Source: Blood Rites
Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: The idea of being constructive, creative, positive, in trying to bring out the best in one's own self and the best in others follows from what I've just been saying. Again, I repeat my belief in us, in ourselves, as the product of the process of evolution, and part of the process itself. I think of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process, and we are constantly learning from experience. It's the need to dedicate one's self in that way, to one's own self, and to choose an activity or life that is of value not only to yourself but to others as well.
“Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots.”
A rant about stupidity... and the coming civil war... (2009)
Context: I've long felt that the best minds of the right had useful things to contribute to a national conversation — even if their overall habit of resistance to change proved wrongheaded, more often than right. At least, some of them had the beneficial knack of targeting and criticizing the worst liberal mistakes, and often forcing needful re-drafting.
That is, some did, way back in when decent republicans and democrats shared one aim — to negotiate better solutions for the republic.
Alas, today's Republican Establishment seems not only incapable but uninterested in negotiation or deliberation. It isn't just the dogmatism, or lockstep partisanship, or Koolaid fantasies spun-up by the Murdoch-Limbaugh hate machine. Heck, even though "culture war" is verifiably the worst direct treason against the United States of America since Fort Sumter, that isn't what boggles most.
It's the stupidity. The vast and nearly uniform dumbitudinousness of ignoring what has happened to conservatism, a transformation of nearly all of the salient traits of Barry Goldwater from:
Letter to James Madison (30 January 1787); referring to Shays' Rebellion Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 6:65
1780s
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 386.
Love to Faults
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792)
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)
[BBC Sport, Cristiano Ronaldo: I'm the best player in the world, 5 November 2015, 4 February 2018, http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/34737914]
In an interview with the BBC ahead of the release of Ronaldo.
