you.” Gripping the back of his shirt, she gave it a little shake for emphasis. “I want you, and you say you want me, and the only thing standing in our way is you. Don’t tell me that you survived all those battles, and suffered through so much, merely to come home for this--” He laid his fingers against her mouth. “Quiet. Let me think.” “What is there to--” “Beatrix,” he warned. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

1316:On June 23 the Detroit Free Press printed Jimmy’s last letter to the editor under the title “Race: The Issue Isn’t Black and White.” This letter said: It is no longer useful to look at the racial climate of this country only in terms of black and white. People from more than 100 ethnic groups live here. By 2040 European Americans and African Americans will be among the many minorities who make up the United States. Blacks in Detroit are a majority; they need to stop thinking like a minority or like victims. Both African Americans and European Americans should be thinking of how to integrate with Detroiters of Latino and Arab descent. To the very end Jimmy was striking out at two of his favorite targets: racial (or what he called biological) thinking, and blacks viewing themselves as a minority. When Ossie and Ruby stopped by to see us in June, he met them at the door with a three-page memo suggesting things for them to work on. The next week Ruby sent him a big batch of rich dark gingerbread that she had baked. A few weeks before his death he called Clementine to alert her to the killing of children that was going on in Liberia and to instruct her how to intervene. A few days later he spoke at a Detroit Summer gathering. The next day he went out with a friend (without his oxygen tank) to supervise the moving of a refrigerator. The week before he died he did a two-hour interview with a local radio reporter. Up to two days before his death, he was grooming himself as carefully as always. Then, suddenly on Tuesday night, July 20, he began to stumble, sat down in a bedroom chair, and never got up or spoke again. I was all alone and wasn’t sure what I should do. There didn’t seem to be any point in calling anybody. So I kept stroking him and saying to him over and over: You are a helluva guy. You raised a whole lot of hell—and a helluva lot of questions. You made a helluva lot of friends—and a helluva lot of enemies. You had a helluva lot of ideas— And wrote a helluva lot of books and pamphlets. You made a helluva lot of difference to a helluva lot of people. ~ Grace Lee Boggs,

1317:The Deficit Demon It was the lunatic poet escaped from the local asylum, Loudly he twanged on his banjo and sang with his voice like a saw-mill, While as with fervour he sang there was borne o'er the shuddering wildwood, Borne on the breath of the poet a flavour of rum and of onions. He sang of the Deficit Demon that dqelt in the Treasury Mountains, How it was small in its youth and a champion was sent to destroy it: Dibbs he was salled, and he boasted, "Soon I will wipe out the Monster," But while he was boasting and bragging the monster grew larger and larger. One day as Dibbs bragged of his prowess in daylight the Deficit met him, Settled his hash in one act and made him to all man a byword, Sent hin, a raving ex-Premier, to dwell in the shades of oblivion, And the people put forward a champion known as Sir Patrick the Portly. As in the midnight the tom-cat who seeketh his love on the house top, Lifteth his voice up and is struck by the fast whizzing brickbat, Drops to the ground in a swoon and glides to the silent hereafter, So fell Sir Patrick the Portly at the stroke of the Deficit Demon. Then were the people amazed and they called for the champion of champions Known as Sir 'Enry the Fishfag unequalled in vilification. He is the man, said the people, to wipe out the Deficit Monster, If nothing else fetches him through he can at the least talk its head off. So he sharpened his lance of Freetrade and he practised in loud-mouthing abusing, "Poodlehead," "Craven," and "Mole-eyes" were things that he purposed to call it, He went to the fight full of valour and all men are waiting the issue, Though they know not his armour nor weapons excepting his power of abusing. Loud sang the lunatic his song of the champions of valour Until he was sighted and captured by fleet-footed keepers pursuing, To whom he remarked with a smile as they ran him off back to the madhouse, "If you want to back Parkes I'm your man -- here's a cool three to one on the Deficit." ~ Banjo Paterson,

1318:No regrets?” he murmured to Hunt as they strode down the hall, while Shaw and St. Vincent followed at a more leisurely pace. Hunt glanced at him with a questioning smile. He was a big, dark-haired man, with the same sense of uncompromising masculinity and the same avid interest in hunting and sportsmanship that Marcus possessed. “About what?” “Being led around by the nose by your wife.” That drew a wry grin from Hunt, and he shook his head. “If my wife does lead me around, Westcliff, it’s by an altogether different body part. And no, I have no regrets whatsoever.” “I suppose there’s a certain convenience in being married,” Marcus mused aloud. “Having a woman close at hand to satisfy your needs, not to mention the fact that a wife is undoubtedly more economical than a mistress. There is, moreover, the begetting of heirs to consider…” Hunt laughed at his effort to cast the issue in a practical light. “I didn’t marry Annabelle for convenience. And although I haven’t tabulated any numbers, I can assure you that she is not cheaper than a mistress. As for the begetting of heirs, that was the farthest thing from my mind when I proposed to her.” “Then why did you?” “I would tell you, but not long ago you said that you hoped I wouldn’t start—how did you put it?—‘pollinate the air with maudlin sentiment.’” “You believe yourself to be in love with her.” “No,” Hunt countered in a relaxed manner, “I am in love with her.” Marcus lifted his shoulders in a brief shrug. “If believing that makes marriage more palatable to you, so be it.” “Good God, Westcliff…” Hunt murmured, a curious smile on his face, “haven’t you ever been in love?” “Of course. Obviously I have found that some women are preferable to others in terms of disposition and physical appearance—” “No, no, no…I’m not referring to finding someone who is ‘preferable.’ I mean completely being absorbed by a woman who fills you with desperation, longing, ecstasy…” Marcus threw him a disparaging glance. “I haven’t time for that nonsense.” Hunt annoyed him by laughing. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

1319:I’m fairly certain where you got that dagger, Shaselle.” Cannan walked toward me, pushing his cloak from his broad shoulders. “Why don’t you tell me about it?” I swallowed uneasily. “It-it was Papa’s, remember?” “No, it wasn’t. Tell me how you came to have it.” I stared at him, afraid to answer, afraid to remain silent. He considered me, then laid his cloak around my shoulders. It was still warm from his body and enormously comforting. “I don’t intend to punish you, Shaselle. I’m trying to protect you. But I need to know the truth.” With a shaky breath, I confessed, “It was hidden in Papa’s study.” “And were there others?” “Yes. Many.” Cannan absorbed this, nodding his head. “Sit down,” he said, motioning to a stack of hay against the wall. I obeyed without a word, not sure what would happen now. He stood before me, dark, tall and grave, but not threatening. He had promised he would protect me; he wouldn’t hurt me. “You weren’t supposed to find those weapons--no one was. Have you told anyone?” I shook my head, my mouth so dry I wasn’t certain I could form words. “Is it possible anyone saw you with them?” “No, I was alone. It was late at night.” “Did you disturb the rest of the armaments?” “No. I left them in place and again covered the entrance.” “Good.” Cannan noticeably relaxed in light of my answers. Maybe my mistake would not create problems for them, after all. “One last question. Can you keep silent on the issue?” “Of course,” I said, mortified that he might think otherwise. “And can you stay out of it?” The horses snuffed and pawed the ground in the quiet. I sat stupidly, my lips parted, not sure how to answer. Could I forget what I’d discovered and never wonder about it again? No. Cannan crossed his arms, guessing my thoughts. “Then ask me what you want to know and I’ll tell you.” “What?” I blurted, flabbergasted by what he was offering. “I cannot risk you getting hurt, Shaselle, and your curiosity cannot disrupt what we have planned. If giving you information will keep you from disrupting things, I will do so. ~ Cayla Kluver,

1320:The situation is established not only to provoke defensiveness but to sidetrack the reformer into answering the wrong questions.... In this, the pattern of discourse resembles that of dinnertime conversations about feminism in the early 1970s. Questions of definition often predominate. Whereas feminists were parlaying questions which trivialized feminism such as "Are you one of those bra burners?" vegetarians must define themselves against the trivializations of "Are you one of those health nuts?" or "Are you one of those animal lovers?" While feminists encountered the response that "men need liberation too," vegetarians are greeted by the postulate that "plants have life too." Or to make the issue appear more ridiculous, the position is forwarded this way: "But what of the lettuce and tomato you are eating; they have feelings too!" The attempt to create defensiveness through trivialization is the first conversational gambit which greets threatening reforms. This pre-establishes the perimeters of discourse. One must explain that no bras were burned at the Miss America pageant, or the symbolic nature of the action of that time, or that this question fails to regard with seriousness questions such as equal pay for equal work. Similarly, a vegetarian, thinking that answering these questions will provide enlightenment, may patiently explain that if plants have life, then why not be responsible solely for the plants one eats at the table rather than for the larger quantities of plants consumed by the herbivorous animals before they become meat? In each case a more radical answer could be forwarded: "Men need first to acknowledge how they benefit from male dominance," "Can anyone really argue that the suffering of this lettuce equals that of a sentient cow who must be bled out before being butchered?" But if the feminist or vegetarian responds this way they will be put back on the defensive by the accusation that they are being aggressive. What to a vegetarian or a feminist is of political, personal, existential, and ethical importance, becomes for others only an entertainment during dinnertime. ~ Carol J Adams,

1321:Where is your wife Sarah? It could be inferred from the angel’s question that it was unusual for Sarah not to be there—either in a serving capacity or joining them in the meal (there is no evidence of women eating separately in the ancient world). It could also be inferred from Abraham’s curt response (“there, in the tent”) that this was not just the circumstance of the moment and that she could be sent for. These are not necessary inferences, but there is a possibility that something is indicated here that was transparent to the Israelite reader, yet elusive to us. That is, it is possible that Sarah has had to retreat to the tent and is now confined there—that she has suddenly, much to her shock and consternation, become “indisposed.” Menstruation rendered a woman unclean in the ancient world and would have prohibited her from social contact and from food preparation and serving. The text specifically indicates that she had already gone through menopause (v. 11), but if she were to bear a child, her period would need to restart. The timing would have to be precise here. In v. 6 Abraham asked Sarah to bake some bread, an activity often forbidden to menstruating women in Abraham’s time, so at that point her period had not begun. Yet she would not be confined to her tent unless she actually had her period. If this is the issue, she experienced the onset of her period as dinner is being served. We know even from the Biblical narratives that menstruating women were at times confined to their tents (cf. 31:34–35). This view is also attested in the ancient Near East. Though somewhat speculative, this line of thinking would explain why the announcement that Sarah would bear a child is introduced by a question concerning Sarah’s whereabouts, leading the somewhat embarrassed Abraham to offer the euphemistic explanation that she is “in the tent” as a way of explaining that she is indisposed (note our modern euphemism, “it’s that time of the month”). One could almost imagine a transitional, “Indeed, and that is just the beginning . . .” It would have constituted a remarkable sign of the resumption of her fertility. ~ Anonymous,

1322:Ignorance of the character structure of masses of people invariably leads to fruitless questioning. The Communists, for example, said that it was the misdirected policies of the Social Democrats that made it possible for the fascists to seize power. Actually this explanation did not explain anything, for it was precisely the Social Democrats who made a point of spreading illusions. In short, it did not result in a new mode of action. That political reaction in the form of fascism had 'befogged,' 'corrupted,' and 'hypnotized' the masses is an explanation that is as sterile as the others. This is and will continue to be the function of fascism as long as it exists. Such explanations are sterile because they fail to offer a way out. Experience teaches us that such disclosures, no matter how often they are repeated, do not convince the masses; that, in other words, social economic inquiry by itself is not enough. Wouldn't it be closer to the mark to ask, what was going on in the masses that they could not and would not recognize the function of fascism? To say that, 'The workers have to realize...' or 'We didn't understand...' does not serve any purpose. Why didn't the workers realize, and why didn't they understand? The questions that formed the basis of the discussion between the Right and the Left in the workers' movements are also to be regarded as sterile. The Right contended that the workers were not predisposed to fight; the Left, on the other hand, refuted this and asserted that the workers were revolutionary and that the Right's statement was a betrayal of revolutionary thinking. Both assertions, because they failed to see the complexities of the issue, were rigidly mechanistic. A realistic appraisal would have had to point out that the average worker bears a contradiction in himself; that he, in other words, is neither a clear-cut revolutionary nor a clear-cut conservative, but stands divided. His psychic structure derives on the one hand from the social situation (which prepares the ground for revolutionary attitudes) and on the other hand from the entire atmosphere of authoritarian society—the two being at odds with one another. ~ Wilhelm Reich,

1323:Most such criticism and confrontation, usually made impulsively in anger or annoyance, does more to increase the amount of confusion in the world than the amount of enlightenment. For the truly loving person the act of criticism or confrontation does not come easily; to such a person it is evident that the act has great potential for arrogance. To confront one’s beloved is to assume a position of moral or intellectual superiority over the loved one, at least so far as the issue at hand is concerned. Yet genuine love recognizes and respects the unique individuality and separate identity of the other person. (I will say more about this later.) The truly loving person, valuing the uniqueness and differentness of his or her beloved, will be reluctant indeed to assume, “I am right, you are wrong; I know better than you what is good for you.” But the reality of life is such that at times one person does know better than the other what is good for the other, and in actuality is in a position of superior knowledge or wisdom in regard to the matter at hand. Under these circumstances the wiser of the two does in fact have an obligation to confront the other with the problem. The loving person, therefore, is frequently in a dilemma, caught between a loving respect for the beloved’s own path in life and a responsibility to exercise loving leadership when the beloved appears to need such leadership. The dilemma can be resolved only by painstaking self-scrutiny, in which the lover examines stringently the worth of his or her “wisdom” and the motives behind this need to assume leadership. “Do I really see things clearly or am I operating on murky assumptions? Do I really understand my beloved? Could it not be that the path my beloved is taking is wise and that my perception of it as unwise is the result of limited vision on my part? Am I being self-serving in believing that my beloved needs redirection?” These are questions that those who truly love must continually ask themselves. This self-scrutiny, as objective as possible, is the essence of humility or meekness. In the words of an anonymous fourteenth-century British monk and spiritual teacher, “Meekness in itself is nothing else than a true knowing and feeling of ~ M Scott Peck,

1324:In one of his essays William Placher comments on a time when the theological use of the Bible presupposed a deep knowledge of what the Bible says.1 The example he serves up is from the final pages of Calvin’s Institutes, where the Reformer thinks through the issue of what Christians should do if they find themselves under a wicked ruler. Placher notes that Calvin reflects on Daniel and Ezekiel regarding the need to obey even bad rulers; he weighs the command to serve the king of Babylon in Jeremiah 27. He quotes from the Psalms, and he cites Isaiah to the effect that the faithful are urged to trust in God to overcome the unrighteous. On the other hand, he evenhandedly notes episodes in Exodus and Judges “where people serve God by overthrowing the evil rulers,” and texts in 1 Kings and Hosea where God’s people are criticized for being obedient to wicked kings. He cites Peter’s conclusion before Gamaliel, according to Acts: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). From these and other biblical passages, he proceeds to weave nuanced conclusions. We should disobey what governement mandates if it violates our religious obligations. By contrast, Christians should not normally go around starting revolutions. But those who are in positions of authority should deploy that authority to deal with those who exploit others. Even violent revolutionaries may in mysterious ways perform the will of God, though of course they may be called to judgment on account of their evil. Placher then comments: My point is not to defend all of Calvin’s conclusions, or even all of his method, but simply to illustrate how immersion in biblical texts can produce a very complex way of reflecting within a framework of biblical authority, compared to which most contemporary examples look pretty simple-minded. We can’t “appeal to the Bible” in a way that’s either helpful or faithful without beginning to do theology. Theology begins to put together a way of looking as a Christian at the world in all its variety, a language that we share as Christians and that provides a context rich enough for discussing the complexities of our lives. Absent such a shared framework, we can quote passages at each other, but the only contexts in which we can operate come from the discourses of politics and popular culture.2 ~ D A Carson,

1325:Let’s say a man really loves a woman; he sees her as his equal, his ally, his colleague; but she enters this other realm and becomes unfathomable. In the krypton spotlight, which he doesn’t even see, she falls ill, out of his caste, and turns into an untouchable. He may know her as confident; she stands on the bathroom scale and sinks into a keening of self-abuse. He knows her as mature; she comes home with a failed haircut, weeping from a vexation she is ashamed even to express. He knows her as prudent; she goes without winter boots because she spent half a week’s paycheck on artfully packaged mineral oil. He knows her as sharing his love of the country; she refuses to go with him to the seaside until her springtime fast is ended. She’s convivial; but she rudely refuses a slice of birthday cake, only to devour the ruins of anything at all in a frigid light at dawn. Nothing he can say about this is right. He can’t speak. Whatever he says hurts her more. If he comforts her by calling the issue trivial, he doesn’t understand. It isn’t trivial at all. If he agrees with her that it’s serious, even worse: He can’t possibly love her, he thinks she’s fat and ugly. If he says he loves her just as she is, worse still: He doesn’t think she’s beautiful. If he lets her know that he loves her because she’s beautiful, worst of all, though she can’t talk about this to anyone. That is supposed to be what she wants most in the world, but it makes her feel bereft, unloved, and alone. He is witnessing something he cannot possibly understand. The mysteriousness of her behavior keeps safe in his view of his lover a zone of incomprehension. It protects a no-man’s-land, an uninhabitable territory between the sexes, wherever a man and a woman might dare to call a ceasefire. Maybe he throws up his hands. Maybe he grows irritable or condescending. Unless he enjoys the power over her this gives him, he probably gets very bored. So would the woman if the man she loved were trapped inside something so pointless, where nothing she might say could reach him. Even where a woman and a man have managed to build and inhabit that sand castle—an equal relationship—this is the unlistening tide; it ensures that there will remain a tag on the woman that marks her as the same old something else, half child, half savage. ~ Naomi Wolf,

1326:Even if the press were dying to report on the Hmong gang-rape spree, the police won’t tell them about it. A year before the Hmong gang rape that reminded the Times of a rape in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, the police in St. Paul issued a warning about gang rapists using telephone chat lines to lure girls out of their homes. Although the warning was issued only in Hmong, St. Paul’s police department refused to confirm to the St. Paul Pioneer Press that the suspects were Hmong, finally coughing up only the information that they were “Asian.”20 And the gang rapes continue. The Star Tribune counted nearly one hundred Hmong males charged with rape or forced prostitution from 2000 to June 30, 2005. More than 80 percent of the victims were fifteen or younger. A quarter of their victims were not Hmong.21 The police say many more Hmong rapists have gone unpunished—they have no idea how many—because Hmong refuse to report rape. Reporters aren’t inclined to push the issue. The only rapes that interest the media are apocryphal gang rapes committed by white men. Was America short on Hmong? These backward hill people began pouring into the United States in the seventies as a reward for their help during the ill-fated Vietnam War. That war ended forty years ago! But the United States is still taking in thousands of Hmong “refugees” every year, so taxpayers can spend millions of dollars on English-language and cultural-assimilation classes, public housing, food stamps, healthcare, prosecutors, and prisons to accommodate all the child rapists.22 By now, there are an estimated 273,000 Hmong in the United States.23 Canada only has about eight hundred.24 Did America lose a bet? In the last few decades, America has taken in more Hmong than Czechs, Danes, French, Luxembourgers, New Zealanders, Norwegians, or Swiss. We have no room for them. We needed to make room for a culture where child rape is the norm.25 A foreign gang-rape culture that blames twelve-year-old girls for their own rapes may not be a good fit with American culture, especially now that political correctness prevents us from criticizing any “minority” group. At least when white males commit a gang rape the media never shut up about it. The Glen Ridge gang rape occurred more than a quarter century ago, and the Times still thinks the case hasn’t been adequately covered. ~ Ann Coulter,

1327:5. Although Sanders and especially Pinnock often speak of the importance of faith, they rarely listen to what the New Testament has to say about the content of faith, about the object of faith. Consider, for example, the following statements: “people can receive the gift of salvation without knowing the giver or the precise nature of the gift.”77 Inclusivism “denies that Jesus must be the object of saving faith.”78 “‘Saving faith’…does not necessitate knowledge of Christ in this life. God’s gracious activity is wider than the arena of special revelation. God will accept into his kingdom those who repent and trust him even if they know nothing of Jesus.”79 “Faith in God is what saves, not possessing certain minimum information.”80 “A person is saved by faith, even if the content of faith is deficient (and whose is not?). The Bible does not teach that one must confess the name of Jesus to be saved.”81 “The issue that God cares about is the direction of the heart, not the content of theology.”82 Some of this argument is slanted by the form of the proferred antitheses. For example: “Faith in God is what saves, not possessing certain minimum information.” At one level that is surely correct: merely possessing information, minimal or otherwise, does not save. Christians are not gnostics. On the other hand, the form of the antithesis may allow the unwary to overlook the fact that faith has content, or an object. Does faith in, say, a ouija board save? How about sincere faith in astrology? Pinnock says it is “faith in God” that saves. But which God? The Buddhist impersonal God? And even if we assume we are dealing with the true God, does all faith in this God save, when we are told that even the devils believe? Again: “The issue that God cares about is the direction of the heart, not the content of theology.” At one level, I would strenuously agree. Yet at the same time, I would want to add that if the direction of the heart is truly right, one of the things it will be concerned about is the content of theology. Does Paul sound as if he does not care about the content of theology in Galatians 1:8-9? Does John, in 1 John 4:1-6? Far from resorting to antitheses, John purposely links sound doctrine, transparent obedience, and love for the brothers and sisters in Christ, as being joint marks of the true believer (and thus of true faith!). ~ D A Carson,

1328:Mandal vs Mandir The V.P. Singh government was the biggest casualty of this confrontation. Within the BJP and its mentor, the RSS, the debate on whether or not to oppose V.P. Singh and OBC reservations reached a high pitch. Inder Malhotra | 981 words It was a blunder on V.P. Singh’s part to announce his acceptance of the Mandal Commission’s report recommending 27 per cent reservations in government jobs for what are called Other Backward Classes but are, in fact, specified castes — economically well-off, politically powerful but socially and educationally backward — in such hot haste. He knew that the issue was highly controversial, deeply emotive and potentially explosive, which it proved to be instantly. But his top priority was to outsmart his former deputy and present adversary, Devi Lal. He even annoyed those whose support “from outside” was sustaining him in power. BJP leaders were peeved that they were informed of what was afoot practically at the last minute in a terse telephone call. What annoyed them even more was that the prime minister’s decision would divide Hindu society. The BJP’s ranks demanded that the plug be pulled on V.P. Singh but the top leadership advised restraint, because it was also important to keep the Congress out of power. The party leadership was aware of the electoral clout of the OBCs, who added up to 52 per cent of the population. As for Rajiv Gandhi, he was totally and vehemently opposed to the Mandal Commission and its report. He eloquently condemned V.P. Singh’s decision when it was eventually discussed in Parliament. This can be better understood in the perspective of the Mandal Commission’s history. Having acquired wealth during the Green Revolution and political power through elections, the OBCs realised that they had little share in the country’s administrative apparatus, especially in the higher rungs of the bureaucracy. So they started clamouring for reservations in government jobs. Throughout the Congress rule until 1977, this demand fell on deaf ears. It was the Janata government, headed by Morarji Desai, that appointed the Mandal Commission in 1978. Ironically, by the time the commission submitted its report, the Janata was history and Indira Gandhi was back in power. She quietly consigned the document to the deep freeze. In Rajiv’s time, one of his cabinet ministers, Shiv Shanker, once asked about the Mandal report. ~ Anonymous,

1329:Of the things I had not known when I started out, I think the most important was the degree to which the legacy of the McCarthy period still lived. It had been almost seven years since Joe McCarthy had been censured when John Kennedy took office, and most people believed that his hold on Washington was over. ... among the top Democrats, against whom the issue of being soft on Communism might be used, and among the Republicans, who might well use the charge, it was still live ammunition. ... McCarthyism still lingered ... The real McCarthyism went deeper in the American grain than most people wanted to admit ... The Republicans’ long, arid period out of office [twenty years, ended by the Eisenhower administration], accentuated by Truman’s 1948 defeat of Dewey, had permitted the out-party in its desperation, to accuse the leaders of the governing party of treason. The Democrats, in the wake of the relentless sustained attacks on Truman and Acheson over their policies in Asia, came to believe that they had lost the White House when they lost China. Long after McCarthy himself was gone, the fear of being accused of being soft on Communism lingered among the Democratic leaders. The Republicans had, of course, offered no alternative policy on China (the last thing they had wanted to do was suggest sending American boys to fight for China) and indeed there was no policy to offer, for China was never ours, events there were well outside our control, and our feudal proxies had been swept away by the forces of history. But in the political darkness of the time it had been easy to blame the Democrats for the ebb and flow of history. The fear generated in those days lasted a long time, and Vietnam was to be something of an instant replay after China. The memory of the fall of China and what it did to the Democrats, was, I think, more bitter for Lyndon Johnson than it was for John Kennedy. Johnson, taking over after Kennedy was murdered and after the Kennedy patched-up advisory commitment had failed, vowed that he was not going to be the President of the United States who lost the Great Society because he lost Saigon. In the end it would take the tragedy of the Vietnam War and the election of Richard Nixon (the only political figure who could probably go to China without being Red-baited by Richard Nixon) to exorcise those demons, and to open the door to China. ~ David Halberstam,

1330:shifts signal a slowing in momentum for the bill among Democrats, who have faced a full-court press from a number of top administration officials, including President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. During Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Obama vowed to veto the bill if it landed on his desk and urged Congress to let international talks play out. It’s already clear that Congress is reluctant to proceed on the issue. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has signaled an unwillingness to bring the sanctions bill to a vote, and in the House, party leaders have been meeting privately for weeks to figure out how to proceed. Talk in that chamber has centered on the possibility of voting on a non-binding resolution that would allow lawmakers to lay out their preferred endgame in Iran negotiations. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) already said earlier this month that a vote on the bill was not needed during the interim agreement. Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) punted the matter to Reid. "Senator Cardin wants to see negotiations with Iran succeed. As for timing of the bill, it is and has always been up to the Majority Leader," Cardin spokeswoman Sue Walitsky said. Both of the bill’s main sponsors, Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), held their ground when asked for their reactions to Obama’s veto threat. “While the president promises to veto any new Iran sanctions legislation, the Iranians have already vetoed any dismantlement of their nuclear infrastructure,” Kirk said in a statement. On Tuesday night, just after the State of the Union had ended, Menendez said, "I’m not frustrated." He walked quickly into an elevator as he spoke, pushing the buttons and looking ready to be done with the conversation. "The president has every right to do what he wants." A spokesman for Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said Wednesday that merely introducing the bill -- but not voting on it -- was helpful to negotiations. "Senator Bennet supports the President’s diplomatic efforts and would like them to succeed. The pertinent question isn't about when we vote on the bill, but whether its introduction is helpful to the negotiations. He believes it is," spokesman Adam Bozzi said. Not all senators agreed that a vote should be delayed. Offices for Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) confirmed that the senators wanted to hold ~ Anonymous,

1331:That brings us to the nub of the issue. The second reason for drawing lines even when drawing lines is not “cool” (as my daughter and son would say) is that the New Testament documents model the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy, even if these terms are not deployed exactly in their English sense. Despite the faddish popularity of religious pluralism, despite the erroneous historical reconstructions of Walter Bauer and others, despite the common practice of treating other religions with more deference than a Christianity that tries to conform to the Bible, the fact remains that there is something disturbingly unfaithful about forms of expression that attempt to be more “broadminded” than the New Testament documents themselves. True, most who read these pages will want to avoid the kind of obscurantist “fundamentalism” that is less concerned with fundamentals than with fences. But most who read these pages will not be tempted down that path, and so they scarcely need to be warned against it. It is a cheap zeal that reserves its passions to combat only the sins and temptations of others. We are more likely to squirm when we read words like these: Do you agree with those who say that a spirit of love is incompatible with the negative and critical denunciation of blatant error, and that we must always be positive? The simple answer to such an attitude is that the Lord Jesus Christ denounced evil and denounced false teachers. I repeat that He denounced them as “ravening wolves” and “whited sepulchres,” and as “blind guides.” The Apostle Paul said of some of them, “whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame”. That is the language of the Scriptures. There can be little doubt but that the Church is as she is today because we do not follow New Testament teaching and its exhortations, and confine ourselves to the positive and the so-called “simple Gospel”, and fail to stress the negatives and the criticism. The result is that people do not reconize error when they meet it. It is not pleasant to be negative; it is not enjoyable to have to denounce and to expose error. But any pastor who feels in a little measure, and with humility, the responsibility which the Apostle Paul knew in an infinitely greater degree for the souls and the well-being spiritually of his people is compelled to utter these warnings. It is not liked and appreciated in this modern flabby generation.29 ~ D A Carson,

1332:People employ what economists call “rational ignorance.” That is, we all spend our time learning about things we can actually do something about, not political issues that we can’t really affect. That’s why most of us can’t name our representative in Congress. And why most of us have no clue about how much of the federal budget goes to Medicare, foreign aid, or any other program. As an Alabama businessman told a Washington Post pollster, “Politics doesn’t interest me. I don’t follow it. … Always had to make a living.” Ellen Goodman, a sensitive, good-government liberal columnist, complained about a friend who had spent months researching new cars, and of her own efforts study the sugar, fiber, fat, and price of various cereals. “Would my car-buying friend use the hours he spent comparing fuel-injection systems to compare national health plans?” Goodman asked. “Maybe not. Will the moments I spend studying cereals be devoted to studying the greenhouse effect on grain? Maybe not.” Certainly not —and why should they? Goodman and her friend will get the cars and the cereal they want, but what good would it do to study national health plans? After a great deal of research on medicine, economics, and bureaucracy, her friend may decide which health-care plan he prefers. He then turns to studying the presidential candidates, only to discover that they offer only vague indications of which health-care plan they would implement. But after diligent investigation, our well-informed voter chooses a candidate. Unfortunately, the voter doesn’t like that candidate’s stand on anything else — the package-deal problem — but he decides to vote on the issue of health care. He has a one-in-a-hundred-million chance of influencing the outcome of the presidential election, after which, if his candidate is successful, he faces a Congress with different ideas, and in any case, it turns out the candidate was dissembling in the first place. Instinctively realizing all this, most voters don’t spend much time studying public policy. Give that same man three health insurance plans that he can choose from, though, and chances are that he will spend time studying them. Finally, as noted above, the candidates are likely to be kidding themselves or the voters anyway. One could argue that in most of the presidential elections since 1968, the American people have tried to vote for smaller government, but in that time the federal budget has risen from $178 billion to $4 trillion. ~ David Boaz,

1333:Cecily.” His gaze wandered from her unbound hair to her disheveled gown, to her fingers still laced with Luke’s. “I . . . I was just about to go searching for you.” “There you are!” Portia called from behind him. “Come in, come in.” She lay swaddled in blankets on the divan, with her bandaged leg propped on a nearby ottoman. Brooke sat beside her, balancing a teacup in either hand. Cecily turned to Denny. “I’m sorry to have worried you, but . . .” She squeezed Luke’s hand for courage. “You see, Luke and I—” “I understand,” he replied. The serious expression on his face told her he did understand, completely. To his credit, he took it well. He turned to Luke. “When will you be married?” “Married?” Portia exclaimed. Cecily sighed. Just like Denny, to take his responsibilities as her third cousin twice removed— and only male relation in the vicinity— so seriously. But did he have to force the issue now? Certainly, she hoped that she and Luke might one day— “As soon as possible.” Luke’s arm slid around her waist. Cecily’s gaze snapped up to his. Are you certain? she asked him silently. He answered her with a quick kiss. “Well, then. When can we be married?” Brooke directed his question to Portia. “Married!” Blushing furiously, Portia made a dismissive gesture with both hands. “Why, I’m only just learning to enjoy being a widow. I don’t want to be married. I want to write scandalous novels and take dozens of lovers.” Brooke raised an eyebrow. “Can that be negotiated to lover, singular?” “That,” she said, giving him a coy smile, “would depend on your skill at negotiation.” “What an evening you’ve had, Portia,” Cecily said. “A brush with death, a proposal of marriage, an indecent proposition . . . Surely you have sufficient inspiration for your gothic novel?” “Too much inspiration!” Portia wailed, gesturing toward her bandaged foot. “I am done with gothics completely. No, I shall take a cue from my insipid wallpaper and write a bawdy little tale about a wanton dairymaid and her many lovers.” “Lover, singular.” Brooke flopped on the divan and settled her feet in his lap. “Oh,” she sighed, as he massaged her uninjured foot. “Oh, very well.” Luke tugged on Cecily’s hand, drawing her toward the doorway. “Let’s make our escape.” As they left, she heard Denny say in his usual jocular tone, “Do me a favor, Portia? Model your hero after me. Just once, I should like to get the girl. ~ Tessa Dare,

1334:In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the ambassador to Britain. The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress’ vote to appease. During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts. In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam “was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Qur’an that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.” For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. Most Americans do not know that the payments in ransom and Jizyah tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800. Not long after Jefferson’s inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress. Declaring that America was going to spend “millions for defense but not one cent for tribute,” Jefferson pressed the issue by deploying American Marines and many of America’s best warships to the Muslim Barbary Coast. The USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, USS Chesapeake, USS Argus, USS Syren and USS Intrepid all fought. In 1805, American Marines marched across the dessert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves. During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States, crumbled as a result of intense American naval bombardment and on shore raids by Marines. They finally agreed officially to abandon slavery and piracy. Jefferson’s victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine Hymn with the line “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country’s battles on the land as on the sea.” It wasn’t until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates. ~ Walid Shoebat,

1335:In accepting as two primary texts, Singer's Animal Liberation and Regan's The Case for Animal Rights--texts that valorize rationality--the animal defense movement reiterates a patriarchal disavowal of emotions as having a legitimate role in theory making. The problem is that while on the one hand it articulates positions against animal suffering, on the other hand animal rights theory dispenses with the idea that caring about and emotionally responding to this suffering can be appropriate sources of knowledge. Emotions and theory are related. One does not have to eviscerate theory of emotional content and reflection to present legitimate theory. Nor does the presence of emotional content and reflection eradicate or militate against thinking theoretically. By disavowing emotional responses, two major texts of animal defense close off the intellectual space for recognizing the role of emotions in knowledge and therefore theory making. As the issue of caring about suffering is problematized, difficulties with animal rights per se become apparent. Without a gender analysis, several important issues that accompany a focus on suffering are neglected, to the detriment of the movement. Animal rights theory offers a legitimating language for animal defense without acknowledging the indebtedness of the rights-holder to caring relationships. Nor does it provide models for theoretically engaging with our own emotional responses, since emotions are seen as untrustworthy. Because the animal advocacy movement has failed to incorporate an understanding of caring as a motivation for so many animal defense activists, and because it has not addressed the gendered nature of caring--that it is woman's duty to provide service to others, while it is men's choice--it has not addressed adequately the implications that a disproportionate number of activists are women motivated because they care about animal suffering. Animal rights theory that disowns or ignores emotions mirrors on the theoretical level the gendered emotional responses inherent in a patriarchal society. In this culture, women are supposed to do the emotional work for heterosexual intimate relationships: 'a man will come to expect that a woman's role in his life is to take care of his feelings and alleviate the discomfort involved in feeling.' At the cultural level, this may mean that women are doing the emotional work for the animal defense movement. And this emotional work takes place in the context of our own oppression. ~ Carol J Adams,

1336:I. Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead! Sit and watch by her side an hour. That is her book-shelf, this her bed; She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, Beginning to die too, in the glass; Little has yet been changed, I think: The shutters are shut, no light may pass Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink. II. Sixteen years old, when she died! Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name; It was not her time to love; beside, Her life had many a hope and aim, Duties enough and little cares, And now was quiet, now astir, Till God's hand beckoned unawares,- And the sweet white brow is all of her. III. Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope? What, your soul was pure and true, The good stars met in your horoscope, Made you of spirit, fire and dew- And, just because I was thrice as old And our paths in the world diverged so wide, Each was nought to each, must I be told? We were fellow mortals, nought beside? IV. No, indeed! for God above Is great to grant, as mighty to make, And creates the love to reward the love: I claim you still, for my own love's sake! Delayed it may be for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: Much is to learn, much to forget Ere the time be come for taking you. V. But the time will come,-at last it will, When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say) In the lower earth, in the years long still, That body and soul so pure and gay? Why your hair was amber, I shall divine, And your mouth of your own geranium's red- And what you would do with me, in fine, In the new life come in the old one's stead. VI. I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, Given up myself so many times, Gained me the gains of various men, Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes; Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, Either I missed or itself missed me: And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope! What is the issue? let us see! VII. I loved you, Evelyn, all the while. My heart seemed full as it could hold? There was place and to spare for the frank young smile, And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold. So, hush,-I will give you this leaf to keep: See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand! There, that is our secret: go to sleep! You will wake, and remember, and understand. ~ Robert Browning, Evelyn Hope ,

1337:September 10, 1965 Dear Francesca, Enclosed are two photographs. One is the shot I took of you in the pasture at sunrise. I hope you like it as much as I do. The other is of Roseman Bridge before I removed your note tacked to it. I sit here trolling the gray areas of my mind for every detail, every moment, of our time together. I ask myself over and over, “What happened to me in Madison County, Iowa?” And I struggle to bring it together. That’s why I wrote the little piece, “Falling from Dimension Z,” I have enclosed, as a way of trying to sift through my confusion. I look down the barrel of a lens, and you’re at the end of it. I begin work on an article, and I’m writing about you. I’m not even sure how I got back here from Iowa. Somehow the old truck brought me home, yet I barely remember the miles going by. A few weeks ago, I felt self-contained, reasonably content. Maybe not profoundly happy, maybe a little lonely, but at least content. All of that has changed. It’s clear to me now that I have been moving toward you and you toward me for a long time. Though neither of us was aware of the other before we met, there was a kind of mindless certainty humming blithely along beneath our ignorance that ensured we would come together. Like two solitary birds flying the great prairies by celestial reckoning, all of these years and lifetimes we have been moving toward one another. The road is a strange place. Shuffling along, I looked up and you were there walking across the grass toward my truck on an August day. In retrospect, it seems inevitable—it could not have been any other way—a case of what I call the high probability of the improbable. So here I am walking around with another person inside of me. Though I think I put it better the day we parted when I said there is a third person we have created from the two of us. And I am stalked now by that other entity. Somehow, we must see each other again. Any place, anytime. Call me if you ever need anything or simply want to see me. I’ll be there, pronto. Let me know if you can come out here sometime—anytime. I can arrange plane fare, if that’s a problem. I’m off to southeast India next week, but I’ll be back in late October. I Love You, Robert P. S., The photo project in Madison County turned out fine. Look for it in NG next year. Or tell me if you want me to send a copy of the issue when it’s published. Francesca Johnson set her brandy glass on the wide oak windowsill and stared at an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph of herself. ~ Robert James Waller,

1338:Learn That Your Feelings Are as Important as Theirs. Some of us can’t see our own feelings because we have learned somewhere along the way that other people’s feelings are more important than ours. For example, it was always assumed that your father would move in with your family when his health began to fail. But now that he has, his constant demands and crankiness are beginning to take a toll, especially on top of managing his medications and frequent doctor’s visits. You are exhausted and frustrated, and wonder why your brother isn’t willing to do his share. Yet you don’t raise it with parent or sibling. “It’s hard, but it’s not that hard,” you reason. “Besides, I don’t want to rock the boat.” Your girlfriend calls and says she can’t have dinner on Friday after all. She’s wondering whether Saturday is okay. She says a friend of hers is in town and wants to see a movie on Friday. You say, “Sure, if that’s better for you.” Although you said yes, Saturday is actually not as good for you, because you had planned to go to a baseball game. Still, you’d rather see your girlfriend, so you give your ticket away. In each of these situations, you’ve chosen to put someone else’s feelings ahead of your own. Does this make sense? Is your father’s frustration or your brother’s peace of mind more important than yours? Is your girlfriend’s desire to see a movie with her friend more important than your desire to see a baseball game? Why is it that they express their feelings and preferences, but you cope with yours privately? There are several reasons why you may choose to honor others’ feelings even when it means dishonoring your own. The implicit rule you are following is that you should put other people’s happiness before your own. If your friends or loved ones or colleagues don’t get their way, they’ll feel bad, and then you’ll have to deal with the consequences. That may be true, but it’s unfair to you. Their anger is no better or worse than yours. “Well, it’s just easier not to rock the boat,” you think. “I don’t like it when they’re mad at me.” If you’re thinking this, then you are undervaluing your own feelings and interests. Friends, neighbors, and bosses will recognize this and begin to see you as someone they can manipulate. When you are more concerned about others’ feelings than your own, you teach others to ignore your feelings too. And beware: one of the reasons you haven’t raised the issue is that you don’t want to jeopardize the relationship. Yet by not raising it, the resentment you feel will grow and slowly erode the relationship anyway. ~ Douglas Stone,

1339:To E.S. Salomon What! Salomon! such words from you, Who call yourself a soldier? Well, The Southern brother where he fell Slept all your base oration through. Alike to him-he cannot know Your praise or blame: as little harm Your tongue can do him as your arm A quarter-century ago. The brave respect the brave. The brave Respect the dead; but _you_-you draw That ancient blade, the ass's jaw, And shake it o'er a hero's grave. Are you not he who makes to-day A merchandise of old renown Which he persuades this easy town He won in battle far away? Nay, those the fallen who revile Have ne'er before the living stood And stoutly made their battle good And greeted danger with a smile. What if the dead whom still you hate Were wrong? Are you so surely right? We know the issue of the fight The sword is but an advocate. Men live and die, and other men Arise with knowledges diverse: What seemed a blessing seems a curse, And Now is still at odds with Then. The years go on, the old comes back To mock the new-beneath the sun. Is _nothing_ new; ideas run Recurrent in an endless track. 615 What most we censure, men as wise Have reverently practiced; nor Will future wisdom fail to war On principles we dearly prize. We do not know-we can but deem, And he is loyalest and best Who takes the light full on his breast And follows it throughout the dream. The broken light, the shadows wide Behold the battle-field displayed! God save the vanquished from the blade, The victor from the victor's pride! If, Salomon, the blessed dew That falls upon the Blue and Gray Is powerless to wash away The sin of differing from you. Remember how the flood of years Has rolled across the erring slain; Remember, too, the cleansing rain Of widows' and of orphans' tears. The dead are dead-let that atone: And though with equal hand we strew The blooms on saint and sinner too, Yet God will know to choose his own. The wretch, whate'er his life and lot, Who does not love the harmless dead With all his heart and all his headMay God forgive him-_I_ shall not. When, Salomon, you come to quaff The Darker Cup with meeker face, I, loving you at last, shall trace Upon your tomb this epitaph: 616 'Draw near, ye generous and brave Kneel round this monument and weep: It covers one who tried to keep A flower from a dead man's grave.' ~ Ambrose Bierce,

1340:I don’t know what transgression Rava committed which, in your eyes, makes her deserving of punishment, but this is not how she should be treated during her time of grief.” “Then you had best remove her to Cokyri. I won’t release her here.” The High Priestess was not amused by Narian’s response, and she approached him, her lips compressed into a thin line. Laying a hand against the side of his head, she grasped a handful of his hair. “That is for me to decide,” she said, her voice dangerously soft. Narian pushed her hand away, and she raised a displeased eyebrow. Feeling like an intruder, I racked my brain for a way to leave, for the sake of my own comfort. “Your party was intercepted?” I asked, reminding Nantilam of my presence. “Then you were traveling here for some other reason?” “Yes,” she said, shifting her focus to me, her tone rounding into the rich, controlled cadence of a ruler. “Rava sent word to me about the festival you are hosting.” Now I wished I had not spoken. I looked to Narian for help, but he offered none, perhaps could offer none. Still, the issue needed to be addressed at some point, and she didn’t sound angry. “Yes, I am reinstating, on a smaller scale, Hytanica’s annual Harvest Festival.” “Rava wished me to put a stop to it, but I see no need to do so. I believe, along with you, that it will lift the people’s spirits. But I share Rava’s concerns about rebellion, and have come so that my presence may discourage such foolishness.” “Your presence is most welcome,” I said, relieved that she did not intend to interfere with my plans. “I’m glad you thought to come.” “Thank you, Alera,” she said, bestowing a slight smile on me as though making a point to Narian about his rudeness. She turned on her heel to go, picking up her gloves as she did so. Just before she stepped into the Hearing Hall, she spoke once more to her commander. “Narian, you will release Rava at once and escort her to my rooms.” “I won’t,” he said, a simple, firm refusal. A simple, firm refusal that merited a significant reaction. The High Priestess closed the door again and stood facing it for a long moment, then she turned toward us, her quiet anger heating the room. “You will, Narian.” “You haven’t even asked after Rava’s crimes. I will not release her, and if I see her free within the Bastion, I will personally return her to the dungeon.” “Tell me, then, what she’s done. Justify your defiance if you can.” I foresaw this battle between them growing lengthy, for neither of them was disposed on principle to give ground. ~ Cayla Kluver,

1341:I want you, and you say you want me, and the only thing standing in our way is you. Don’t tell me that you survived all those battles, and suffered through so much, merely to come home for this--” He laid his fingers against her mouth. “Quiet. Let me think.” “What is there to--” “Beatrix,” he warned. She fell silent, her gaze locked on his severe features. Christopher frowned, weighing possibilities, inwardly debating the issue without seeming to come to any satisfactory conclusion. In the silence, Beatrix rested her head on his shoulder. His body was warm and comforting, the deep-flexing muscles easily accommodating her weight. She wriggled to press closer to him, until she felt the satisfying hardness of his chest against her breasts. And she adjusted her position as she felt the firm pressure of him lower down. Her body ached to gather him in. Furtively she brushed her lips against the salt-scented skin of his neck. He clamped his hand on her hip. Amusement threaded through his voice. “Stop squirming. There is no possible way a man can think when you’re doing that.” “Haven’t you finished thinking yet?” “No.” But she felt him smile as he kissed her forehead. “If you and I marry,” he said eventually, “I would be put in the position of trying to protect my wife against myself. And your well-being and happiness are everything to me.” If…Beatrix’s heart leaped into her throat. She began to speak, but Christopher nudged his knuckles beneath her chin, gently closing her mouth. “And regardless of what fascinating ideas your family may have about the marital relationship,” he continued, “I have a traditional view. The husband is master of the household.” “Oh, absolutely,” Beatrix said, a bit too quickly. “That’s what my family believes, too.” His eyes narrowed skeptically. Perhaps that had been taking it a bit far. Hoping to distract him, Beatrix nuzzled her cheek into his hand. “Could I keep my animals?” “Of course.” His voice softened. “I would never deny something so important to you. Although I can’t help but ask…is the hedgehog negotiable?” “Medusa? Oh, no, she couldn’t survive on her own. She was abandoned by her mother as kit, and I’ve taken care of her ever since. I suppose I could try to find a new home for her, but for some reason people don’t take readily to the idea of pet hedgehogs.” “How odd of them,” Christopher said. “Very well, Medusa stays.” “Are you proposing to me?” Beatrix asked hopefully. “No.” Closing his eyes, Christopher let out a short sigh. “But I’m considering it against all better judgment. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

1342:People employ what economists call “rational ignorance.” That is, we all spend our time learning about things we can actually do something about, not political issues that we can’t really affect. That’s why most of us can’t name our representative in Congress. And why most of us have no clue about how much of the federal budget goes to Medicare, foreign aid, or any other program. As an Alabama businessman told a Washington Post pollster, “Politics doesn’t interest me. I don’t follow it. … Always had to make a living.” Ellen Goodman, a sensitive, good-government liberal columnist, complained about a friend who had spent months researching new cars, and of her own efforts study the sugar, fiber, fat, and price of various cereals. “Would my car-buying friend use the hours he spent comparing fuel-injection systems to compare national health plans?” Goodman asked. “Maybe not. Will the moments I spend studying cereals be devoted to studying the greenhouse effect on grain? Maybe not.” Certainly not —and why should they? Goodman and her friend will get the cars and the cereal they want, but what good would it do to study national health plans? After a great deal of research on medicine, economics, and bureaucracy, her friend may decide which health-care plan he prefers. He then turns to studying the presidential candidates, only to discover that they offer only vague indications of which health-care plan they would implement. But after diligent investigation, our well-informed voter chooses a candidate. Unfortunately, the voter doesn’t like that candidate’s stand on anything else — the package-deal problem — but he decides to vote on the issue of health care. He has a one-in-a-hundred-million chance of influencing the outcome of the presidential election, after which, if his candidate is successful, he faces a Congress with different ideas, and in any case, it turns out the candidate was dissembling in the first place. Instinctively realizing all this, most voters don’t spend much time studying public policy. Give that same man three health insurance plans that he can choose from, though, and chances are that he will spend time studying them. Finally, as noted above, the candidates are likely to be kidding themselves or the voters anyway. One could argue that in most of the presidential elections since 1968, the American people have tried to vote for smaller government, but in that time the federal budget has risen from $178 billion to $4 trillion. George Bush made one promise that every voter noticed in the 1988 campaign: “Read my lips, no new taxes.” Then he raised them. If we are the government, why do we get so many policies we don’t want? ~ David Boaz,

1343:No sugarcoating would be necessary,” Matthew interrupted calmly. “Daisy…that is, Miss Bowman, is entirely—” Beautiful. Desirable. Bewitching. “—acceptable. Marrying a woman like Miss Bowman would be a reward in itself.” “Good,” Bowman grunted, clearly unconvinced. “Very gentlemanly of you to say so. Still, I will offer you fair recompense in the form of a generous dowry, more shares in the company and so forth. You will be quite satisfied, I assure you. Now as to the wedding arrangements—” “I didn’t say yes,” Matthew interrupted. Bowman stopped pacing and sent him a questioning stare. “To start with,” Matthew continued carefully, “it is possible Miss Bowman will find a suitor within the next two months.” “She will find no suitors of your caliber,” Bowman said smugly. Matthew replied gravely despite his amusement. “Thank you. But I don’t believe Miss Bowman shares your high opinion.” The older man made a dismissive gesture. “Bah. Women’s minds are as changeable as English weather. You can persuade her to like you. Give her a posy of flowers, throw a few compliments in her direction…better yet, quote something from one of those blasted poetry books she reads. Seducing a woman is easily accomplished, Swift. All you have to do is—” “Mr. Bowman,” Matthew interrupted with a sudden touch of alarm. God in heaven, all he needed was an explanation of courtship techniques from his employer. “I believe I could manage that without any advice. That’s not the issue.” “Then what…ah.” Bowman gave him a man-of-the-world smile. “I understand.” “You understand what?” Matthew asked apprehensively. “Obviously you fear my reaction if you should decide later on that my daughter is not adequate to your needs. But as long as you behave with discretion, I won’t say a word.” Matthew sighed and rubbed his eyes, suddenly feeling weary. This was a bit much to face so soon after his ship had landed in Bristol. “You’re saying you’ll look the other way if I stray from my wife,” he said rather than asked. “We men face temptations. Sometimes we stray. It is the way of the world.” “It’s not my way,” Matthew said flatly. “I stand by my word, both in business and in my personal life. If or when I promise to be faithful to a woman, I would be. No matter what.” Bowman’s heavy mustache twitched with amusement. “You’re still young enough to afford scruples.” “The old can’t afford them?” Matthew asked with a touch of affectionate mockery. “Some scruples have a way of becoming overpriced. You’ll discover that someday.” “God, I hope not.” Matthew sank into a chair and buried his head in his hands, his fingers tunneling through the heavy locks of his hair. ~ Lisa Kleypas,

1344:What do think about abortion?” “I could feel the tension growing in the plane. I dropped my head, acknowledging that we had very different value systems for our lives. Then I thought of a way to respond to his question. “You’re Jewish, right?” I asked. “Yes,” he said defensively. “I told you I was!” “Do you know how Hitler persuaded the German people to destroy more than six million of your Jewish ancestors?” The man looked at me expectantly, so I continued. ”He convinced them that Jews were not human and then exterminated your people like rats.” I could see that I had his attention, so I went on. “Do you understand how Americans enslaved, tortured, and killed millions of Africans? We dehumanized them so our constitution didn’t apply to them, and then we treated them worse than animals.” “How about the Native Americans?” I pressed. “Do you have any idea how we managed to hunt Indians like wild animals, drive them out of their own land, burn their villages, rape their women, and slaughter their children? Do you have any clue how everyday people turned into cruel murderers?” My Jewish friend was silent, and his eyes were filling with tears as I made my point. “We made people believe that the Native Americans were wild savages, not real human beings, and then we brutalized them without any conviction of wrongdoing! Now do you understand how we have persuaded mothers to kill their own babies? We took the word fetus, which is the Latin word for ‘offspring,’ and redefined it to dehumanize the unborn. We told mothers, ‘That is not really a baby you are carrying in your belly; it is a fetus, tissue that suddenly forms into a human being just seconds before it exits the womb.’ In doing so, we were able to assert that, in the issue of abortion, there is only one person’s human rights to consider, and then we convinced mothers that disposing of fetal tissue (terminating the life of their babies) was a woman’s right. Our constitution no longer protects the unborn because they are not real people. They are just lifeless blobs of tissue.” By now, tears were flowing down his cheeks. I looked right into his eyes and said, “Your people, the Native Americans, and the African Americans should be the greatest defenders of the unborn on the planet. After all, you know what it’s like for society to redefine you so that they can destroy your races. But ironically, your races have the highest abortion rates in this country! Somebody is still trying to exterminate your people, and you don’t even realize it. The names have changed, but the plot remains the same!” Finally he couldn’t handle it anymore. He blurted out, “I have never heard anything like this before. I am hanging out with the wrong people. I have been deceived! ~ Kris Vallotton,

1345:Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you. 1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master’s whims. He is often cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on. 2. The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time. 3. The master has a group of slave, and he decides how things are to be allocated among them on nice grounds, taking into account their needs, merit, and so on. 4. The master allows the slave four days on their own and requires them to work only three days a week on his land. The rest of the time is their own. 5. The master allows his slaves to go off and work in the city (or anywhere they wish) for wages. He also retains the power to recall them to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him. He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking. 6. The master allows all of his 10,000 slaves, except you, to vote, and the joint decision is made by all of them. There is open discussion, and so forth, among them, and they have the power to determine to what use to put whatever percentage of your (and their) earnings they decide to take; what activities legitimately may be forbidden to you, and so on. 7. Though still not having the vote, you are at liberty (and are given the right) to enter into discussion of the 10,000, to try to persuade them to adopt various policies and to treat you and themselves in a certain way. They then go off to vote to decide upon policies covering the vast range of their powers. 8. In appreciation of your useful contributions to discussion, the 10,000 allow you to vote if they are deadlocked; they commit themselve3s to this procedure. After the discussion you mark your vote on a slip of paper, and they go off and vote. In the eventuality that they divide evenly on some issue, 5,000 for and 5,000 against, they look at your ballot and count it in. This has never yet happened; they have never yet had occasion to open your ballot. (A single master may also might commit himself to letting his slave decide any issue concerning him about which he, the master, was absolutely indifferent.) 9. They throw your vote in with theirs. If they are exactly tied your vote carries the issue. Otherwise it makes no difference to the electoral outcome. The question is: which transition from case 1 to case 9 made it no longer the tale of the slave? ~ Robert Nozick,

1346:Incidentally, there's a little historical footnote here, if you're interested. The oil company that was authorized by the Treasury Department under Bush and Clinton to ship oil to the Haitian coup leaders happened to be Texaco. And people of about my age who were attuned to these sorts of things might remember back to the 1930s, when the Roosevelt administration was trying to undermine the Spanish Republic at the time of the Spanish Revolution in 1936 and '37―you'll remember that Texaco also played a role. See, the Western powers were strongly opposed to the Spanish Republican forces at that point during the Spanish Civil War―because the Republican side was aligned with a popular revolution, the anarcho-syndicalist revolution that was breaking out in Spain, and there was a danger that that revolution might take root and spread to other countries. After the anarcho-syndicalist organizations were put down by force, the Western powers didn't care so much anymore [anarcho-syndicalism is a sort of non-Leninist or libertarian socialism]. But while the revolution was still going on in Spain and the Republican forces were at war with General Franco and his Fascist army―who were being actively supported by Hitler and Mussolini, remember―the Western countries and Stalinist Russia all wanted to see the Republican forces just gotten rid of. And one of the ways in which the Roosevelt administration helped to see that they were gotten rid of was through what was called the "Neutrality Act"―you know, we're going to be neutral, we're not going to send any support to either the Republican side or the Fascist side, we're just going to let them fight their own war. Except the "Neutrality Act" was only 50 percent applied in this case. You see, the Fascists were getting all the guns they needed from Germany, but they didn't have enough oil. So therefore the Texaco Oil Company―which happened to be run by an outright Nazi at the time [Captain Thorkild Rieber], something that wasn't so unusual in those days, actually―simply terminated its existing oil contracts with the Spanish Republic and redirected its tankers in mid-ocean to start sending the Fascists the oil they needed, in July 1936. It was all totally illegal, of course, but the Roosevelt administration never pushed the issue. And again, the entire American press at the time was never able to discover it―except the small left-wing press: somehow they were able to find out about it. So if you read the small left-wing press in the United States back in 1937, they were reporting this all the time, but the big American newspapers just have never had the resources to find out about things like this, so they never said a word. I mean, years later people writing diplomatic history sort of mention these facts in the margins―but at the time there was nothing in the mainstream. ~ Noam Chomsky,

1347:Let, then, thy soul by faith be exercised with such thoughts and apprehensions as these: “I am a poor, weak creature; unstable as water, I cannot excel. This corruption is too hard for me, and is at the very door of ruining my soul; and what to do I know not. My soul is become as parched ground, and an habitation of dragons. I have made promises and broken them; vows and engagements have been as a thing of nought. Many persuasions have I had that I had got the victory and should be delivered, but I am deceived; so that I plainly see, that without some eminent succour and assistance, I am lost, and shall be prevailed on to an utter relinquishment of God. But yet, though this be my state and condition, let the hands that hang down be lifted up, and the feeble knees be strengthened. Behold, 32the Lord Christ, that hath all fulness of grace in his heart, all fulness of power in his hand, he is able to slay all these his enemies. There is sufficient provision in him for my relief and assistance. He can take my drooping, dying soul and make me more than a conqueror.33 ‘Why sayest thou, O my soul, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint,’ Isa. xl. 27–31. He can make the ‘dry, parched ground of my soul to become a pool, and my thirsty, barren heart as springs of water;’ yea, he can make this ‘habitation of dragons,’ this heart, so full of abominable lusts and fiery temptations, to be a place for ‘grass’ and fruit to himself,” Isa. xxxv. 7. So God staid Paul, under his temptation, with the consideration of the sufficiency of his grace: “My grace is sufficient for thee,” 2 Cor. xii. 9. Though he were not immediately so far made partaker of it as to be freed from his temptation, yet the sufficiency of it in God, for that end and purpose, was enough to stay his spirit. I say, then, by faith, be much in the consideration of that supply and the fulness of it that is in Jesus Christ, and how he can at any time give thee strength and deliverance. Now, if hereby thou dost not find success to a conquest, yet thou wilt be staid in the chariot, that thou shalt not fly out of the field until the battle be ended; thou wilt be kept from an utter despondency and a lying down under thy unbelief, or a turning aside to false means and remedies, that in the issue will not relieve thee. The efficacy of this consideration will be found only in the practice. ~ John Owen,

1348:Bear fat for the burn. You will lie on your face.” Their gazes locked, laughter still shimmering in his. Seconds dragged by, measured by the wild thumping of her heart. He wanted to rub her down? Oh, God, what was she going to do? She clutched the fur more tightly. Hunter shrugged as if her defiance bothered him not at all and tossed down the pouch. “You are sure enough not smart, Blue Eyes. You will lie on your face,” he said softly. “Don’t fight the big fight. If my strong arm fails me, I will call my friends. And in the end, you will lie on your face.” Loretta imagined sixty warriors swooping down on her. As if he needed more of an advantage. Hatred and helpless rage made her tremble. Hunter watched her, his expression unreadable as he waited. She wanted to fly at him, scratching and biting. Instead she loosened her hold on the buffalo robe and rolled onto her stomach. As she pressed her face into the stench-ridden buffalo fur, tears streamed down her cheeks, pooling and tickling in the crevices at each side of her nose. She clamped her arms to her sides and lay rigid, expecting him to jerk back the robe. Shame swept over her in hot, rolling waves as she imagined all those horrible men looking at her. She felt the fur shift and braced herself. His greased palm touched her back and slid downward with such agonizing slowness that her skin shriveled and her buttocks quivered. So focused was she on his touch, on the shame of it, that several seconds passed before she realized he had slipped his arm beneath the fur, that no one, not even he, could see her. Relief, if she felt any at all, was short-lived, for he laved every inch of her back with grease and then tried to nudge her arms aside to get at the burned skin along her ribs. She resisted him, but in the end his strength won out. When his fingertips grazed the swell of her left breast, her lungs ceased working and her body snapped taut. He hesitated, then resumed the rubbing, diving his fingertips between her and the fur to graze her nipple. She wasn’t burned there, and she knew he pressed the issue only to drive home his point. She belonged to him, and he would touch her whenever and wherever he pleased. A sob caught in her throat. Once again she felt his hand pause. His gaze burned into the back of her head, tangible in its intensity. At last he withdrew his arm from under the fur and sat back. Loretta twisted her neck to look up at his dark face, not bothering to wipe away her tears, too defeated to care if he saw them. He set the leather pouch on the pallet beside her. For an instant she thought she glimpsed pity in his eyes. “You rub the rest, eh? And put yourself into the clothes.” With that, he rose, presented his broad back to her, and walked away to crouch by the only remaining fire. Loretta clutched the fur to her breasts and sat up, not quite able to believe he had left her alone to dress. ~ Catherine Anderson,

1349:Reason #1: Downtime Aids Insights Consider the following excerpt from a 2006 paper that appeared in the journal Science: The scientific literature has emphasized the benefits of conscious deliberation in decision making for hundreds of years… The question addressed here is whether this view is justified. We hypothesize that it is not. Lurking in this bland statement is a bold claim. The authors of this study, led by the Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis, set out to prove that some decisions are better left to your unconscious mind to untangle. In other words, to actively try to work through these decisions will lead to a worse outcome than loading up the relevant information and then moving on to something else while letting the subconscious layers of your mind mull things over. Dijksterhuis’s team isolated this effect by giving subjects the information needed for a complex decision regarding a car purchase. Half the subjects were told to think through the information and then make the best decision. The other half were distracted by easy puzzles after they read the information, and were then put on the spot to make a decision without having had time to consciously deliberate. The distracted group ended up performing better. Observations from experiments such as this one led Dijksterhuis and his collaborators to introduce unconscious thought theory (UTT)—an attempt to understand the different roles conscious and unconscious deliberation play in decision making. At a high level, this theory proposes that for decisions that require the application of strict rules, the conscious mind must be involved. For example, if you need to do a math calculation, only your conscious mind is able to follow the precise arithmetic rules needed for correctness. On the other hand, for decisions that involve large amounts of information and multiple vague, and perhaps even conflicting, constraints, your unconscious mind is well suited to tackle the issue. UTT hypothesizes that this is due to the fact that these regions of your brain have more neuronal bandwidth available, allowing them to move around more information and sift through more potential solutions than your conscious centers of thinking. Your conscious mind, according to this theory, is like a home computer on which you can run carefully written programs that return correct answers to limited problems, whereas your unconscious mind is like Google’s vast data centers, in which statistical algorithms sift through terabytes of unstructured information, teasing out surprising useful solutions to difficult questions. The implication of this line of research is that providing your conscious brain time to rest enables your unconscious mind to take a shift sorting through your most complex professional challenges. A shutdown habit, therefore, is not necessarily reducing the amount of time you’re engaged in productive work, but is instead diversifying the type of work you deploy. ~ Cal Newport,

1350:In 2006, researchers Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler created fake newspaper articles about polarizing political issues. The articles were written in a way that would confirm a widespread misconception about certain ideas in American politics. As soon as a person read a fake article, experimenters then handed over a true article that corrected the first. For instance, one article suggested that the United States had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The next article corrected the first and said that the United States had never found them, which was the truth. Those opposed to the war or who had strong liberal leanings tended to disagree with the original article and accept the second. Those who supported the war and leaned more toward the conservative camp tended to agree with the first article and strongly disagree with the second. These reactions shouldn’t surprise you. What should give you pause, though, is how conservatives felt about the correction. After reading that there were no WMDs, they reported being even more certain than before that there actually were WMDs and that their original beliefs were correct. The researchers repeated the experiment with other wedge issues, such as stem cell research and tax reform, and once again they found that corrections tended to increase the strength of the participants’ misconceptions if those corrections contradicted their ideologies. People on opposing sides of the political spectrum read the same articles and then the same corrections, and when new evidence was interpreted as threatening to their beliefs, they doubled down. The corrections backfired. Researchers Kelly Garrett and Brian Weeks expanded on this work in 2013. In their study, people already suspicious of electronic health records read factually incorrect articles about such technologies that supported those subjects’ beliefs. In those articles, the scientists had already identified any misinformation and placed it within brackets, highlighted it in red, and italicized the text. After they finished reading the articles, people who said beforehand that they opposed electronic health records reported no change in their opinions and felt even more strongly about the issue than before. The corrections had strengthened their biases instead of weakening them. Once something is added to your collection of beliefs, you protect it from harm. You do this instinctively and unconsciously when confronted with attitude-inconsistent information. Just as confirmation bias shields you when you actively seek information, the backfire effect defends you when the information seeks you, when it blindsides you. Coming or going, you stick to your beliefs instead of questioning them. When someone tries to correct you, tries to dilute your misconceptions, it backfires and strengthens those misconceptions instead. Over time, the backfire effect makes you less skeptical of those things that allow you to continue seeing your beliefs and attitudes as true and proper. ~ David McRaney,

1351:Men cooperate with one another. The totality of interhuman relations engendered by such cooperation is called society. Society is not an entity in itself. It is an aspect of human action. It does not exist or live outside of the conduct of people. It is an orientation of human action. Society neither thinks nor acts. Individuais in thinking and acting constitute a complex of relations and facts that are called social relations and facts. The issue has been confused by an arithmetical metaphor. Is society, people asked, merely a sum of individuals or is it more than this and thereby an entity endowed with independent reality? The question is nonsensical. Society is neither the sum of individuais nor more nor less. Arithmetical concepts cannot be applied to the matter. Another confusion arises from the no less empty question whether society is—in logic and in time—anterior to individuais or not. The evolution of society and that of civilization were not two distinct processes but one and the same process. The biological passing of a species of primates beyond the levei of a mere animal existence and their transformation into primitive men implied already the development of the first rudiments of social cooperation. Homo sapiens appeared on the stage of earthly events neither as a solitary foodseeker nor as a member of a gregarious flock, but as a being consciously cooperating with other beings of his own kind. Only in cooperation with his fellows could he develop language, the indispensable tool of thinking. We cannot even imagine a reasonable being living in perfect isolation and not cooperating at least with members of his family, clan, or tribe. Man as man is necessarily a social animal. Some sort of cooperation is an essential characteristic of his nature. But awareness of this fact does not justify dealing with social relations as if they were something else than relations or with society as if it were an independent entity outside or above the actions of individual men. Finally there are the misconstructions caused by the organismic metaphor. We may compare society to a biological organism. The tertium comparationis is the fact that division of labor and cooperation exist among the various parts of a biological body as among the various members of society. But the biological evolution that resulted in the emergence of the structurefunction systems of plant and animal bodies was a purely physiological process in which no trace of a conscious activity on the part of the cells can be discovered. On the other hand, human society is an intellectual and spiritual phenomenon. In cooperating with their fellows, individuais do not divest themselves of their individuality. They retain the power to act antisocially, and often make use of it. Its place in the structure of the body is invariably assigned to each cell. But individuais spontaneously choose the way in which they integrate themselves into social cooperation. Men have ideas and seek chosen ends, while the cells and organs of the body lack such autonomy. ~ Ludwig von Mises,

1352:As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer noticed, truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed. The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts. The president does this at a high rate and at a fast pace. One attempt during the 2016 campaign to track his utterances found that 78 percent of his factual claims were false. This proportion is so high that it makes the correct assertions seem like unintended oversights on the path toward total fiction. Demeaning the world as it is begins the creation of a fictional counterworld. The second mode is shamanistic incantation. As Klemperer noted, the fascist style depends upon “endless repetition,” designed to make the fictional plausible and the criminal desirable. The systematic use of nicknames such as “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary” displaced certain character traits that might more appropriately have been affixed to the president himself. Yet through blunt repetition over Twitter, our president managed the transformation of individuals into stereotypes that people then spoke aloud. At rallies, the repeated chants of “Build that wall” and “Lock her up” did not describe anything that the president had specific plans to do, but their very grandiosity established a connection between him and his audience. The next mode is magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction. The president’s campaign involved the promises of cutting taxes for everyone, eliminating the national debt, and increasing spending on both social policy and national defense. These promises mutually contradict. It is as if a farmer said he were taking an egg from the henhouse, boiling it whole and serving it to his wife, and also poaching it and serving it to his children, and then returning it to the hen unbroken, and then watching as the chick hatches. Accepting untruth of this radical kind requires a blatant abandonment of reason. Klemperer’s descriptions of losing friends in Germany in 1933 over the issue of magical thinking ring eerily true today. One of his former students implored him to “abandon yourself to your feelings, and you must always focus on the Führer’s greatness, rather than on the discomfort you are feeling at present.” Twelve years later, after all the atrocities, and at the end of a war that Germany had clearly lost, an amputated soldier told Klemperer that Hitler “has never lied yet. I believe in Hitler.” The final mode is misplaced faith. It involves the sort of self-deifying claims the president made when he said that “I alone can solve it” or “I am your voice.” When faith descends from heaven to earth in this way, no room remains for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience. What terrified Klemperer was the way that this transition seemed permanent. Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant. At the end of the war a worker told Klemperer that “understanding is useless, you have to have faith. I believe in the Führer. ~ Timothy Snyder,

1353:The woman glares at him and, after taking a breath, forges on. "One other issue I'd like to raise is how you have authors here separated by sex." "Yes, that's right. The person who was in charge before us cataloged these and for whatever reason divided them into male and female. We were thinking of recataloging all of them, but haven't been able to as of yet." "We're not criticizing you for this," she says. Oshima tilts his head slightly. "The problem, though, is that in all categories male authors are listed before female authors," she says. "To our way of thinking this violates the principle of sexual equality and is totally unfair." Oshima picks up her business card again, runs his eyes over it, then lays it back down on the counter. "Ms. Soga," he begins, "when they called the role in school your name would have come before Ms. Tanaka, and after Ms. Sekine. Did you file a complaint about that? Did you object, asking them to reverse the order? Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution just because it follows 67?" "That's not the point," she says angrily. "You're intentionally trying to confuse the issue." Hearing this, the shorter woman, who'd been standing in front of a stack taking notes, races over. "Intentionally trying to confuse the issue," Oshima repeats, like he's underlining the woman's words. "Are you denying it?" "That's a red herring," Oshima replies. The woman named Soga stands there, mouth slightly ajar, not saying a word. "In English there's this expression red herring. Something that's very interesting but leads you astray from the main topic. I'm afraid I haven't looked into why they use that kind of expression, though." "Herrings or mackerel or whatever, you're dodging the issue." "Actually what I'm doing is shifting the analogy," Oshima says. "One of the most effective methods of argument, according to Aristotle. The citizens of ancient Athens enjoyed using this kind of intellectual trick very much. It's a shame, though, that at the time women weren't included in the definition of 'citizen.'" "Are you making fun of us?" Oshima shakes his head. "Look, what I'm trying to get across is this: I'm sure there are many more effective ways of making sure that Japanese women's rights are guaranteed than sniffing around a small library in a little town and complaining about the restrooms and the card catalog. We're doing our level best to see that this modest library of ours helps the community. We've assembled an outstanding collection for people who love books. And we do our utmost to put a human face on all our dealings with the public. You might not be aware of it, but this library's collection of poetry-related material from the 1910s to the mid-Showa period is nationally recognized. Of course there are things we could do better, and limits to what we can accomplish. But rest assured we're doing our very best. I think it'd be a whole lot better if you focus on what we do well than what we're unable to do. Isn't that what you call fair? ~ Haruki Murakami,

1354:I TAUGHT MY WRITING CLASS from a Chinese-published text called A Handbook of Writing. Like all of the books we used, its political intent was never understated, and the chapter on “Argumentation” featured a model essay entitled “The Three Gorges Project Is Beneficial.” It was a standard five-paragraph essay and the opening section explained some of the risks that had led people to oppose the project: flooded scenery and cultural relics, endangered species that might be pushed to extinction, the threat of earthquake, landslide, or war destroying a dam that would hold back a lake four hundred miles long. “In short,” the second paragraph concluded, “the risks of the project may be too great for it to be beneficial.” The next two sentences provided the transition. “Their worries and warnings are well justified,” the essay continued. “But we should not give up eating for fear of choking.” And the writer went on to describe the benefits—more electricity, improved transportation, better flood control—and concluded by asserting that the Three Gorges Project had more advantages than disadvantages. I had some moral qualms about teaching a model persuasive essay whose topic had been banned from public debate in China since 1987—this seemed a slap in the face to the very notion of argumentation. At worst it was an exercise in propaganda, and at best it didn’t seem particularly sporting. But I had nothing else to work with, and the truth was that the essay, apart from its political agenda, provided a good structural model. My job was to teach the students how to write such a composition, and so I went ahead and taught it. I reckoned there was no sense in giving up eating for fear of choking. I was punished by having that transition sentence infect my students’ papers for the rest of the term. They were accustomed to learning by rote, which meant that they often followed models to the point of plagiarism. They were also inveterate copiers; it wasn’t uncommon to receive the exact same paper from two or three students. There wasn’t really a sense of wrong associated with these acts—all through school they had been taught to imitate models, and copy things, and accept what they were told without question, and often that was what they did. When I told them that the Three Gorges essay was a good model, they listened carefully and adopted its nuances in future work. I assigned argumentative essays on whether students should be required to do morning exercises, and many of them opened their compositions by describing the benefits of the morning routine. After that was finished, they made their shift: “But we should not give up eating for fear of choking.” Even students who were writing on opposite sides of the issue used that same transition. Later I assigned an argumentative essay on Hamlet’s character, and they listed his shortcomings—indecisiveness, cruelty to Ophelia—and many of them seemed like good papers until suddenly that cursed sentence came from nowhere and boomed out, “But we should not give up eating for fear of choking.” I came to loathe the phrase, and repeatedly I told them that it was a horrid transition, but it always reappeared. ~ Anonymous,

1355:At this point, the cautious reader might wish to read over the whole argument again, as presented above, just to make sure that I have not indulged in any 'sleight of hand'! Admittedly there is an air of the conjuring trick about the argument, but it is perfectly legitimate, and it only gains in strength the more minutely it is examined. We have found a computation Ck(k) that we know does not stop; yet the given computational procedure A is not powerful enough to ascertain that facet. This is the Godel(-Turing) theorem in the form that I require. It applies to any computational procedure A whatever for ascertaining that computations do not stop, so long as we know it to be sound. We deduce that no knowably sound set of computational rules (such as A) can ever suffice for ascertaining that computations do not stop, since there are some non-stopping computations (such as Ck(k)) that must elude these rules. Moreover, since from the knowledge of A and of its soundness, we can actually construct a computation Ck(k) that we can see does not ever stop, we deduce that A cannot be a formalization of the procedures available to mathematicians for ascertaining that computations do not stop, no matter what A is. Hence: (G) Human mathematicians are not using a knowably sound algorithm in order to ascertain mathematical truth. It seems to me that this conclusion is inescapable. However, many people have tried to argue against it-bringing in objections like those summarized in the queries Q1-Q20 of 2.6 and 2.10 below-and certainly many would argue against the stronger deduction that there must be something fundamentally non-computational in our thought processes. The reader may indeed wonder what on earth mathematical reasoning like this, concerning the abstract nature of computations, can have to say about the workings of the human mind. What, after all, does any of this have to do with the issue of conscious awareness? The answer is that the argument indeed says something very significant about the mental quality of understanding-in relation to the general issue of computation-and, as was argued in 1.12, the quality of understanding is something dependent upon conscious awareness. It is true that, for the most part, the foregoing reasoning has been presented as just a piece of mathematics, but there is the essential point that the algorithm A enters the argument at two quite different levels. At the one level, it is being treated as just some algorithm that has certain properties, but at the other, we attempt to regard A as being actually 'the algorithm that we ourselves use' in coming to believe that a computation will not stop. The argument is not simply about computations. It is also about how we use our conscious understanding in order to infer the validity of some mathematical claim-here the non-stopping character of Ck(k). It is the interplay between the two different levels at which the algorithm A is being considered-as a putative instance of conscious activity and as a computation itself-that allows us to arrive at a conclusion expressing a fundamental conflict between such conscious activity and mere computation. ~ Roger Penrose,

1356:Much of the so-called environmental movement today has transmuted into an aggressively nefarious and primitive faction. In the last fifteen years, many of the tenets of utopian statism have coalesced around something called the “degrowth” movement. Originating in Europe but now taking a firm hold in the United States, the “degrowthers,” as I shall characterize them, include in their ranks none other than President Barack Obama. On January 17, 2008, Obama made clear his hostility toward, of all things, electricity generated from coal and coal-powered plants. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal . . . under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. . . .”3 Obama added, “. . . So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”4 Degrowthers define their agenda as follows: “Sustainable degrowth is a downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet. It calls for a future where societies live within their ecological means, with open localized economies and resources more equally distributed through new forms of democratic institutions.”5 It “is an essential economic strategy to pursue in overdeveloped countries like the United States—for the well-being of the planet, of underdeveloped populations, and yes, even of the sick, stressed, and overweight ‘consumer’ populations of overdeveloped countries.”6 For its proponents and adherents, degrowth has quickly developed into a pseudo-religion and public-policy obsession. In fact, the degrowthers insist their ideology reaches far beyond the environment or even its odium for capitalism and is an all-encompassing lifestyle and governing philosophy. Some of its leading advocates argue that “Degrowth is not just an economic concept. We shall show that it is a frame constituted by a large array of concerns, goals, strategies and actions. As a result, degrowth has now become a confluence point where streams of critical ideas and political action converge.”7 Degrowth is “an interpretative frame for a social movement, understood as the mechanism through which actors engage in a collective action.”8 The degrowthers seek to eliminate carbon sources of energy and redistribute wealth according to terms they consider equitable. They reject the traditional economic reality that acknowledges growth as improving living conditions generally but especially for the impoverished. They embrace the notions of “less competition, large scale redistribution, sharing and reduction of excessive incomes and wealth.”9 Degrowthers want to engage in polices that will set “a maximum income, or maximum wealth, to weaken envy as a motor of consumerism, and opening borders (“no-border”) to reduce means to keep inequality between rich and poor countries.”10 And they demand reparations by supporting a “concept of ecological debt, or the demand that the Global North pays for past and present colonial exploitation in the Global South.”11 ~ Mark R Levin,

1357:As Allied forces moved into Hitler’s Fortress Europe, Roosevelt and his circle were confronted with new evidence of the Holocaust. In early 1942, he had been given information that Adolf Hitler was quietly fulfilling his threat to “annihilate the Jewish race.” Rabbi Stephen Wise asked the President that December 1942 to inform the world about “the most overwhelming disaster of Jewish history” and “try to stop it.” Although he was willing to warn the world about the impending catastrophe and insisted that there be war crimes commissions when the conflict was over, Roosevelt told Wise that punishment for such crimes would probably have to await the end of the fighting, so his own solution was to “win the war.” The problem with this approach was that by the time of an Allied victory, much of world Jewry might have been annihilated. By June 1944, the Germans had removed more than half of Hungary’s 750,000 Jews, and some Jewish leaders were asking the Allies to bomb railways from Hungary to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. In response, Churchill told his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, that the murder of the Jews was “probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world,” and ordered him to get “everything” he could out of the British Air Force. But the Prime Minister was told that American bombers were better positioned to do the job. At the Pentagon, Stimson consulted John McCloy, who later insisted, for decades, that he had “never talked” with Roosevelt about the option of bombing the railroad lines or death camps. But in 1986, McCloy changed his story during a taped conversation with Henry Morgenthau’s son, Henry III, who was researching a family history. The ninety-one-year-old McCloy insisted that he had indeed raised the idea with the President, and that Roosevelt became “irate” and “made it very clear” that bombing Auschwitz “wouldn’t have done any good.” By McCloy’s new account, Roosevelt “took it out of my hands” and warned that “if it’s successful, it’ll be more provocative” and “we’ll be accused of participating in this horrible business,” as well as “bombing innocent people.” McCloy went on, “I didn’t want to bomb Auschwitz,” adding that “it seemed to be a bunch of fanatic Jews who seemed to think that if you didn’t bomb, it was an indication of lack of venom against Hitler.” If McCloy’s memory was reliable, then, just as with the Japanese internment, Roosevelt had used the discreet younger man to discuss a decision for which he knew he might be criticized by history, and which might conceivably have become an issue in the 1944 campaign. This approach to the possible bombing of the camps would allow the President to explain, if it became necessary, that the issue had been resolved at a lower level by the military. In retrospect, the President should have considered the bombing proposal more seriously. Approving it might have required him to slightly revise his insistence that the Allies’ sole aim should be winning the war, as he did on at least a few other occasions. But such a decision might have saved lives and shown future generations that, like Churchill, he understood the importance of the Holocaust as a crime unparalleled in world history.* ~ Michael R Beschloss,

1358:I'm going to throw some suggestions at you now in rapid succession, assuming you are a father of one or more boys. Here we go: If you speak disparagingly of the opposite sex, or if you refer to females as sex objects, those attitudes will translate directly into dating and marital relationships later on. Remember that your goal is to prepare a boy to lead a family when he's grown and to show him how to earn the respect of those he serves. Tell him it is great to laugh and have fun with his friends, but advise him not to be "goofy." Guys who are goofy are not respected, and people, especially girls and women, do not follow boys and men whom they disrespect. Also, tell your son that he is never to hit a girl under any circumstances. Remind him that she is not as strong as he is and that she is deserving of his respect. Not only should he not hurt her, but he should protect her if she is threatened. When he is strolling along with a girl on the street, he should walk on the outside, nearer the cars. That is symbolic of his responsibility to take care of her. When he is on a date, he should pay for her food and entertainment. Also (and this is simply my opinion), girls should not call boys on the telephone-at least not until a committed relationship has developed. Guys must be the initiators, planning the dates and asking for the girl's company. Teach your son to open doors for girls and to help them with their coats or their chairs in a restaurant. When a guy goes to her house to pick up his date, tell him to get out of the car and knock on the door. Never honk. Teach him to stand, in formal situations, when a woman leaves the room or a table or when she returns. This is a way of showing respect for her. If he treats her like a lady, she will treat him like a man. It's a great plan. Make a concerted effort to teach sexual abstinence to your teenagers, just as you teach them to abstain from drug and alcohol usage and other harmful behavior. Of course you can do it! Young people are fully capable of understanding that irresponsible sex is not in their best interest and that it leads to disease, unwanted pregnancy, rejection, etc. In many cases today, no one is sharing this truth with teenagers. Parents are embarrassed to talk about sex, and, it disturbs me to say, churches are often unwilling to address the issue. That creates a vacuum into which liberal sex counselors have intruded to say, "We know you're going to have sex anyway, so why not do it right?" What a damning message that is. It is why herpes and other sexually transmitted diseases are spreading exponentially through the population and why unwanted pregnancies stalk school campuses. Despite these terrible social consequences, very little support is provided even for young people who are desperately looking for a valid reason to say no. They're told that "safe sex" is fine if they just use the right equipment. You as a father must counterbalance those messages at home. Tell your sons that there is no safety-no place to hide-when one lives in contradiction to the laws of God! Remind them repeatedly and emphatically of the biblical teaching about sexual immorality-and why someone who violates those laws not only hurts himself, but also wounds the girl and cheats the man she will eventually marry. Tell them not to take anything that doesn't belong to them-especially the moral purity of a woman. ~ James C Dobson,

1359:Amy, listen to me.  Listen to me.  Don't you ever let them tell you you're ugly!  Don't ever let them tell you you're dirty.  You're a beautiful person, inside and out, thoughtful, sensitive and kind.  I don't care what Sylvanus says, or what anyone else thinks.  You'll find yourself a nice man to marry someday, and if your family's trying to convince you otherwise, it's only because they have an unpaid servant in you and they don't want to lose you." He heard what sounded like a gulp, then a sniffle. "Amy?" "I — I'm sorry, Ch-Charles.  No one's ever said anything like that to me before, and . . . and I j-just don't know what to make of it —" "Oh, God, don't cry.  I don't know how to deal with tearful females, truly I don't." "I c-can't help it, you're being so nice to me, saying that I'm beautiful when really, I'm not, and — "You are beautiful, Amy, and don't you ever forget it." "You can't say that, you've never even seen me!" "Come here." "I am here." "Come closer, then, and let me judge the issue for myself." She did. "Now, place my hands on your face." Sniffling, she took his hands within her own.  Or tried to, given that hers were half the size of his and dainty as a bird's foot. And then she raised them to her face, placing one on each hot, tearstained cheek. The minute he felt her flesh beneath his, Charles knew this was a mistake.  A big mistake.  But to stop now would crush her. "Ah, Amy.  How can you think you're ugly?  Your skin is so soft that it feels like roses after a morning rain." "It's too dark.  Bronzy.  Not at all the color of Ophelia's and Mildred's." "And who says skin has to be milk-white to be beautiful?" "Well . . . no one, I guess." He gently pressed his thumbs against her cheeks, noting that they were hot with blush, soft as thistledown, and that the delicate bones beneath were high and prominent.  "And look at these cheekbones!  I know women — aristocratic women, mind you — who'd kill for cheekbones like these.  High cheekbones are a mark of great beauty, you know." "High cheekbones are a mark of Indian blood." "Amy." "Yes?" "Stop it." "I'm sorry." He continued on, now tracing the curve of her brow, and the bridge of her nose.  He had lost his eyesight, but it was amazing what his hands could see. "You have a lovely nose," he said. "It's too strong." "No it isn't.  Close your eyes." She did.  He could feel the fragile veneer of her eyelids, trembling faintly beneath his fingertips, and long, long lashes that brushed those cheekbones he had so admired. "What color are your eyes, Amy?" "Brown." "What color brown?  Brown like conkers?  Brown like nutmeg?  Brown like black?" "Brown like mud." "Can you think of a more flattering word?" "No." His hands moved out over her face, learning its shape, before touching the plaited, pinned-up mass of her hair.  It was straight, he could tell that much.  Shiny like glass, as soft as a fern.  He wished it was down. Good God, man, whatever are you thinking?! "My hair's brown, too," Amy said, her voice now a tremulous, barely audible whisper. "Brown like mud?" he cajoled. "No.  Brown like black.  And when the sun comes out, it's got reddish undertones." "It sounds very pretty." "It's not, really.  It's just hair." "Just hair.  Do you ever wear it down?" "No." "Why not?" "It gets in the way of things." "Don't you think that someday, a man will wish to drag his fingers through all this hair?" "No . . . no respectable man." He shook his head, his heart aching for her.  "Oh, Amy." He ~ Danelle Harmon,

1360:Freud was fascinated with depression and focused on the issue that we began with—why is it that most of us can have occasional terrible experiences, feel depressed, and then recover, while a few of us collapse into major depression (melancholia)? In his classic essay “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917), Freud began with what the two have in common. In both cases, he felt, there is the loss of a love object. (In Freudian terms, such an “object” is usually a person, but can also be a goal or an ideal.) In Freud’s formulation, in every loving relationship there is ambivalence, mixed feelings—elements of hatred as well as love. In the case of a small, reactive depression—mourning—you are able to deal with those mixed feelings in a healthy manner: you lose, you grieve, and then you recover. In the case of a major melancholic depression, you have become obsessed with the ambivalence—the simultaneity, the irreconcilable nature of the intense love alongside the intense hatred. Melancholia—a major depression—Freud theorized, is the internal conflict generated by this ambivalence. This can begin to explain the intensity of grief experienced in a major depression. If you are obsessed with the intensely mixed feelings, you grieve doubly after a loss—for your loss of the loved individual and for the loss of any chance now to ever resolve the difficulties. “If only I had said the things I needed to, if only we could have worked things out”—for all of time, you have lost the chance to purge yourself of the ambivalence. For the rest of your life, you will be reaching for the door to let you into a place of pure, unsullied love, and you can never reach that door. It also explains the intensity of the guilt often experienced in major depression. If you truly harbored intense anger toward the person along with love, in the aftermath of your loss there must be some facet of you that is celebrating, alongside the grieving. “He’s gone; that’s terrible but…thank god, I can finally live, I can finally grow up, no more of this or that.” Inevitably, a metaphorical instant later, there must come a paralyzing belief that you have become a horrible monster to feel any sense of relief or pleasure at a time like this. Incapacitating guilt. This theory also explains the tendency of major depressives in such circumstances to, oddly, begin to take on some of the traits of the lost loved/hated one—and not just any traits, but invariably the ones that the survivor found most irritating. Psychodynamically, this is wonderfully logical. By taking on a trait, you are being loyal to your lost, beloved opponent. By picking an irritating trait, you are still trying to convince the world you were right to be irritated—you see how you hate it when I do it; can you imagine what it was like to have to put up with that for years? And by picking a trait that, most of all, you find irritating, you are not only still trying to score points in your argument with the departed, but you are punishing yourself for arguing as well. Out of the Freudian school of thought has come one of the more apt descriptions of depression—“aggression turned inward.” Suddenly the loss of pleasure, the psychomotor retardation, the impulse to suicide all make sense. As do the elevated glucocorticoid levels. This does not describe someone too lethargic to function; it is more like the actual state of a patient in depression, exhausted from the most draining emotional conflict of his or her life—one going on entirely within. If that doesn’t count as psychologically stressful, I don’t know what does. ~ Robert M Sapolsky,

1361:You are a totally pathetic, historical example of the phallocentric, to put it mildly." "A pathetic, historical example," Oshima repeats, obviously impressed. By his tone of voice he seems to like the sound of that phrase. "In other words you're a typical sexist, patriarchic male," the tall one pipes in, unable to conceal her irritation. "A patriarchic male," Oshima again repeats. The short one ignores this and goes on. "You're employing the status quo and the cheap phallocentric logic that supports it to reduce the entire female gender to second-class citizens, to limit and deprive women of the rights they're due. You're doing this unconsciously rather than deliberately, but that makes you even guiltier. You protect vested male interests and become inured to the pain of others, and don't even try to see what evil your blindness causes women and society. I realize that problems with restrooms and card catalogs are mere details, but if we don't begin with the small things we'll never be able to throw off the cloak of blindness that covers our society. Those are the principles by which we act." "That's the way every sensible woman feels," the tall one adds, her face expressionless. [...] A frozen silence follows. "At any rate, what you've been saying is fundamentally wrong," Oshima says, calmly yet emphatically. "I am most definitely not a pathetic, historical example of a patriarchic male." "Then explain, simply, what's wrong with what we've said," the shorter woman says defiantly. "Without sidestepping the issue or trying to show off how erudite you are," the tall one adds. "All right. I'll do just that—explain it simply and honestly, minus any sidestepping or displays of brilliance," Oshima says. "We're waiting," the tall one says, and the short one gives a compact nod to show she agrees. "First of all, I'm not a male," Oshima announces. A dumbfounded silence follows on the part of everybody. I gulp and shoot Oshima a glance. "I'm a woman," he says. "I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't joke around," the short woman says, after a pause for breath. Not much confidence, though. It's more like she felt somebody had to say something. Oshima pulls his wallet out of his chinos, takes out the driver's license, and passes it to the woman. She reads what's written there, frowns, and hands it to her tall companion, who reads it and, after a moment's hesitation, gives it back to Oshima, a sour look on her face. "Did you want to see it too?" Oshima asks me. When I shake my head, he slips the license back in his wallet and puts the wallet in his pants pocket. He then places both hands on the counter and says, "As you can see, biologically and legally I am undeniably female. Which is why what you've been saying about me is fundamentally wrong. It's simply impossible for me to be, as you put it, a typical sexist, patriarchic male." "Yes, but—" the tall woman says but then stops. The short one, lips tight, is playing with her collar. "My body is physically female, but my mind's completely male," Oshima goes on. "Emotionally I live as a man. So I suppose your notion of being a historical example may be correct. And maybe I am sexist—who knows. But I'm not a lesbian, even though I dress this way. My sexual preference is for men. In other words, I'm a female but I'm gay. I do anal sex, and have never used my vagina for sex. My clitoris is sensitive but my breasts aren't. I don't have a period. So, what am I discriminating against? Could somebody tell me? ~ Haruki Murakami,

1362:Reading Group Guide  1.   The river town of Hobnob, Mississippi, is in danger of flooding. To offset the risk, the townspeople were offered the chance to relocate in exchange for money. Some people jumped at the opportunity (the Flooders); others (the Stickers) refused to leave, so the deal fell through. If you lived in Hobnob, which choice would you make and why? If you’d lived in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina, would you have fled the storm or stayed to protect your house? Did the two floods remind you of each other in terms of official government response or media coverage?  2.   How are the circumstances during the Prohibition era (laws against consuming or selling alcohol, underground businesses that make and sell booze on the black market, corruption in the government and in law enforcement) similar to what’s happening today (the fight to legalize and tax marijuana, the fallout of the drug war in countries like Mexico and Colombia, jails filled with drug abusers)? How are the circumstances different? Do you identify with the bootleggers or the prohibitionists in the novel? What is your stance on the issue today?  3.   The novel is written in third person from two different perspectives—Ingersoll’s and Dixie Clay’s—in alternating chapters. How do you think this approach adds to or detracts from the story? Are you a fan of books written from multiple perspectives, or do you prefer one character to tell his/her side of the story?  4.   The Tilted World is written by two authors. Do you think it reads differently than a book written by only one? Do you think you could coauthor a novel with a loved one? Did you try to guess which author wrote different passages?  5.   Language and dialect play an important role in the book. Do you think the southern dialect is rendered successfully? How about the authors’ use of similes (“wet towels hanging out of the upstairs windows like tongues”; “Her nylon stockings sagged around her ankles like shedding snakeskin.”). Do they provide necessary context or flavor?  6.   At the end of Chapter 5, when Jesse, Ham, and Ingersoll first meet, Ingersoll realizes that Jesse has been drinking water the entire time they’ve been at dinner. Of course, Ham and Ingersoll are both drunk from all the moonshine. How does this discovery set the stage for what happens in the latter half of the book?  7.   Ingersoll grew up an orphan. In what ways do you think that independence informed his character? His choices throughout the novel? Dixie Clay also became independent, after marrying Jesse and becoming ostracized from friends and family. Later, after Ingersoll rescues her, she reflects, “For so long she’d relied only on herself. She’d needed to. . . . But now she’d let someone in. It should have felt like weakness, but it didn’t.” Are love and independence mutually exclusive? How did the arrival of Willy prepare these characters for the changes they’d have to undergo to be ready for each other?  8.   Dixie Clay becomes a bootlegger not because she loves booze or money but because she needs something to occupy her time. It’s true, however, that she’s not only breaking the law but participating in a system that perpetrates violence. Do you think there were better choices she could have made? Consider the scene at the beginning of the novel, when there’s a showdown between Jesse and two revenuers interested in making an arrest. Dixie Clay intercepts the arrest, pretending to be a posse of gunslingers protecting Jesse and the still. Given what you find out about Jesse—his dishonesty, his drunkenness, his womanizing—do you think she made the right choice? If you were in Dixie Clay’s shoes, what would you have done?  9.   When Ham learns that Ingersoll abandoned his post at the levee to help Dixie Clay, he feels not only that Ingersoll acted ~ Tom Franklin,

1363:Adventists urged to study women’s ordination for themselves Adventist Church President Ted N. C. Wilson appealed to members to study the Bible regarding the theology of ordination as the Church continues to examine the matter at Annual Council next month and at General Conference Session next year. Above, Wilson delivers the Sabbath sermon at Annual Council last year. [ANN file photo] President Wilson and TOSC chair Stele also ask for prayers for Holy Spirit to guide proceedings September 24, 2014 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Andrew McChesney/Adventist Review Ted N. C. Wilson, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, appealed to church members worldwide to earnestly read what the Bible says about women’s ordination and to pray that he and other church leaders humbly follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance on the matter. Church members wishing to understand what the Bible teaches on women’s ordination have no reason to worry about where to start, said Artur A. Stele, who oversaw an unprecedented, two-year study on women’s ordination as chair of the church-commissioned Theology of Ordination Study Committee. Stele, who echoed Wilson’s call for church members to read the Bible and pray on the issue, recommended reading the study’s three brief “Way Forward Statements,” which cite Bible texts and Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White to support each of the three positions on women’s ordination that emerged during the committee’s research. The results of the study will be discussed in October at the Annual Council, a major business meeting of church leaders. The Annual Council will then decide whether to ask the nearly 2,600 delegates of the world church to make a final call on women’s ordination in a vote at the General Conference Session next July. Wilson, speaking in an interview, urged each of the church’s 18 million members to prayerfully read the study materials, available on the website of the church’s Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research. "Look to see how the papers and presentations were based on an understanding of a clear reading of Scripture,” Wilson said in his office at General Conference headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. “The Spirit of Prophecy tells us that we are to take the Bible just as it reads,” he said. “And I would encourage each church member, and certainly each representative at the Annual Council and those who will be delegates to the General Conference Session, to prayerfully review those presentations and then ask the Holy Spirit to help them know God’s will.” The Spirit of Prophecy refers to the writings of White, who among her statements on how to read the Bible wrote in The Great Controversy (p. 598), “The language of the Bible should be explained according to its obvious meaning, unless a symbol or figure is employed.” “We don’t have the luxury of having the Urim and the Thummim,” Wilson said, in a nod to the stones that the Israelite high priest used in Old Testament times to learn God’s will. “Nor do we have a living prophet with us. So we must rely upon the Holy Spirit’s leading in our own Bible study as we review the plain teachings of Scripture.” He said world church leadership was committed to “a very open, fair, and careful process” on the issue of women’s ordination. Wilson added that the crucial question facing the church wasn’t whether women should be ordained but whether church members who disagreed with the final decision on ordination, whatever it might be, would be willing to set aside their differences to focus on the church’s 151-year mission: proclaiming Revelation 14 and the three angels’ messages that Jesus is coming soon. 3 Views on Women’s Ordination In an effort to better understand the Bible’s teaching on ordination, the church established the Theology of Ordination Study Committee, a group of 106 members commonly referred to by church leaders as TOSC. It was not organized ~ Anonymous,

1364:Mary Smith Away down East where I was reared amongst my Yankee kith, There used to live a pretty girl whose name was Mary Smith; And though it's many years since last I saw that pretty girl, And though I feel I'm sadly worn by Western strife and whirl; Still, oftentimes, I think about the old familiar place, Which, someway, seemed the brighter for Miss Mary's pretty face, And in my heart I feel once more revivified the glow I used to feel in those old times when I was Mary's beau. I saw her home from singing school--she warbled like a bird. A sweeter voice than hers for song or speech I never heard. She was soprano in the choir, and I a solemn bass, And when we unisoned our voices filled that holy place; The tenor and the alto never had the slightest chance, For Mary's upper register made every heart-string dance; And, as for me, I shall not brag, and yet I'd have you know I sung a very likely bass when I was Mary's beau. On Friday nights I'd drop around to make my weekly call, And though I came to visit her, I'd have to see 'em all. With Mary's mother sitting here and Mary's father there, The conversation never flagged so far as I'm aware; Sometimes I'd hold her worsted, sometimes we'd play at games, Sometimes dissect the apples which we'd named each other's names. Oh how I loathed the shrill-toned clock that told me when to go-'Twas ten o'clock at half-past eight when I was Mary's beau. Now there was Luther Baker--because he'd come of age And thought himself some pumpkins because he drove the stage-He fancied he could cut me out; but Mary was my friend-Elsewise I'm sure the issue had had a tragic end. For Luther Baker was a man I never could abide, And, when it came to Mary, either he or I had died. I merely cite this instance incidentally to show That I was quite in earnest when I was Mary's beau. How often now those sights, those pleasant sights, recur again: The little township that was all the world I knew of then-The meeting-house upon the hill, the tavern just beyond, 222 Old deacon Packard's general store, the sawmill by the pond, The village elms I vainly sought to conquer in my quest Of that surpassing trophy, the golden oriole's nest. And, last of all those visions that come back from long ago, The pretty face that thrilled my soul when I was Mary's beau. Hush, gentle wife, there is no need a pang should vex your heart-'T is many years since fate ordained that she and I should part; To each a true, maturer love came in good time, and yet It brought not with its nobler grace the power to forget. And would you fain begrudge me now the sentimental joy That comes of recollections of my sparkings when a boy? I warrant me that, were your heart put to the rack,'t would show That it had predilections when I was Mary's beau. And, Mary, should these lines of mine seek out your biding place, God grant they bring the old sweet smile back to your pretty face-God grant they bring you thoughts of me, not as I am to-day, With faltering step and brimming eyes and aspect grimly gray; But thoughts that picture me as fair and full of life and glee As we were in the olden times--as you shall always be. Think of me ever, Mary, as the boy you used to know When time was fleet, and life was sweet, and I was Mary's beau. Dear hills of old New England, look down with tender eyes Upon one little lonely grave that in your bosom lies; For in that cradle sleeps a child who was so fair to see God yearned to have unto Himself the joy she brought to me; And bid your winds sing soft and low the song of other days, When, hand in hand and heart to heart, we went our pleasant ways-Ah me! but could I sing again that song of long ago, Instead of this poor idle song of being Mary's beau. ~ Eugene Field,

1365:History records that there was only one Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo — and that he was too small for his job. The fact is there were two Napoleons at Waterloo, and the second one was big enough for his job, with some to spare. The second Napoleon was Nathan Rothschild — the emperor of finance. During the trying months that came before the crash Nathan Rothschild had plunged on England until his own fortunes, no less than those of the warring nations, were staked on the issue. He had lent money direct. He had discounted Wellington's paper. He had risked millions by sending chests of gold through war-swept territory where the slightest failure of plans might have caused its capture. He was extended to the limit when the fateful hour struck, and the future seemed none too certain. The English, in characteristic fashion, believed that all had been lost before anything was lost -— before the first gun bellowed out its challenge over the Belgian plains. The London stock market was in a panic. Consols were falling, slipping, sliding, tumbling. If the telegraph had been invented, the suspense would have been less, even if the wires had told that all was lost. But there was no telegraph. There were only rumors and fears. As the armies drew toward Waterloo Nathan Rothschild was like a man aflame. All of his instincts were crying out for news — good news, bad news, any kind of news, but news — something to end his suspense. News could be had immediately only by going to the front. He did not want to go to the front. A biographer of the family, Mr. Ignatius Balla, 1 declares that Nathan had " always shrunk from the sight of blood." From this it may be presumed that, to put it delicately, he was not a martial figure. But, as events came to a focus, his mingled hopes and fears overcame his inborn instincts. He must know the best or the worst and that at once. So he posted off for Belgium. He drew near to the gathering armies. From a safe post on a hill he saw the puffs of smoke from the opening guns. He saw Napoleon hurl his human missiles at Wellington's advancing walls of red. He did not see the final crash of the French, because he saw enough to convince him that it was coming, and therefore did not wait to witness the actual event. He had no time to wait. He hungered and thirsted for London as a few days before he had hungered and thirsted for the sight of Waterloo. Wellington having saved the day for him as well as for England, Nathan Rothschild saw an opportunity to reap colossal gains by beating the news of Napoleon's 1 The Romance of the Rothschilds, p. 88. 126 OUR DISHONEST CONSTITUTION defeat to London and buying the depressed securities of his adopted country before the news of victory should send them skyward with the hats of those whose brains were still whirling with fear. So he left the field of Waterloo while the guns were still booming out the requiem of all of Napoleon's great hopes of empire. He raced to Brussels upon the back of a horse whose sides were dripping with spur-drawn blood. At Brussels he paid an exorbitant price to be whirled in a carriage to Ostend. At Ostend he found the sea in the grip of a storm that shook the shores even as Wellington was still shaking the luck-worn hope of France. " He was certainly no hero," says Balla, " but at the present moment he feared nothing." Who would take him in a boat and row him to England? Not a boatman spoke. No one likes to speak when Death calls his name, and Rothschild's words were like words from Death. But Rothschild continued to speak. He must have a boatman and a boat. He must beat the news of Waterloo to England. Who would make the trip for 500 francs? Who would go for 800, 1,000? Who would go for 2,000? A courageous sailor would go. His name should be here if it had not been lost to the world. His name should be here and wherever this story is printed, because he said he would go if Rothschild would pay the 2,000 francs to the sailor's wife before ~ Anonymous,

1366:Theseus Blue shadows wreathed the galley's prow that bore Twice seven Attic youth, a glorious train For Theseus, captain of the brunt of war, Over the Cretan main. The North wind filled the shining sails above, Thanks to the bucklered Goddess of the Fight; But Minos' heart was sore with pains of Love, Love brow-bound with delight. Sweet Eriboea! he refrained no more His hands, he touched her cheek of virgin white: 'Son of Pandion, save!' Her cries implore The brazen-armoured knight. Theseus had seen; beneath his frowning brow Dark rolls the sudden anger of his eyes; Hard in his heart the stab of grief: 'How now! Son of great Zeus,' he cries, 'No more thine unpermitted humour's course Within thyself thou governest aright; Hold, Prince, I charge thee, thy presuming force! Not against Fate we fight: 'All that the God's appointment and decree, All that the scales of Justice shall require, We will fulfil whene'er the hour may be; Stay but thy fell desire. 'What thought the princess of the lovely name Bedded to Zeus in Ida gave thee birth, To be the first of all the world in fame? Am I as nothing worth? '-I whom the child of treasured Pittheus bare To one whose reign doth all the seas enfold? Nymphs of the deep with violet-coloured hair Gave her a veil of gold. 10 'Therefore, great Captain of the Cnosian men, Forfend the grievous quarrel! Yon dear light Of day I would not choose to see again, Should'st thou do rude despite 'To one of these:-Oh, better combat's chanceA challenge!-God shall judge the issue true!' So said the valiant master of the lance: Fear fell on all the crew, Fear for the overboldness of the man. Then in his soul the son-in-law of the Sun Was angry, and he schemed an evil plan, And prayed, 'Most Mighty One, 'Hear, Father Zeus! If thou'rt my sire indeed, Of the white-wristed Tyrian's child true sire, Give me a visible sign! Send down with speed The lightning's tress of fire! 'Prince, if Troezenian Aethra mothered thee Got by Poseidon, Shaker of the Earth, Cast thyself boldly down into the sea, His home who gave thee birth! 'Fetch me this golden jewel from my hand Out of the deep! Soon shalt thou be aware Whether the Lord of Thunder, whose command Rules all, will hear my prayer.' Zeus to that high And with peculiar His son, and give Did lighten in the request his ear inclined, praise to magnify a sign to all mankind, sky. Then at the welcome sign the Warrior-King Spreading his palms to hallowed heaven-wide, 'Theseus, the grace of God is in this thing 'Made manifest,' he cried. 'Go, get thee down into the sounding swell! 11 Surely the God thy father shall upraise In all the wooded earth for thee as well Exceeding glory and praise.' But Theseus at the word, no whit unmanned, Turnèd not back in spirit: on deck he stood Poised for a leap, and passed within the bland Sanctuary of the flood. The son of Zeus was merry in his mind; The tight ship to the breeze he bade them lay; Fast flew the keel, the strong North drove behind: But Fate ruled not the way. All the Athenians trembled when the first Knight of their number seaward sprang, the tear Ran down smooth faces, waiting for the worst In heavy hopeless fear. But quick the dolphin-people of the deep Down to his father's vasty dwelling steered; He saw the state the Gods of Ocean keep, And at the sight he feared: The daughters of the blessed Nereus there Beamed from their radiant limbs a fiery blaze, Ribbons of golden web reeled round their hair, All dancing in a maze Of fluent feet for pleasure; and he saw His father's wife the Lady Amphitrite, Eyed like an ox-a Goddess throned for awe In chambers of delight. She flung about him purple raiment brave, Over his curls a perfect wreath she laid, The wedding-gift that cozening Venus gave, Thick roses in a braid. The thing God wills, the wise man never deems Beyond belief. Close by the slender stern The Prince appeared, and O the world of schemes 12 He slit by that return, Miraculous from the deep! Bright maids arow Sang for surprise and joy-Upon his limbs Shone gifts of Gods!-laud sang the lads also The sea was loud with hymns. We came from Ceos with a song and dance: Lord God of Delos be well pleased this day, Send us the conduct of thy lucky chance To help us on our way. ~ Bacchylides,

1367:Of horrible heat- the which are nowhere, nor Indeed can be: but in this life is fear Of retributions just and expiations For evil acts: the dungeon and the leap From that dread rock of infamy, the stripes, The executioners, the oaken rack, The iron plates, bitumen, and the torch. And even though these are absent, yet the mind, With a fore-fearing conscience, plies its goads And burns beneath the lash, nor sees meanwhile What terminus of ills, what end of pine Can ever be, and feareth lest the same But grow more heavy after death. Of truth, The life of fools is Acheron on earth. This also to thy very self sometimes Repeat thou mayst: "Lo, even good Ancus left The sunshine with his eyes, in divers things A better man than thou, O worthless hind; And many other kings and lords of rule Thereafter have gone under, once who swayed O'er mighty peoples. And he also, he- Who whilom paved a highway down the sea, And gave his legionaries thoroughfare Along the deep, and taught them how to cross The pools of brine afoot, and did contemn, Trampling upon it with his cavalry, The bellowings of ocean- poured his soul From dying body, as his light was ta'en. And Scipio's son, the thunderbolt of war, Horror of Carthage, gave his bones to earth, Like to the lowliest villein in the house. Add finders-out of sciences and arts; Add comrades of the Heliconian dames, Among whom Homer, sceptered o'er them all Now lies in slumber sunken with the rest. Then, too, Democritus, when ripened eld Admonished him his memory waned away, Of own accord offered his head to death. Even Epicurus went, his light of life Run out, the man in genius who o'er-topped The human race, extinguishing all others, As sun, in ether arisen, all the stars. Wilt thou, then, dally, thou complain to go?- For whom already life's as good as dead, Whilst yet thou livest and lookest?- who in sleep Wastest thy life- time's major part, and snorest Even when awake, and ceasest not to see The stuff of dreams, and bearest a mind beset By baseless terror, nor discoverest oft What's wrong with thee, when, like a sotted wretch, Thou'rt jostled along by many crowding cares, And wanderest reeling round, with mind aswim." If men, in that same way as on the mind They feel the load that wearies with its weight, Could also know the causes whence it comes, And why so great the heap of ill on heart, O not in this sort would they live their life, As now so much we see them, knowing not What 'tis they want, and seeking ever and ever A change of place, as if to drop the burden. The man who sickens of his home goes out, Forth from his splendid halls, and straight- returns, Feeling i'faith no better off abroad. He races, driving his Gallic ponies along, Down to his villa, madly,- as in haste To hurry help to a house afire.- At once He yawns, as soon as foot has touched the threshold, Or drowsily goes off in sleep and seeks Forgetfulness, or maybe bustles about And makes for town again. In such a way Each human flees himself- a self in sooth, As happens, he by no means can escape; And willy-nilly he cleaves to it and loathes, Sick, sick, and guessing not the cause of ail. Yet should he see but that, O chiefly then, Leaving all else, he'd study to divine The nature of things, since here is in debate Eternal time and not the single hour, Mortal's estate in whatsoever remains After great death. And too, when all is said, What evil lust of life is this so great Subdues us to live, so dreadfully distraught In perils and alarms? one fixed end Of life abideth for mortality; Death's not to shun, and we must go to meet. Besides we're busied with the same devices, Ever and ever, and we are at them ever, And there's no new delight that may be forged By living on. But whilst the thing we long for Is lacking, that seems good above all else; Thereafter, when we've touched it, something else We long for; ever one equal thirst of life Grips us agape. And doubtful 'tis what fortune The future times may carry, or what be That chance may bring, or what the issue next Awaiting us. Nor by prolonging life Take we the least away from death's own time, Nor can we pluck one moment off, whereby To minish the aeons of our state of death. Therefore, O man, by living on, fulfil As many generations as thou may: Eternal death shall there be waiting still; And he who died with light of yesterday Shall be no briefer time in death's No-more Than he who perished months or years before. author class:Lucretius ~ out-belching from his mouth the surge, Cerberus And Furies, And That Lack Of Light ,

1368:The Transparent Man I'm mighty glad to see you, Mrs. Curtis, And thank you very kindly for this visit-Especially now when all the others here Are having holiday visitors, and I feel A little conspicuous and in the way. It's mainly because of Thanksgiving. All these mothers And wives and husbands gaze at me soulfully And feel they should break up their box of chocolates For a donation, or hand me a chunk of fruitcake. What they don't understand and never guess Is that it's better for me without a family; It's a great blessing. Though I mean no harm. And as for visitors, why, I have you, All cheerful, brisk and punctual every Sunday, Like church, even if the aisles smell of phenol. And you always bring even better gifts than any On your book-trolley. Though they mean only good, Families can become a sort of burden. I've only got my father, and he won't come, Poor man, because it would be too much for him. And for me, too, so it's best the way it is. He knows, you see, that I will predecease him, Which is hard enough. It would take a callous man To come and stand around and watch me failing. (Now don't you fuss; we both know the plain facts.) But for him it's even harder. He loved my mother. They say she looked like me; I suppose she may have. Or rather, as I grew older I came to look More and more like she must one time have looked, And so the prospect for my father now Of losing me is like having to lose her twice. I know he frets about me. Dr. Frazer Tells me he phones in every single day, Hoping that things will take a turn for the better. But with leukemia things don't improve. It's like a sort of blizzard in the bloodstream, A deep, severe, unseasonable winter, Burying everything. The white blood cells Multiply crazily and storm around, 47 Out of control. The chemotherapy Hasn't helped much, and it makes my hair fall out. I know I look a sight, but I don't care. I care about fewer things; I'm more selective. It's got so I can't even bring myself To read through any of your books these days. It's partly weariness, and partly the fact That I seem not to care much about the endings, How things work out, or whether they even do. What I do instead is sit here by this window And look out at the trees across the way. You wouldn't think that was much, but let me tell you, It keeps me quite intent and occupied. Now all the leaves are down, you can see the spare, Delicate structures of the sycamores, The fine articulation of the beeches. I have sat here for days studying them, And I have only just begun to see What it is that they resemble. One by one, They stand there like magnificent enlargements Of the vascular system of the human brain. I see them there like huge discarnate minds, Lost in their meditative silences. The trunks, branches and twigs compose the vessels That feed and nourish vast immortal thoughts. So I've assigned them names. There, near the path, Is the great brain of Beethoven, and Kepler Haunts the wide spaces of that mountain ash. This view, you see, has become my Hall of Fame, It came to me one day when I remembered Mary Beth Finley who used to play with me When we were girls. One year her parents gave her A birthday toy called "The Transparent Man." It was made of plastic, with different colored organs, And the circulatory system all mapped out In rivers of red and blue. She'd ask me over And the two of us would sit and study him Together, and do a powerful lot of giggling. I figure he's most likely the only man Either of us would ever get to know Intimately, because Mary Beth became A Sister of Mercy when she was old enough. 48 She must be thirty-one; she was a year Older than I, and about four inches taller. I used to envy both those advantages Back in those days. Anyway, I was struck Right from the start by the sea-weed intricacy, The fine-haired, silken-threaded filiations That wove, like Belgian lace, throughout the head. But this last week it seems I have found myself Looking beyond, or through, individual trees At the dense, clustered woodland just behind them, Where those great, nameless crowds patiently stand. It's become a sort of complex, ultimate puzzle And keeps me fascinated. My eyes are twenty-twenty, Or used to be, but of course I can't unravel The tousled snarl of intersecting limbs, That mackled, cinder grayness. It's a riddle Beyond the eye's solution. Impenetrable. If there is order in all that anarchy Of granite mezzotint, that wilderness, It takes a better eye than mine to see it. It set me on to wondering how to deal With such a thickness of particulars, Deal with it faithfully, you understand, Without blurring the issue. Of course I know That within a month the sleeving snows will come With cold, selective emphases, with massings And arbitrary contrasts, rendering things Deceptively simple, thickening the twigs To frosty veins, bestowing epaulets And decorations on every birch and aspen. And the eye, self-satisfied, will be misled, Thinking the puzzle solved, supposing at last It can look forth and comprehend the world. That's when you have to really watch yourself. So I hope that you won't think me plain ungrateful For not selecting one of your fine books, And I take it very kindly that you came And sat here and let me rattle on this way. ~ Anthony Evan Hecht,

1369:Any Soldier To His Son What did I do, sonny, in the Great World War? Well, I learned to peel potatoes and to scrub the barrack floor. I learned to push a barrow and I learned to swing a pick, I learned to turn my toes out, and to make my eyeballs click. I learned the road to Folkestone, and I watched the English shore, Go down behind the skyline, as I thought, for evermore. And the Blighty boats went by us and the harbour hove in sight, And they landed us and sorted us and marched us "by the right". "Quick march!" across the cobbles, by the kids who rang along Singing "Appoo?" "Spearmant" "Shokolah?" through dingy old Boulogne; By the widows and the nurses and the niggers and Chinese, And the gangs of smiling Fritzes, as saucy as you please. I learned to ride as soldiers ride from Etaps to the Line, For days and nights in cattle trucks, packed in like droves of swine. I learned to curl and kip it on a foot of muddy floor, And to envy cows and horses that have beds of beaucoup straw. I learned to wash in shell holes and to shave myself in tea, While the fragments of a mirror did a balance on my knee. I learned to dodge the whizz-bangs and the flying lumps of lead, And to keep a foot of earth between the sniper and my head. I learned to keep my haversack well filled with buckshee food, To take the Army issue and to pinch what else I could. I learned to cook Maconochie with candle-ends and string, With "four-by-two" and sardine-oil and any God-dam thing. I learned to use my bayonet according as you please For a breadknife or a chopper or a prong for toasting cheese. I learned "a first field dressing" to serve my mate and me As a dish-rag and a face-rag and a strainer for our tea. I learned to gather souvenirs that home I hoped to send, And hump them round for months and months and dump them in the end. I learned to hunt for vermin in the lining of my shirt, To crack them with my finger-nail and feel the beggars spirt; I learned to catch and crack them by the dozen and the score And to hunt my shirt tomorrow and to find as many more. I learned to sleep by snatches on the firestep of a trench, And to eat my breakfast mixed with mud and Fritz's heavy stench. I learned to pray for Blighty ones and lie and squirm with fear, When Jerry started strafing and the Blighty ones were near. I learned to write home cheerful with my heart a lump of lead With the thought of you and mother, when she heard that I was dead. And the only thing like pleasure over there I ever knew, Was to hear my pal come shouting, "There's a parcel, mate, for you." So much for what I did do - now for what I have not done: Well, I never kissed a French girl and I never killed a Hun, I never missed an issue of tobacco, pay, or rum, I never made a friend and yet I never lacked a chum. I never borrowed money, and I never lent - but once (I can learn some sorts of lessons though I may be borne a dunce). I never used to grumble after breakfast in the Line That the eggs were cooked too lightly or the bacon cut too fine. I never told a sergeant just exactly what I thought, I never did a pack-drill, for I never quite got caught. I never punched a Red-Cap's nose (be prudent like your Dad), But I'd like as many sovereigns as the times I've wished I had. I never stopped a whizz-bang, though I've stopped a lot of mud, But the one that Fritz sent over with my name on was a dud. I never played the hero or walked about on top, I kept inside my funk hole when the shells began to drop. Well, Tommy Jones's father must be made of different stuff: I never asked for trouble - the issue was enough. So I learned to live and lump it in the lovely land of war, Where the face of nature seems a monstrous septic sore, Where the bowels of earth of earth hang open, like the guts of something slain, And the rot and wreck of everything are churned and churned again; Where all is done in darkness and where all is still in day, Where living men are buried and the dead unburied lay; Where men inhabit holes like rats, and only rats live there; Where cottage stood and castle once in days before La Guerre; Where endless files of soldiers thread the everlasting way, By endless miles of duckboards, through endless walls of clay; Where life is one hard labour, and a soldiers gets his rest When they leave him in the daisies with a puncture in his chest; Where still the lark in summer pours her warble from the skies, And underneath, unheeding, lie the blank upstaring eyes. And I read the Blighty papers, where the warriors of the pen Tell of "Christmas in the trenches" and "The Spirit of our men"; And I saved the choicest morsels and I read them to my chum, And he muttered, as he cracked a louse and wiped it off his thumb: "May a thousand chats from Belgium crawl under their fingers as they write; May they dream they're not exempted till they faint with mortal fright; May the fattest rats in Dickebusch race over them in bed; May the lies they've written choke them like a gas cloud till they're dead; May the horror and the torture and the things they never tell (For they only write to order) be reserved for them in Hell!" You'd like to be a soldier and go to France some day? By all the dead in Delville Wood, by all the nights I lay Between our lines and Fritz's before they brought me in; By this old wood-and-leather stump, that once was flesh and skin; By all the lads who crossed with me but never crossed again, By all the prayers their mothers and their sweethearts prayed in vain, Before the things that were that day should ever more befall May God in common pity destroy us one and all! ~ Anonymous English,

1370:A Minor Poet "What should such fellows as I do, Crawling between earth and heaven?" Here is the phial; here I turn the key Sharp in the lock. Click!--there's no doubt it turned. This is the third time; there is luck in threes-Queen Luck, that rules the world, befriend me now And freely I'll forgive you many wrongs! Just as the draught began to work, first time, Tom Leigh, my friend (as friends go in the world), Burst in, and drew the phial from my hand, (Ah, Tom! ah, Tom! that was a sorry turn!) And lectured me a lecture, all compact Of neatest, newest phrases, freshly culled From works of newest culture: "common good ;" "The world's great harmonies;""must be content With knowing God works all things for the best, And Nature never stumbles." Then again, "The common good," and still, "the common, good;" And what a small thing was our joy or grief When weigh'd with that of thousands. Gentle Tom, But you might wag your philosophic tongue From morn till eve, and still the thing's the same: I am myself, as each man is himself-Feels his own pain, joys his own joy, and loves With his own love, no other's. Friend, the world Is but one man; one man is but the world. And I am I, and you are Tom, that bleeds When needles prick your flesh (mark, yours, not mine). I must confess it; I can feel the pulse A-beating at my heart, yet never knew The throb of cosmic pulses. I lament The death of youth's ideal in my heart; And, to be honest, never yet rejoiced In the world's progress--scarce, indeed, discerned; (For still it seems that God's a Sisyphus With the world for stone). You shake your head. I'm base, 13 Ignoble? Who is noble--you or I? I was not once thus? Ah, my friend, we are As the Fates make us. This time is the third; The second time the flask fell from my hand, Its drowsy juices spilt upon the board; And there my face fell flat, and all the life Crept from my limbs, and hand and foot were bound With mighty chains, subtle, intangible; While still the mind held to its wonted use, Or rather grew intense and keen with dread, An awful dread--I thought I was in Hell. In Hell, in Hell ! Was ever Hell conceived By mortal brain, by brain Divine devised, Darker, more fraught with torment, than the world For such as I? A creature maimed and marr'd From very birth. A blot, a blur, a note All out of tune in this world's instrument. A base thing, yet not knowing to fulfil Base functions. A high thing, yet all unmeet For work that's high. A dweller on the earth, Yet not content to dig with other men Because of certain sudden sights and sounds (Bars of broke music; furtive, fleeting glimpse Of angel faces 'thwart the grating seen) Perceived in Heaven. Yet when I approach To catch the sound's completeness, to absorb The faces' full perfection, Heaven's gate, Which then had stood ajar, sudden falls to, And I, a-shiver in the dark and cold, Scarce hear afar the mocking tones of men: "He would not dig, forsooth ; but he must strive For higher fruits than what our tillage yields; Behold what comes, my brothers, of vain pride!" Why play with figures? trifle prettily With this my grief which very simply's said, "There is no place for me in all the world"? The world's a rock, and I will beat no more A breast of flesh and blood against a rock. . . A stride across the planks for old time's sake. Ah, bare, small room that I have sorrowed in; Ay, and on sunny days, haply, rejoiced; 14 We know some things together, you and I! Hold there, you rangèd row of books ! In vain You beckon from your shelf. You've stood my friends Where all things else were foes; yet now I'll turn My back upon you, even as the world Turns it on me. And yet--farewell, farewell! You, lofty Shakespere, with the tattered leaves And fathomless great heart, your binding's bruised Yet did I love you less? Goethe, farewell; Farewell, triumphant smile and tragic eyes, And pitiless world-wisdom! For all men These two. And 'tis farewell with you, my friends, More dear because more near: Theokritus; Heine that stings and smiles; Prometheus' bard; (I've grown too coarse for Shelley latterly:) And one wild singer of to-day, whose song Is all aflame with passionate bard's blood Lash'd into foam by pain and the world's wrong. At least, he has a voice to cry his pain; For him, no silent writhing in the dark, No muttering of mute lips, no straining out Of a weak throat a-choke with pent-up sound, A-throb with pent-up passion. . . Ah, my sun! That's you, then, at the window, looking in To beam farewell on one who's loved you long And very truly. Up, you creaking thing, You squinting, cobwebbed casement! So, at last, I can drink in the sunlight. How it falls. Across that endless sea of London roofs, Weaving such golden wonders on the grey, That almost, for the moment, we forget The world of woe beneath them. Underneath, For all the sunset glory, Pain is king. Yet, the sun's there, and very sweet withal; And I'll not grumble that it's only sun, But open wide my lips--thus--drink it in; 15 Turn up my face to the sweet evening sky (What royal wealth of scarlet on the blue So tender toned, you'd almost think it green) And stretch my hands out--so--to grasp it tight. Ha, ha! 'tis sweet awhile to cheat the Fates, And be as happy as another man. The sun works in my veins like wine, like wine! 'Tis a fair world: if dark, indeed, with woe, Yet having hope and hint of such a joy, That a man, winning, well might turn aside, Careless of Heaven . . . O enough; I turn From the sun's light, or haply I shall hope. I have hoped enough; I would not hope again: 'Tis hope that is most cruel. Tom, my friend, You very sorry philosophic fool; 'Tis you, I think, that bid me be resign'd, Trust, and be thankful. Out on you! Resign'd? I'm not resign'd, not patient, not school'd in To take my starveling's portion and pretend I'm grateful for it. I want all, all, all; I've appetite for all. I want the best: Love, beauty, sunlight, nameless joy of life. There's too much patience in the world, I think. We have grown base with crooking of the knee. Mankind--say--God has bidden to a feast; The board is spread, and groans with cates and drinks; In troop the guests; each man with appetite Keen-whetted with expectance. In they troop, Struggle for seats, jostle and push and seize. What's this? what's this? There are not seats for all! Some men must stand without the gates; and some Must linger by the table, ill-supplied With broken meats. One man gets meat for two, The while another hungers. If I stand Without the portals, seeing others eat Where I had thought to satiate the pangs Of mine own hunger; shall I then come forth When all is done, and drink my Lord's good health 16 In my Lord's water? Shall I not rather turn And curse him, curse him for a niggard host? O, I have hungered, hungered, through the years, Till appetite grows craving, then disease; I am starved, wither'd, shrivelled. Peace, O peace! This rage is idle; what avails to curse The nameless forces, the vast silences That work in all things. This time is the third, I wrought before in heat, stung mad with pain, Blind, scarcely understanding; now I know What thing I do. There was a woman once; Deep eyes she had, white hands, a subtle smile, Soft speaking tones: she did not break my heart, Yet haply had her heart been otherwise Mine had not now been broken. Yet, who knows? My life was jarring discord from the first: Tho' here and there brief hints of melody, Of melody unutterable, clove the air. From this bleak world, into the heart of night, The dim, deep bosom of the universe, I cast myself. I only crave for rest; Too heavy is the load. I fling it down. EPILOGUE. We knocked and knocked; at last, burst in the door, And found him as you know--the outstretched arms Propping the hidden face. The sun had set, And all the place was dim with lurking shade. There was no written word to say farewell, Or make more clear the deed. I search'd and search'd; The room held little: just a row of books Much scrawl'd and noted; sketches on the wall, Done rough in charcoal; the old instrument (A violin, no Stradivarius) He played so ill on; in the table drawer Large schemes of undone work. Poems half-writ; 17 Wild drafts of symphonies; big plans of fugues; Some scraps of writing in a woman's hand: No more--the scattered pages of a tale, A sorry tale that no man cared to read. Alas, my friend, I lov'd him well, tho' he Held me a cold and stagnant-blooded fool, Because I am content to watch, and wait With a calm mind the issue of all things. Certain it is my blood's no turbid stream; Yet, for all that, haply I understood More than he ever deem'd; nor held so light The poet in him. Nay, I sometimes doubt If they have not, indeed, the better part-These poets, who get drunk with sun, and weep Because the night or a woman's face is fair. Meantime there is much talk about my friend. The women say, of course, he died for love; The men, for lack of gold, or cavilling Of carping critics. I, Tom Leigh, his friend I have no word at all to say of this. Nay, I had deem'd him more philosopher; For did he think by this one paltry deed To cut the knot of circumstance, and snap The chain which binds all being? ~ Amy Levy,

1371: In the Moonlight If now must pause the bullocks' jingling tune, Here let it be beneath the dreaming trees Supine and huge that hang upon the breeze, Here in the wide eye of the silent moon. How living a stillness reigns! The night's hushed rules All things obey but three, the slow wind's sigh Among the leaves, the cricket's ceaseless cry, The frog's harsh discord in the ringing pools. Yet they but seem the silence to increase And dreadful wideness of the inhuman night. The whole hushed world immeasurable might Be watching round this single spot of peace. So boundless is the darkness and so rife With thoughts of infinite reach that it creates A dangerous sense of space and abrogates The wholesome littleness of human life. 237 238 Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 - 1909 The common round that each of us must tread Now seems a thing unreal; we forget The heavy yoke the world on us has set, The slave's vain labour earning tasteless bread. Space hedges us and Time our hearts o'ertakes; Our bounded senses and our boundless thought Strive through the centuries and are slowly brought Back to the source whence their divergence wakes. The source that none have traced, since none can know Whether from Heaven the eternal waters well Through Nature's matted locks, as Ganges fell, Or from some dismal nether darkness flow. Two genii in the dubious heart of man, Two great unhappy foes together bound Wrestle and strive to win unhampered ground; They strive for ever since the race began. One from his body like a bridge of fire Mounts upward azure-winged with eager eyes; One in his brain deep-mansioned labouring lies And clamps to earth the spirit's high desire. Here in this moonlight with strange visions rife I seem to see their vast peripheries Without me in the sombre mighty trees, And, hark! their silence turns the wheels of life. These are the middle and the first. Are they The last too? Has the duel then no close? Shall neither vanquish of the eternal foes, Nor even at length this moonlight turn to day? Our age has made an idol of the brain, The last adored a purer presence; yet Poems from Ahana and Other Poems 239 In Asia like a dove immaculate He lurks deep-brooding in the hearts of men. But Europe comes to us bright-eyed and shrill. "A far delusion was that mounting fire, An impulse baulked and an unjust desire; It fades as we ascend the human hill." She cries to us to labour in the light Of common things, grow beautiful and wise On strong material food, nor vex our eyes With straining after visionary delight. Ah, beautiful and wise, but to what end? Europe knows not, nor any of her schools Who scorn the higher thought for dreams of fools; Riches and joy and power meanwhile are gained. Gained and then lost! For Death the heavy grip Shall loosen, Death shall cloud the laughing eye, And he who broke the nations soon shall lie More helpless than a little child asleep. And after? Nay, for death is end and term. A fiery dragon through the centuries curled, He feeds upon the glories of the world And the vast mammoth dies before the worm. Stars run their cycle and are quenched; the suns Born from the night are to the night returned, When the cold tenebrous spaces have inurned The listless phantoms of the Shining Ones. From two dead worlds a burning world arose Of which the late putrescent fruit is man; From chill dark space his roll of life began And shall again in icy quiet close. 240 Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 - 1909 Our lives are but a transitory breath: Mean pismires in the sad and dying age Of a once glorious planet, on the edge Of bitter pain we wait eternal death. Watering the ages with our sweat and blood We pant towards some vague ideal state And by the effort fiercer ills create, Working by lasting evil transient good. Insults and servitude we bear perforce; With profitable crimes our souls we rack, Vexing ourselves lest earth our seed should lack Who needs us not in her perpetual course; Then down into the earth descend and sleep For ever, and the lives for which we toiled Forget us, who when they their turn have moiled, Themselves forgotten into silence creep. Why is it all, the labour and the din, And wherefore do we plague our souls and vex Our bodies or with doubts our days perplex? Death levels soon the virtue with the sin. If Death be end and close the useless strife, Strive not at all, but take what ease you may And make a golden glory of the day, Exhaust the little honey of your life. Fear not to take her beauty to your heart Whom you so utterly desire; you do No hurt to any, for the inner you So cherished is a dream that shall depart. The wine of life is sweet; let no man stint His longing or refuse one passionate hope. Poems from Ahana and Other Poems Why should we cabin in such infinite scope, Restrict the issue of such golden mint? Society forbids? It for our sakes Was fashioned; if it seek to fence around Our joys and pleasures in such narrow bound, It gives us little for the much it takes. Nor need we hearken to the gospel vain That bids men curb themselves to help mankind. We lose our little chance of bliss, then blind And silent lie for ever. Whose the gain? What helps it us if so mankind be served? Ourselves are blotted out from joy and light, Having no profit of the sunshine bright, While others reap the fruit our toils deserved. O this new god who has replaced the old! He dies today, he dies tomorrow, dies At last for ever, and the last sunrise Shall have forgotten him extinct and cold. But virtue to itself is joy enough? Yet if to us sin taste diviner? why Should we not herd in Epicurus' sty Whom Nature made not of a Stoic stuff? For Nature being all, desire must reign. It is too sweet and strong for us to slay Upon a nameless altar, saying nay To honied urgings for no purpose plain. A strange unreal gospel Science brings, - Being animals to act as angels might; Mortals we must put forth immortal might And flutter in the void celestial wings. 241 242 Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 - 1909 "Ephemeral creatures, for the future live," She bids us, "gather in for unborn men Knowledge and joy, and forfeit, nor complain, The present which alone is yours to give." Man's immortality she first denies And then assumes what she rejects, made blind By sudden knowledge, the majestic Mind Within her smiling at her sophistries. Not so shall Truth extend her flight sublime, Pass from the poor beginnings she has made And with the splendour of her wings displayed Range through the boundaries of Space and Time. Clamp her not down to her material finds! She shall go further. She shall not reject The light within, nor shall the dialect Of unprogressive pedants bar men's minds. We seek the Truth and will not pause nor fear. Truth we will have and not the sophist's pleas; Animals, we will take our grosser ease, Or, spirits, heaven's celestial music hear. The intellect is not all; a guide within Awaits our question. He it was informed The reason, He surpasses; and unformed Presages of His mightiness begin. Nor mind submerged, nor self subliminal, But the great Force that makes the planets wheel Through ether and the sun in flames reveal His godhead, is in us perpetual. That Force in us is body, that is mind, And what is higher than the mind is He. Poems from Ahana and Other Poems This was the secret Science could not see; Aware of death, to life her eyes were blind. Through chemistry she seeks the source of life, Nor knows the mighty laws that she has found, Are Nature's bye-laws merely, meant to ground A grandiose freedom building peace by strife. The organ for the thing itself she takes, The brain for mind, the body for the soul, Nor has she patience to explore the whole, But like a child a hasty period makes. "It is enough," she says, "I have explored The whole of being; nothing now remains But to put details in and count my gains." So she deceives herself, denies her Lord. Therefore He manifests Himself; once more The wonders of the secret world within Wrapped yet with an uncertain mist begin To look from that thick curtain out; the door Opens. Her days are numbered, and not long Shall she be suffered to belittle thus Man and restrain from his tempestuous Uprising that immortal spirit strong. He rises now; for God has taken birth. The revolutions that pervade the world Are faint beginnings and the discus hurled Of Vishnu speeds down to enring the earth. The old shall perish; it shall pass away, Expunged, annihilated, blotted out; And all the iron bands that ring about Man's wide expansion shall at last give way. 243 244 Baroda and Bengal, c. 1900 - 1909 Freedom, God, Immortality; the three Are one and shall be realised at length, Love, Wisdom, Justice, Joy and utter Strength Gather into a pure felicity. It comes at last, the day foreseen of old, What John in Patmos saw, what Shelley dreamed, Vision and vain imagination deemed, The City of Delight, the Age of Gold. The Iron Age is ended. Only now The last fierce spasm of the dying past Shall shake the nations, and when that has passed, Earth washed of ills shall raise a fairer brow. This is man's progress; for the Iron Age Prepares the Age of Gold. What we call sin, Is but man's leavings as from deep within The Pilot guides him in his pilgrimage. He leaves behind the ill with strife and pain, Because it clings and constantly returns, And in the fire of suffering fiercely burns More sweetness to deserve, more strength to gain. He rises to the good with Titan wings: And this the reason of his high unease, Because he came from the infinities To build immortally with mortal things; The body with increasing soul to fill, Extend Heaven's claim upon the toiling earth And climb from death to a diviner birth Grasped and supported by immortal Will. ~ Sri Aurobindo, - In the Moonlight ,

1372:Œnone . There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand The lawns and meadow-ledges midway down Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine In cataract after cataract to the sea. Behind the valley topmost Gargarus Stands up and takes the morning: but in front The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel, The crown of Troas. Hither came at noon Mournful Œnone, wandering forlorn Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills. Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck Floated her hair or seem'd to float in rest. She, leaning on a fragment twined with vine, Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-shade Sloped downward to her seat from the upper cliff. 'O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. For now the noonday quiet holds the hill: The grasshopper is silent in the grass: The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead. The purple flower droops: the golden bee Is lily-cradled: I alone awake. My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love, My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim, And I am all aweary of my life. 'O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. Hear me, O Earth, hear me, O Hills, O Caves That house the cold crown'd snake! O mountain brooks, I am the daughter of a River-God, 514 Hear me, for I will speak, and build up all My sorrow with my song, as yonder walls Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed, A cloud that gather'd shape: for it may be That, while I speak of it, a little while My heart may wander from its deeper woe. 'O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. I waited underneath the dawning hills, Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark, And dewy-dark aloft the mountain pine: Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris, Leading a jet-black goat white-horn'd, white-hooved, Came up from reedy Simois all alone. 'O mother Ida, harken ere I die. Far-off the torrent call'd me from the cleft: Far up the solitary morning smote The streaks of virgin snow. With down-dropt eyes I sat alone: white-breasted like a star Fronting the dawn he moved; a leopard skin Droop'd from his shoulder, but his sunny hair Cluster'd about his temples like a God's: And his cheek brighten'd as the foam-bow brightens When the wind blows the foam, and all my heart Went forth to embrace him coming ere he came. 'Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. He smiled, and opening out his milk-white palm Disclosed a fruit of pure Hesperian gold, That smelt ambrosially, and while I look'd And listen'd, the full-flowing river of speech Came down upon my heart. `My own Œnone, Beautiful-brow'd Œnone, my own soul, Behold this fruit, whose gleaming rind ingrav'n 'For the most fair,' would seem to award it thine, As lovelier than whatever Oread haunt The knolls of Ida, loveliest in all grace Of movement, and the charm of married brows.' 'Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. 515 He prest the blossom of his lips to mine, And added 'This was cast upon the board, When all the full-faced presence of the Gods Ranged in the halls of Peleus; whereupon Rose feud, with question unto whom 'twere due: But light-foot Iris brought it yester-eve, Delivering that to me, by common voice Elected umpire, Herè comes to-day, Pallas and Aphroditè, claiming each This meed of fairest. Thou, within the cave Behind yon whispering tuft of oldest pine, Mayst well behold them unbeheld, unheard Hear all, and see thy Paris judge of Gods.' 'Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. It was the deep midnoon: one silvery cloud Had lost his way between the piney sides Of this long glen. Then to the bower they came, Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower, And at their feet the crocus brake like fire, Violet, amaracus, and asphodel, Lotos and lilies: and a wind arose, And overhead the wandering ivy and vine, This way and that, in many a wild festoon Ran riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs With bunch and berry and flower thro' and thro'. 'O mother Ida, harken ere I die. On the tree-tops a crested peacock lit, And o'er him flow'd a golden cloud, and lean'd Upon him, slowly dropping fragrant dew. Then first I heard the voice of her, to whom Coming thro' Heaven, like a light that grows Larger and clearer, with one mind the Gods Rise up for reverence. She to Paris made Proffer of royal power, ample rule Unquestion'd, overflowing revenue Wherewith to embellish state, 'from many a vale And river-sunder'd champaign clothed with corn, Or labour'd mine undrainable of ore. Honour,' she said, 'and homage, tax and toll, 516 From many an inland town and haven large, Mast-throng'd beneath her shadowing citadel In glassy bays among her tallest towers.' 'O mother Ida, harken ere I die. Still she spake on and still she spake of power, 'Which in all action is the end of all; Power fitted to the season; wisdom-bred And throned of wisdom-from all neighbour crowns Alliance and allegiance, till thy hand Fail from the sceptre-staff. Such boon from me, From me, Heaven's Queen, Paris, to thee king-born, A shepherd all thy life but yet king-born, Should come most welcome, seeing men, in power Only, are likest Gods, who have attain'd Rest in a happy place and quiet seats Above the thunder, with undying bliss In knowledge of their own supremacy.' 'Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. She ceased, and Paris held the costly fruit Out at arm's-length, so much the thought of power Flatter'd his spirit; but Pallas where she stood Somewhat apart, her clear and bared limbs O'erthwarted with the brazen-headed spear Upon her pearly shoulder leaning cold, The while, above, her full and earnest eye Over her snow-cold breast and angry cheek Kept watch, waiting decision, made reply. '`Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power. Yet not for power (power of herself Would come uncall'd for) but to live by law, Acting the law we live by without fear; And, because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.' 517 'Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. Again she said: 'I woo thee not with gifts. Sequel of guerdon could not alter me To fairer. Judge thou me by what I am, So shalt thou find me fairest. Yet, indeed, If gazing on divinity disrobed Thy mortal eyes are frail to judge of fair, Unbias'd by self-profit, oh! rest thee sure That I shall love thee well and cleave to thee, So that my vigour, wedded to thy blood, Shall strike within thy pulses, like a God's, To push thee forward thro' a life of shocks, Dangers, and deeds, until endurance grow Sinew'd with action, and the full-grown will, Circled thro' all experiences, pure law, Commeasure perfect freedom.' Here she ceas'd And Paris ponder'd, and I cried, 'O Paris, Give it to Pallas!' but he heard me not, Or hearing would not hear me, woe is me! 'O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. Italian Aphroditè beautiful, Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian wells, With rosy slender fingers backward drew From her warm brows and bosom her deep hair Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat And shoulder: from the violets her light foot Shone rosy-white, and o'er her rounded form Between the shadows of the vine-bunches Floated the glowing sunlights, as she moved. 'Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die. She with a subtle smile in her mild eyes, The herald of her triumph, drawing nigh Half-whisper'd in his ear, 'I promise thee The fairest and most loving wife in Greece.' She spoke and laugh'd: I shut my sight for fear: But when I look'd, Paris had raised his arm, And I beheld great Herè's angry eyes, 518 As she withdrew into the golden cloud, And I was left alone within the bower; And from that time to this I am alone, And I shall be alone until I die. 'Yet, mother Ida, harken ere I die. Fairest-why fairest wife? am I not fair? My love hath told me so a thousand times. Methinks I must be fair, for yesterday, When I past by, a wild and wanton pard, Eyed like the evening star, with playful tail Crouch'd fawning in the weed. Most loving is she? Ah me, my mountain shepherd, that my arms Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest Close, close to thine in that quick-falling dew Of fruitful kisses, thick as Autumn rains Flash in the pools of whirling Simois! 'O mother, hear me yet before I die. They came, they cut away my tallest pines, My tall dark pines, that plumed the craggy ledge High over the blue gorge, and all between The snowy peak and snow-white cataract Foster'd the callow eaglet-from beneath Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn The panther's roar came muffled, while I sat Low in the valley. Never, never more Shall lone Œnone see the morning mist Sweep thro' them; never see them overlaid With narrow moon-lit slips of silver cloud, Between the loud stream and the trembling stars. 'O mother, hear me yet before I die. I wish that somewhere in the ruin'd folds, Among the fragments tumbled from the glens, Or the dry thickets, I could meet with her The Abominable, that uninvited came Into the fair Pele{:i}an banquet-hall, And cast the golden fruit upon the board, 519 And bred this change; that I might speak my mind, And tell her to her face how much I hate Her presence, hated both of Gods and men. 'O mother, hear me yet before I die. Hath he not sworn his love a thousand times, In this green valley, under this green hill, Ev'n on this hand, and sitting on this stone? Seal'd it with kisses? water'd it with tears? O happy tears, and how unlike to these! O happy Heaven, how canst thou see my face? O happy earth, how canst thou bear my weight? O death, death, death, thou ever-floating cloud, There are enough unhappy on this earth, Pass by the happy souls, that love to live: I pray thee, pass before my light of life, And shadow all my soul, that I may die. Thou weighest heavy on the heart within, Weigh heavy on my eyelids: let me die. 'O mother, hear me yet before I die. I will not die alone, for fiery thoughts Do shape themselves within me, more and more, Whereof I catch the issue, as I hear Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills, Like footsteps upon wool. I dimly see My far-off doubtful purpose, as a mother Conjectures of the features of her child Ere it is born: her child!-a shudder comes Across me: never child be born of me, Unblest, to vex me with his father's eyes! 'O mother, hear me yet before I die. Hear me, O earth. I will not die alone, Lest their shrill happy laughter come to me Walking the cold and starless road of death Uncomforted, leaving my ancient love With the Greek woman. I will rise and go Down into Troy, and ere the stars come forth 520 Talk with the wild Cassandra, for she says A fire dances before her, and a sound Rings ever in her ears of armed men. What this may be I know not, but I know That, wheresoe'er I am by night and day, All earth and air seem only burning fire.' ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson,

1373:But do not let us quarrel any more,   No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:   Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.   You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?   I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,   Treat his own subject after his own way,   Fix his own time, accept too his own price,   And shut the money into this small hand   When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly? Oh, I'll content him,but to-morrow, Love! I often am much wearier than you think, This evening more than usual, and it seems As ifforgive nowshould you let me sit Here by the window with your hand in mine And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole, Both of one mind, as married people use, Quietly, quietly the evening through, I might get up to-morrow to my work Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try. To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this! Your soft hand is a woman of itself, And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside. Don't count the time lost, neither; you must serve For each of the five pictures we require: It saves a model. So! keep looking so My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds! How could you ever prick those perfect ears, Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet My face, my moon, my everybody's moon, Which everybody looks on and calls his, And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn, While she looksno one's: very dear, no less. You smile? why, there's my picture ready made, There's what we painters call our harmony! A common greyness silvers everything, All in a twilight, you and I alike You, at the point of your first pride in me (That's gone you know),but I, at every point; My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top; That length of convent-wall across the way Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease, And autumn grows, autumn in everything. Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape As if I saw alike my work and self And all that I was born to be and do, A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand. How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead; So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie! This chamber for exampleturn your head All that's behind us! You don't understand Nor care to understand about my art, But you can hear at least when people speak: And that cartoon, the second from the door It is the thing, Love! so such things should be Behold Madonna!I am bold to say.   I can do with my pencil what I know, What I see, what at bottom of my heart I wish for, if I ever wish so deep Do easily, toowhen I say, perfectly, I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge, Who listened to the Legate's talk last week, And just as much they used to say in France. At any rate 'tis easy, all of it! No sketches first, no studies, that's long past: I do what many dream of, all their lives, Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, And fail in doing. I could count twenty such On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, Who striveyou don't know how the others strive To paint a little thing like that you smeared Carelessly passing with your robes afloat, Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, (I know his name, no matter)so much less! Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged. There burns a truer light of God in them, In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine. Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me, Enter and take their place there sure enough, Though they come back and cannot tell the world. My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here. The sudden blood of these men! at a word Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too. I, painting from myself and to myself, Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame Or their praise either. Somebody remarks Morello's outline there is wrongly traced, His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey, Placid and perfect with my art: the worse! I know both what I want and what might gain, And yet how profitless to know, to sigh "Had I been two, another and myself, "Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt. Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth The Urbinate who died five years ago. ('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.) Well, I can fancy how he did it all, Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, Above and through his artfor it gives way; That arm is wrongly putand there again A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, Its body, so to speak: its soul is right, He means rightthat, a child may understand. Still, what an arm! and I could alter it: But all the play, the insight and the stretch (Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out? Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, We might have risen to Rafael, I and you! Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think More than I merit, yes, by many times. But had youoh, with the same perfect brow, And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind! Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged "God and the glory! never care for gain. "The present by the future, what is that? "Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo! "Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!" I might have done it for you. So it seems: Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules. Beside, incentives come from the soul's self; The rest avail not. Why do I need you? What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo? In this world, who can do a thing, will not; And who would do it, cannot, I perceive: Yet the will's somewhatsomewhat, too, the power And thus we half-men struggle. At the end, God, I conclude, compensates, punishes. 'Tis safer for me, if the award be strict, That I am something underrated here, Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth. I dared not, do you know, leave home all day, For fear of chancing on the Paris lords. The best is when they pass and look aside; But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all. Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time, And that long festal year at Fontainebleau! I surely then could sometimes leave the ground, Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear, In that humane great monarch's golden look, One finger in his beard or twisted curl Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile, One arm about my shoulder, round my neck, The jingle of his gold chain in my ear, I painting proudly with his breath on me, All his court round him, seeing with his eyes, Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts, And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond, This in the background, waiting on my work, To crown the issue with a last reward! A good time, was it not, my kingly days? And had you not grown restless but I know 'Tis done and past: 'twas right, my instinct said: Too live the life grew, golden and not grey, And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt Out of the grange whose four walls make his world. How could it end in any other way? You called me, and I came home to your heart. The triumph wasto reach and stay there; since I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost? Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold, You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine! "Rafael did this, Andrea painted that; "The Roman's is the better when you pray, "But still the other's Virgin was his wife" Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows My better fortune, I resolve to think. For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives, Said one day Agnolo, his very self, To Rafael . . . I have known it all these years . . . (When the young man was flaming out his thoughts Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see, Too lifted up in heart because of it) "Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub "Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, "Who, were he set to plan and execute "As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings, "Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!" To Rafael's!And indeed the arm is wrong. I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see, Give the chalk herequick, thus, the line should go! Ay, but the soul! he's Rafael! rub it out! Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth, (What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo? Do you forget already words like those?) If really there was such a chance, so lost, Is, whether you'renot gratefulbut more pleased. Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed! This hour has been an hour! Another smile? If you would sit thus by me every night I should work better, do you comprehend? I mean that I should earn more, give you more. See, it is settled dusk now; there's a star; Morello's gone, the watch-lights show the wall, The cue-owls speak the name we call them by. Come from the window, love,come in, at last, Inside the melancholy little house We built to be so gay with. God is just. King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights When I look up from painting, eyes tired out, The walls become illumined, brick from brick Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold, That gold of his I did cement them with! Let us but love each other. Must you go? That Cousin here again? he waits outside? Must see youyou, and not with me? Those loans? More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that? Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend? While hand and eye and something of a heart Are left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth? I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit The grey remainder of the evening out, Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly How I could paint, were I but back in France, One picture, just one morethe Virgin's face, Not yours this time! I want you at my side To hear themthat is, Michel Agnolo Judge all I do and tell you of its worth. Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend. I take the subjects for his corridor, Finish the portrait out of handthere, there, And throw him in another thing or two If he demurs; the whole should prove enough To pay for this same Cousin's freak. Beside, What's better and what's all I care about, Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff! Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he, The Cousin! what does he to please you more? I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. I regret little, I would change still less. Since there my past life lies, why alter it? The very wrong to Francis!it is true I took his coin, was tempted and complied, And built this house and sinned, and all is said. My father and my mother died of want. Well, had I riches of my own? you see How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot. They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died: And I have laboured somewhat in my time And not been paid profusely. Some good son Paint my two hundred pictureslet him try! No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes, You loved me quite enough. it seems to-night. This must suffice me here. What would one have? In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, Meted on each side by the angel's reed, For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me To coverthe three first without a wife, While I have mine! Sostill they overcome Because there's still Lucrezia,as I choose. Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love. ~ Robert Browning, Andrea del Sarto ,

1374:I. The morn when first it thunders in March, The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say: As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch Of the villa-gate this warm March day, No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled In the valley beneath where, white and wide And washed by the morning water-gold, Florence lay out on the mountain-side. II. River and bridge and street and square Lay mine, as much at my beck and call, Through the live translucent bath of air, As the sights in a magic crystal ball. And of all I saw and of all I praised, The most to praise and the best to see Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised: But why did it more than startle me? III. Giotto, how, with that soul of yours, Could you play me false who loved you so? Some slights if a certain heart endures Yet it feels, I would have your fellows know! I' faith, I perceive not why I should care To break a silence that suits them best, But the thing grows somewhat hard to bear When I find a Giotto join the rest. IV. On the arch where olives overhead Print the blue sky with twig and leaf, (That sharp-curled leaf which they never shed) 'Twixt the aloes, I used to lean in chief, And mark through the winter afternoons, By a gift God grants me now and then, In the mild decline of those suns like moons, Who walked in Florence, besides her men. V. They might chirp and chaffer, come and go For pleasure or profit, her men alive- My business was hardly with them, I trow, But with empty cells of the human hive; -With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch, The church's apsis, aisle or nave, Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch, Its face set full for the sun to shave. VI. Wherever a fresco peels and drops, Wherever an outline weakens and wanes Till the latest life in the painting stops, Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains: One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick, Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster, -A lion who dies of an ****'s kick, The wronged great soul of an ancient Master. VII. For oh, this world and the wrong it does They are safe in heaven with their backs to it, The Michaels and Rafaels, you hum and buzz Round the works of, you of the little wit! Do their eyes contract to the earth's old scope, Now that they see God face to face, And have all attained to be poets, I hope? 'Tis their holiday now, in any case. VIII. Much they reck of your praise and you! But the wronged great souls-can they be quit Of a world where their work is all to do, Where you style them, you of the little wit, Old Master This and Early the Other, Not dreaming that Old and New are fellows: A younger succeeds to an elder brother, Da Vincis derive in good time from Dellos. IX. And here where your praise might yield returns, And a handsome word or two give help, Here, after your kind, the mastiff girns And the puppy pack of poodles yelp. What, not a word for Stefano there, Of brow once prominent and starry, Called Nature's Ape and the world's despair For his peerless painting? (See Vasari.) X. There stands the Master. Study, my friends, What a man's work comes to! So he plans it, Performs it, perfects it, makes amends For the toiling and moiling, and then, sic transit! Happier the thrifty blind-folk labour, With upturned eye while the hand is busy, Not sidling a glance at the coin of their neighbour! 'Tis looking downward that makes one dizzy. XI. ``If you knew their work you would deal your dole.'' May I take upon me to instruct you? When Greek Art ran and reached the goal, Thus much had the world to boast in fructu- The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken, Which the actual generations garble, Was re-uttered, and Soul (which Limbs betoken) And Limbs (Soul informs) made new in marble. XII. So, you saw yourself as you wished you were, As you might have been, as you cannot be; Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there: And grew content in your poor degree With your little power, by those statues' godhead, And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway, And your little grace, by their grace embodied, And your little date, by their forms that stay. XIII. You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am? Even so, you will not sit like Theseus. You would prove a model? The Son of Priam Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees' use. You're wroth-can you slay your snake like Apollo? You're grieved-still Niobe's the grander! You live-there's the Racers' frieze to follow: You die-there's the dying Alexander. XIV. So, testing your weakness by their strength, Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty, Measured by Art in your breadth and length, You learned-to submit is a mortal's duty. -When I say ``you'' 'tis the common soul, The collective, I mean: the race of Man That receives life in parts to live in a whole, And grow here according to God's clear plan. XV. Growth came when, looking your last on them all, You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day And cried with a start-What if we so small Be greater and grander the while than they? Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature? In both, of such lower types are we Precisely because of our wider nature; For time, theirs-ours, for eternity. XVI. To-day's brief passion limits their range; It seethes with the morrow for us and more. They are perfect-how else? they shall never change: We are faulty-why not? we have time in store. The Artificer's hand is not arrested With us; we are rough-hewn, nowise polished: They stand for our copy, and, once invested With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished. XVII. 'Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven- The better! What's come to perfection perishes. Things learned on earth, we shall practise in heaven: Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes. Thyself shalt afford the example, Giotto! Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish, Done at a stroke, was just (was it not?) ``O!'' Thy great Campanile is still to finish. XVIII. Is it true that we are now, and shall be hereafter, But what and where depend on life's minute? Hails heavenly cheer or infernal laughter Our first step out of the gulf or in it? Shall Man, such step within his endeavour, Man's face, have no more play and action Than joy which is crystallized for ever, Or grief, an eternal petrifaction? XIX. On which I conclude, that the early painters, To cries of ``Greek Art and what more wish you?''- Replied, ``To become now self-acquainters, ``And paint man man, whatever the issue! ``Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray, ``New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters: ``To bring the invisible full into play! ``Let the visible go to the dogs-what matters?'' XX. Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and glory For daring so much, before they well did it. The first of the new, in our race's story, Beats the last of the old; 'tis no idle quiddit. The worthies began a revolution, Which if on earth you intend to acknowledge, Why, honour them now! (ends my allocution) Nor confer your degree when the folk leave college. XXI. There's a fancy some lean to and others hate- That, when this life is ended, begins New work for the soul in another state, Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins: Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries, Repeat in large what they practised in small, Through life after life in unlimited series; Only the scale's to be changed, that's all. XXII. Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen By the means of Evil that Good is best, And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene,- When our faith in the same has stood the test- Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, The uses of labour are surely done; There remaineth a rest for the people of God: And I have had troubles enough, for one. XXIII. But at any rate I have loved the season Of Art's spring-birth so dim and dewy; My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan, My painter-who but Cimabue? Nor ever was man of them all indeed, From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlandaio, Could say that he missed my critic-meed. So, now to my special grievance-heigh ho! XXIV. Their ghosts still stand, as I said before, Watching each fresco flaked and rasped, Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o'er: -No getting again what the church has grasped! The works on the wall must take their chance; ``Works never conceded to England's thick clime!'' (I hope they prefer their inheritance Of a bucketful of Italian quick-lime.) XXV. When they go at length, with such a shaking Of heads o'er the old delusion, sadly Each master his way through the black streets taking, Where many a lost work breathes though badly- Why don't they bethink them of who has merited? Why not reveal, while their pictures dree Such doom, how a captive might be out-ferreted? Why is it they never remember me? XXVI. Not that I expect the great Bigordi, Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose; Nor the wronged Lippino; and not a word I Say of a scrap of Fr Angelico's: But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi, To grant me a taste of your intonaco, Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye? Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco? XXVII. Could not the ghost with the close red cap, My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman, Save me a sample, give me the hap Of a muscular Christ that shows the draughtsman? No Virgin by him the somewhat petty, Of finical touch and tempera crumbly- Could not Alesso Baldovinetti Contribute so much, I ask him humbly? XXVIII. Margheritone of Arezzo, With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?) Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion, Where in the foreground kneels the donor? If such remain, as is my conviction, The hoarding it does you but little honour. XXIX. They pass; for them the panels may thrill, The tempera grow alive and tinglish; Their pictures are left to the mercies still Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English, Who, seeing mere money's worth in their prize, Will sell it to somebody calm as Zeno At naked High Art, and in ecstasies Before some clay-cold vile Carlino! XXX. No matter for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it,- Oh, never! it shall not be counted true- That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover,- Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! and to whom?-to whom? XXXI. I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito, (Or was it rather the Ognissanti?) Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe! Nay, I shall have it yet! Detur amanti! My Koh-i-noor-or (if that's a platitude) Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi's eye So, in anticipative gratitude, What if I take up my hope and prophesy? XXXII. When the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing, To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard, We shall begin by way of rejoicing; None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge), Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer, Hunting Radetzky's soul like a partridge Over Morello with squib and cracker. XXXIII. This time we'll shoot better game and bag 'em hot- No mere display at the stone of Dante, But a kind of sober Witanagemot (Ex: ``Casa Guidi,'' quod videas ante) Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence, How Art may return that departed with her. Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine's, And bring us the days of Orgagna hither! XXXIV. How we shall prologize, how we shall perorate, Utter fit things upon art and history, Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero rate, Make of the want of the age no mystery; Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras, Show-monarchy ever its uncouth cub licks Out of the bear's shape into Chimra's, While Pure Art's birth is still the republic's. XXXV. Then one shall propose in a speech (curt Tuscan, Expurgate and sober, with scarcely an ``issimo,'') To end now our half-told tale of Cambuscan, And turn the bell-tower's alt to altissimo: And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally, Shall soar up in gold full fifty braccia, Completing Florence, as Florence Italy. XXXVI. Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold Is broken away, and the long-pent fire, Like the golden hope of the world, unbaffled Springs from its sleep, and up goes the spire While ``God and the People'' plain for its motto, Thence the new tricolour flaps at the sky? At least to foresee that glory of Giotto And Florence together, the first am I! A sculptor, died 1278. Died 1455. Designed the bronze gates of the Baptistry at Florence. A painter, died 1498. The son of Fr Lippo Lippi. Wronged, because some of his pictures have been attributed to others. Died 1366. One of Giotto's pupils and assistants. Rough cast. Painter, sculptor, and goldsmith. Distemper-mixture of water and egg yolk. Sculptor and architect, died 1313- All Saints. A Florentine painter, died 1576. Tartar king. A woodcock ~ Robert Browning, Old Pictures In Florence ,

1375:The spider spreads her webs, whether she be In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree; The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves; So I, a thing whom moralists call worm, Sit spinning still round this decaying form, From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought No net of words in garish colours wrought To catch the idle buzzers of the day But a soft cell, where when that fades away, Memory may clothe in wings my living name And feed it with the asphodels of fame, Which in those hearts which must remember me Grow, making love an immortality. Whoever should behold me now, I wist, Would think I were a mighty mechanist, Bent with sublime Archimedean art To breathe a soul into the iron heart Of some machine portentous, or strange gin, Which by the force of figured spells might win Its way over the sea, and sport therein; For round the walls are hung dread engines, such As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch Ixion or the Titan:or the quick Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic, To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic, Or those in philanthropic council met, Who thought to pay some interest for the debt They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation, By giving a faint foretaste of damnation To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest Who made our land an island of the blest, When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire: With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag, Which fishers found under the utmost crag Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles, Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn When the exulting elements in scorn, Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey, As panthers sleep;and other strange and dread Magical forms the brick floor overspread, Proteus transformed to metal did not make More figures, or more strange; nor did he take Such shapes of unintelligible brass, Or heap himself in such a horrid mass Of tin and iron not to be understood; And forms of unimaginable wood, To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood: Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and groovd blocks, The elements of what will stand the shocks Of wave and wind and time.Upon the table More knacks and quips there be than I am able To catalogize in this verse of mine: A pretty bowl of woodnot full of wine, But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink When at their subterranean toil they swink, Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who Reply to them in lavacry halloo! And call out to the cities o'er their head, Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead, Crash through the chinks of earthand then all quaff Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh. This quicksilver no gnome has drunkwithin The walnut bowl it lies, veind and thin, In colour like the wake of light that stains The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains The inmost shower of its white firethe breeze Is stillblue Heaven smiles over the pale seas. And in this bowl of quicksilverfor I Yield to the impulse of an infancy Outlasting manhoodI have made to float A rude idealism of a paper boat: A hollow screw with cogsHenry will know The thing I mean and laugh at me,if so He fears not I should do more mischief.Next Lie bills and calculations much perplexed, With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint Traced over them in blue and yellow paint. Then comes a range of mathematical Instruments, for plans nautical and statical; A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass With ink in it;a china cup that was What it will never be again, I think, A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink The liquor doctors rail atand which I Will quaff in spite of themand when we die We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea, And cry out,'Heads or tails?' where'er we be. Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks, A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books, Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms, To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray Of figures,disentangle them who may. Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie, And some odd volumes of old chemistry. Near those a most inexplicable thing, With lead in the middleI'm conjecturing How to make Henry understand; but no I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo, This secret in the pregnant womb of time, Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme. And here like some weird Archimage sit I, Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery, The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind The gentle spirit of our meek reviews Into a powdery foam of salt abuse, Ruffling the ocean of their self-content; I sitand smile or sigh as is my bent, But not for themLibeccio rushes round With an inconstant and an idle sound, I heed him more than themthe thunder-smoke Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare; The ripe corn under the undulating air Undulates like an ocean;and the vines Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill The empty pauses of the blast;the hill Looks hoary through the white electric rain, And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain, The interrupted thunder howls; above One chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love On the unquiet world;while such things are, How could one worth your friendship heed the war Of worms? the shriek of the world's carrion jays, Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise? You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees, In vacant chairs, your absent images, And points where once you sat, and now should be But are not.I demand if ever we Shall meet as then we met;and she replies, Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes; 'I know the past alonebut summon home My sister Hope,she speaks of all to come.' But I, an old diviner, who knew well Every false verse of that sweet oracle, Turned to the sad enchantress once again, And sought a respite from my gentle pain, In citing every passage o'er and o'er Of our communionhow on the sea-shore We watched the ocean and the sky together, Under the roof of blue Italian weather; How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm, And felt the transverse lightning linger warm Upon my cheekand how we often made Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed The frugal luxury of our country cheer, As well it might, were it less firm and clear Than ours must ever be;and how we spun A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun Of this familiar life, which seems to be But is not:or is but quaint mockery Of all we would believe, and sadly blame The jarring and inexplicable frame Of this wrong world:and then anatomize The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes Were closed in distant years;or widely guess The issue of the earth's great business, When we shall be as we no longer are Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not;or how You listened to some interrupted flow Of visionary rhyme,in joy and pain Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain, With little skill perhaps;or how we sought Those deepest wells of passion or of thought Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years, Staining their sacred waters with our tears; Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed! Or how I, wisest lady! then endued The language of a land which now is free, And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty, Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud, And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud, 'My name is Legion!'that majestic tongue Which Calderon over the desert flung Of ages and of nations; and which found An echo in our hearts, and with the sound Startled oblivion;thou wert then to me As is a nursewhen inarticulately A child would talk as its grown parents do. If living winds the rapid clouds pursue, If hawks chase doves through the aethereal way, Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey, Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast Out of the forest of the pathless past These recollected pleasures?                You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see That which was Godwin,greater none than he Though fallenand fallen on evil timesto stand Among the spirits of our age and land, Before the dread tribunal of to come The foremost,while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb. You will see Coleridgehe who sits obscure In the exceeding lustre and the pure Intense irradiation of a mind, Which, with its own internal lightning blind, Flags wearily through darkness and despair A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, A hooded eagle among blinking owls. You will see Huntone of those happy souls Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom This world would smell like what it isa tomb; Who is, what others seem; his room no doubt Is still adorned with many a cast from Shout, With graceful flowers tastefully placed about; And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung; The gifts of the most learned among some dozens Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins. And there is he with his eternal puns, Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns Thundering for money at a poet's door; Alas! it is no use to say, 'I'm poor!' Or oft in graver mood, when he will look Things wiser than were ever read in book, Except in Shakespeare's wisest tenderness. You will see Hogg,and I cannot express His virtues,though I know that they are great, Because he locks, then barricades the gate Within which they inhabit;of his wit And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. He is a pearl within an oyster shell, One of the richest of the deep;and there Is English Peacock, with his mountain Fair, Turned into a Flamingo;that shy bird That gleams i' the Indian airhave you not heard When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, His best friends hear no more of him?but you Will see him, and will like him too, I hope, With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope Matched with this cameleopardhis fine wit Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it; A strain too learnd for a shallow age, Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page, Which charms the chosen spirits of the time, Fold itself up for the serener clime Of years to come, and find its recompense In that just expectation.Wit and sense, Virtue and human knowledge; all that might Make this dull world a business of delight, Are all combined in Horace Smith.And these, With some exceptions, which I need not tease Your patience by descanting on,are all You and I know in London.               I recall My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night. As water does a sponge, so the moonlight Fills the void, hollow, universal air What see you?unpavilioned Heaven is fair, Whether the moon, into her chamber gone, Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep; Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep, Piloted by the many-wandering blast, And the rare stars rush through them dim and fast: All this is beautiful in every land. But what see you beside?a shabby stand Of Hackney coachesa brick house or wall Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl Of our unhappy politics;or worse A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse Mixed with the watchman's, partner of her trade, You must accept in place of serenade Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring To Henry, some unutterable thing. I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit Built round dark caverns, even to the root Of the living stems that feed themin whose bowers There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers; Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance, Like wingd stars the fire-flies flash and glance, Pale in the open moonshine, but each one Under the dark trees seems a little sun, A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray From the silver regions of the milky way; Afar the Contadino's song is heard, Rude, but made sweet by distanceand a bird Which cannot be the Nightingale, and yet I know none else that sings so sweet as it At this late hour;and then all is still NowItaly or London, which you will! Next winter you must pass with me; I'll have My house by that time turned into a grave Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care, And all the dreams which our tormentors are; Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and Smith were there, With everything belonging to them fair! We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek; And ask one week to make another week As like his father, as I'm unlike mine, Which is not his fault, as you may divine. Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, Yet let's be merry: we'll have tea and toast; Custards for supper, and an endless host Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies, And other such lady-like luxuries, Feasting on which we will philosophize! And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood, To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood. And then we'll talk;what shall we talk about? Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout Of thought-entangled descant;as to nerves With cones and parallelograms and curves I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare To bother mewhen you are with me there. And they shall never more sip laudanum, From Helicon or Himeros[1];well, come, And in despite of God and of the devil, We'll make our friendly philosophic revel Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers Warn the obscure inevitable hours, Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew; 'To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.' Composed during Shelley's occupation of the Gisbornes' house at Leghorn, July 1820; published in Posthumous Poems, 1824. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, Letter To Maria Gisborne ,

1376:"Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself."    (David, Psalms 50.21) ['Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best, Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin. And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, And feels about his spine small eft-things course, Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh: And while above his head a pompion-plant, Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye, Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard, And now a flower drops with a bee inside, And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch, He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross And recross till they weave a spider-web (Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times) And talks to his own self, howe'er he please, Touching that other, whom his dam called God. Because to talk about Him, vexesha, Could He but know! and time to vex is now, When talk is safer than in winter-time. Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep In confidence he drudges at their task, And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe, Letting the rank tongue blossom into speech.] Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos! 'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon. 'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match, But not the stars; the stars came otherwise; Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that: Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon, And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same. 'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold, Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave; Only, she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life, (Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun) Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe, And in her old bounds buried her despair, Hating and loving warmth alike: so He. 'Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle, Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing. Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech; Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam, That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue That pricks deep into oak warts for a worm, And says a plain word when she finds her prize, But will not eat the ants; the ants themselves That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks About their holeHe made all these and more, Made all we see, and us, in spite: how else? He could not, Himself, make a second self To be His mate; as well have made Himself: He would not make what He mislikes or slights, An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains: But did, in envy, listlessness or sport, Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be Weaker in most points, stronger in a few, Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while, Things He admires and mocks too,that is it. Because, so brave, so better though they be, It nothing skills if He begin to plague. Look, now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash, Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived, Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss, Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all, Quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain; Last, throw me on my back i' the seeded thyme, And wanton, wishing I were born a bird. Put case, unable to be what I wish, I yet could make a live bird out of clay: Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban Able to fly?for, there, see, he hath wings, And great comb like the hoopoe's to admire, And there, a sting to do his foes offence, There, and I will that he begin to live, Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns Of grigs high up that make the merry din, Saucy through their veined wings, and mind me not. In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay, And he lay stupid-like,why, I should laugh; And if he, spying me, should fall to weep, Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong, Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again, Well, as the chance were, this might take or else Not take my fancy: I might hear his cry, And give the mankin three sound legs for one, Or pluck the other off, leave him like an egg And lessoned he was mine and merely clay. Were this no pleasure, lying in the thyme, Drinking the mash, with brain become alive, Making and marring clay at will? So He. 'Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him, Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord. 'Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs That march now from the mountain to the sea; 'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so. 'Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off; 'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, And two worms he whose nippers end in red; As it likes me each time, I do: so He. Well then, 'supposeth He is good i' the main, Placable if His mind and ways were guessed, But rougher than His handiwork, be sure! Oh, He hath made things worthier than Himself, And envieth that, so helped, such things do more Than He who made them! What consoles but this? That they, unless through Him, do nought at all, And must submit: what other use in things? 'Hath cut a pipe of pithless elder-joint That, blown through, gives exact the scream o' the jay When from her wing you twitch the feathers blue: Sound this, and little birds that hate the jay Flock within stone's throw, glad their foe is hurt: Put case such pipe could prattle and boast forsooth "I catch the birds, I am the crafty thing, I make the cry my maker cannot make With his great round mouth; he must blow through mine!' Would not I smash it with my foot? So He. But wherefore rough, why cold and ill at ease? Aha, that is a question! Ask, for that, What knows,the something over Setebos That made Him, or He, may be, found and fought, Worsted, drove off and did to nothing, perchance. There may be something quiet o'er His head, Out of His reach, that feels nor joy nor grief, Since both derive from weakness in some way. I joy because the quails come; would not joy Could I bring quails here when I have a mind: This Quiet, all it hath a mind to, doth. 'Esteemeth stars the outposts of its couch, But never spends much thought nor care that way. It may look up, work up,the worse for those It works on! 'Careth but for Setebos The many-handed as a cuttle-fish, Who, making Himself feared through what He does, Looks up, first, and perceives he cannot soar To what is quiet and hath happy life; Next looks down here, and out of very spite Makes this a bauble-world to ape yon real, These good things to match those as hips do grapes. 'Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport. Himself peeped late, eyed Prosper at his books Careless and lofty, lord now of the isle: Vexed, 'stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow-shaped, Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words; Has peeled a wand and called it by a name; Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe The eyed skin of a supple oncelot; And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch, Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye, And saith she is Miranda and my wife: 'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge; Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared, Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat tame, And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge In a hole o' the rock and calls him Caliban; A bitter heart that bides its time and bites. 'Plays thus at being Prosper in a way, Taketh his mirth with make-believes: so He. His dam held that the Quiet made all things Which Setebos vexed only: 'holds not so. Who made them weak, meant weakness He might vex. Had He meant other, while His hand was in, Why not make horny eyes no thorn could prick, Or plate my scalp with bone against the snow, Or overscale my flesh 'neath joint and joint Like an orc's armour? Ay,so spoil His sport! He is the One now: only He doth all. 'Saith, He may like, perchance, what profits Him. Ay, himself loves what does him good; but why? 'Gets good no otherwise. This blinded beast Loves whoso places flesh-meat on his nose, But, had he eyes, would want no help, but hate Or love, just as it liked him: He hath eyes. Also it pleaseth Setebos to work, Use all His hands, and exercise much craft, By no means for the love of what is worked. 'Tasteth, himself, no finer good i' the world When all goes right, in this safe summer-time, And he wants little, hungers, aches not much, Than trying what to do with wit and strength. 'Falls to make something: 'piled yon pile of turfs, And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk, And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each, And set up endwise certain spikes of tree, And crowned the whole with a sloth's skull a-top, Found dead i' the woods, too hard for one to kill. No use at all i' the work, for work's sole sake; 'Shall some day knock it down again: so He. 'Saith He is terrible: watch His feats in proof! One hurricane will spoil six good months' hope. He hath a spite against me, that I know, Just as He favours Prosper, who knows why? So it is, all the same, as well I find. 'Wove wattles half the winter, fenced them firm With stone and stake to stop she-tortoises Crawling to lay their eggs here: well, one wave, Feeling the foot of Him upon its neck, Gaped as a snake does, lolled out its large tongue, And licked the whole labour flat: so much for spite. 'Saw a ball flame down late (yonder it lies) Where, half an hour before, I slept i' the shade: Often they scatter sparkles: there is force! 'Dug up a newt He may have envied once And turned to stone, shut up Inside a stone. Please Him and hinder this?What Prosper does? Aha, if He would tell me how! Not He! There is the sport: discover how or die! All need not die, for of the things o' the isle Some flee afar, some dive, some run up trees; Those at His mercy,why, they please Him most When . . . when . . . well, never try the same way twice! Repeat what act has pleased, He may grow wroth. You must not know His ways, and play Him off, Sure of the issue. 'Doth the like himself: 'Spareth a squirrel that it nothing fears But steals the nut from underneath my thumb, And when I threat, bites stoutly in defence: 'Spareth an urchin that contrariwise, Curls up into a ball, pretending death For fright at my approach: the two ways please. But what would move my choler more than this, That either creature counted on its life To-morrow and next day and all days to come, Saying, forsooth, in the inmost of its heart, "Because he did so yesterday with me, And otherwise with such another brute, So must he do henceforth and always."Ay? Would teach the reasoning couple what "must" means! 'Doth as he likes, or wherefore Lord? So He. 'Conceiveth all things will continue thus, And we shall have to live in fear of Him So long as He lives, keeps His strength: no change, If He have done His best, make no new world To please Him more, so leave off watching this, If He surprise not even the Quiet's self Some strange day,or, suppose, grow into it As grubs grow butterflies: else, here are we, And there is He, and nowhere help at all. 'Believeth with the life, the pain shall stop. His dam held different, that after death He both plagued enemies and feasted friends: Idly! He doth His worst in this our life, Giving just respite lest we die through pain, Saving last pain for worst,with which, an end. Meanwhile, the best way to escape His ire Is, not to seem too happy. 'Sees, himself, Yonder two flies, with purple films and pink, Bask on the pompion-bell above: kills both. 'Sees two black painful beetles roll their ball On head and tail as if to save their lives: Moves them the stick away they strive to clear. Even so, 'would have Him misconceive, suppose This Caliban strives hard and ails no less, And always, above all else, envies Him; Wherefore he mainly dances on dark nights, Moans in the sun, gets under holes to laugh, And never speaks his mind save housed as now: Outside, 'groans, curses. If He caught me here, O'erheard this speech, and asked "What chucklest at?" 'Would, to appease Him, cut a finger off, Or of my three kid yearlings burn the best, Or let the toothsome apples rot on tree, Or push my tame beast for the orc to taste: While myself lit a fire, and made a song And sung it, "What I hate, be consecrate To celebrate Thee and Thy state, no mate For Thee; what see for envy in poor me?" Hoping the while, since evils sometimes mend, Warts rub away and sores are cured with slime, That some strange day, will either the Quiet catch And conquer Setebos, or likelier He Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die. NOTES Form: unrhyming 1. The motto is from Psalms 1: 21. For the title character, see The Tempest, I, ii. The subtitle and the motto indicate much of Browning's intention in the poem. "Natural theology" is distinguished from (and here opposed to) "revealed theology"\; natural theology being that system of thought about God which man arrives at through the unaided use of his natural reason. To the Victorian secularists, all theology was "natural theology"--that is, man-made. Their favourite theory was that all religion was a projection by man of his own qualities. This is the theory which the text chosen as motto condemns, and which Caliban's musings illustrate. Throughout he looks at his own characteristics, and then ascribes them to his god, Setebos: "So he." What is conspicuous in the poem is that there is no glimpse of what to Browning is true theology: the theology of a God of Love. This comes to man (as to David in Saul) by revelation. The highest conception Caliban can achieve by natural reason is of the Quiet--an indifferent, absentee, Epicurean God. His Setebos is merely a God of arbitrary and jealous power. It is also noteworthy that Browning includes in Caliban's theology not merely most of the doctrines of primitive religions, but also some elements associated with branches of Christianity, particularly the narrower kind of Calvinist sect. He is by implication rejecting these elements as part of his own definition of true Christianity in terms of a God of Love. The passages in brackets at the beginning and end of the poem represent Caliban's silent thoughts. The main part of the poem is spoken aloud, and presents his attempt at a system. He is very much the "natural" man, but Browning gives him not only a quick and vivid imagination, but a mind that follows the general systematic pattern of thought used by writers on natural religion. He starts with the relation of his god to the universe, and the problem of cosmology, and then moves systematically to consider his god's attributes, and to try to evolve rules for worship and service. Caliban throughout speaks of himself in the third person, usually without the pronoun. Browning indicates the omission of the pronoun by an apostrophe. ~ Robert Browning, Caliban upon Setebos or, Natural Theology in the Island ,

1377:The tavern-keeper Siduri who lives by the seashore, she lives the pot-stand was made for her, the golden fermenting vat was made for her. She is covered with a veil Gilgamesh was roving about wearing a skin, having the flesh of the gods in his body, but sadness deep within him, looking like one who has been traveling a long distance. The tavern-keeper was gazing off into the distance, puzzling to herself, she said, wondering to herself: "That fellow is surely a murderer(!)! Where is he heading!" As soon as the tavern-keeper saw him, she bolted her door, bolted her gate, bolted the lock. But at her noise Gilgamesh pricked up his ears, lifted his chin (to look about) and then laid his eyes on her. Gilgamesh spoke to the tavern-keeper, saying: "Tavern-keeper, what have you seen that made you bolt                your door, bolt your gate, bolt the lock! if you do not let me in I will break your door, and smash                 the lock! the wilderness." Gilgamesh The tavern-keeper Siduri who lives by the seashore, she lives the pot-stand was made for her, the golden fermenting vat was made                  for her. She is covered with a veil Gilgamesh was roving about wearing a skin, having the flesh of the gods in his body, but sadness deep within him, looking like one who has been traveling a long distance. The tavern-keeper was gazing off into the distance, puzzling to herself, she said, wondering to herself: "That fellow is surely a murderer(!)! Where is he heading!" As soon as the tavern-keeper saw him, she bolted her door, bolted her gate, bolted the lock. But at her noise Gilgamesh pricked up his ears, lifted his chin (to look about) and then laid his eyes on her. Gilgamesh spoke to the tavern-keeper, saying: "Tavern-keeper, what have you seen that made you bolt                your door, bolt your gate, bolt the lock! if you do not let me in I will break your door, and smash                 the lock! the wilderness." Gilgamesh gate Gilgamesh said to the tavern-keeper: "I am Gilgamesh, I killed the Guardian! I destroyed Humbaba who lived in the Cedar Forest, I slew lions in the mountain passes! I grappled with the Bull that came down from heaven, and                killed him." The tavern-keeper spoke to Gilgamesh, saying: "lf you are Gilgamesh, who killed the Guardian, who destroyed Humbaba who lived in the Cedar Forest, who slew lions in the mountain passes, who grappled with the Bull that came down from heaven, and                killed him, why are your cheeks emaciated, your expression desolate! Why is your heart so wretched, your features so haggard! Why is there such sadness deep within you! Why do you look like one who has been traveling a long                  distance so that ice and heat have seared your face! you roam the wilderness!" Gilgamesh spoke to her, to the tavern-keeper he said: "Tavern-keeper, should not my cheeks be emaciated? Should my heart not be wretched, my features not haggard? Should there not be sadness deep within me! Should I not look like one who has been traveling a long                 distance, and should ice and heat not have seared my face! , should I not roam the wilderness? My friend, the wild **** who chased the wild donkey, panther of               the wilderness, Enkidu, the wild **** who chased the wild donkey, panther of                the wilderness, we joined together, and went up into the mountain. We grappled with and killed the Bull of Heaven, we destroyed Humbaba who lived in the Cedar Forest, we slew lions in the mountain passes! My friend, whom I love deeply, who went through every hard-              ship with me, Enkidu, whom I love deeply, who went through every hardship                with me, the fate of mankind has overtaken him. Six days and seven nights I mourned over him and would not allow him to be buried until a maggot fell out of his nose. I was terrified by his appearance(!), I began to fear death, and so roam the wilderness. The issue of my friend oppresses me, so I have been roaming long trails through the wilderness. The issue of Enkidu, my friend, oppresses me, so I have been roaming long roads through the wilderness. How can I stay silent, how can 1 be still! My friend whom I love has turned to clay. Am I not like him? Will I lie down, never to get up again?"' Gilgamesh spoke to the tavern-keeper, saying: "So now, tavern-keeper, what is the way to Utanapishtim! What are its markers Give them to me! Give me the markers! If possible, I will cross the sea; if not, I will roam through the wilderness." The tavern-keeper spoke to Gilgamesh, saying: "There has never been, Gilgamesh, any passage whatever, there has never been anyone since days of yore who crossed                  the sea. The (only) one who crosses the sea is valiant Shamash, except             for him who can cross! The crossing is difficult, its ways are treacherous and in between are the Waters of Death that bar its approaches! And even if, Gilgamesh, you should cross the sea, when you reach the Waters of Death what would you do! Gilgamesh, over there is Urshanabi, the ferryman of Utanapishtim. 'The stone things' L are with him, he is in the woods picking                  mint( !). Go on, let him see your face. If possible, cross with him; if not, you should turn back." When Gilgamesh heard this he raised the axe in his hand, drew the dagger from his belt, and slipped stealthily away after them. Like an arrow he fell among them ("the stone things"). From the middle of the woods their noise could be heard. Urshanabi, the sharp-eyed, saw When he heard the axe, he ran toward it. He struck his head Gilgamesh.' He clapped his hands and his chest, while "the stone things" the boat Waters of Death broad sea in the Waters of Death to the river the boat on the shore. Gilgamesh spoke to Urshanabi (?