“Ask yourself, if you or a loved one is to undergo brain or heart surgery, does it matter whether the surgeons who will operate had been selected for medical school for any other reason than their aptitude for medicine and surgery? Even if there were no quotas, should race have been "taken into consideration" in their selection? Consider the hairline life and death decisions that surgeons make all the time. Does not every consideration, however slight, apart from aptitude, dilute the qualifications of surgeons for surgery? The next time you are crossing a great bridge, do you not rely upon the qualifications of the engineers and builders to ensure your safety? What does the skin color of the classmates of doctors or engineers have to do with their medicine or their engineering? Is it not their professional qualification that matters, and not either the sameness or the differences from which they came? Is not the same true if we are seeking mathematicians, physicists, economists, or generals? In each case, what is apt for the end in view may be regarded as good, what is inapt may be regarded as bad.”
2000s, Is Diversity Good? (2003)
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Harry V. Jaffa 171
American historian and collegiate professor 1918–2015Related quotes
George R. Price
(1922–1975) American population geneticist
Price, G.R. (1995). "The nature of selection." Journal of Theoretical Biology 175:389-396 (written circa 1971)
“Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.”
Jay Samit
(1961) American businessman
Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 30
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
(1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker
quote of 1921; de:Louis de Marsalle, in 'Uber Kirchners Graphik', Genius 3, no. 2, p. 252; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', by I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 40
1920's
“Quite collected at cocktail parties,
meanwhile in my head
I'm undergoing open-heart surgery.”
Anne Sexton
(1928–1974) poet from the United States
Variant: Meanwhile in my head, I’m undergoing open-heart surgery.
Source: Transformations
Sören Kierkegaard
(1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism
' Letter to Kierkegaard's cousin Hans Peter http://books.google.de/books?id=CUfkNXWLyboC&pg=PR21 (1848)
1840s
Epictetus
(50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece
Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: A Philosopher's school is a Surgery: pain, not pleasure, you should have felt therein. For on entering none of you is whole. One has a shoulder out of joint, another an abscess: a third suffers from an issue, a forth pains in the head. And am I then to sit down and treat you to pretty sentiments and empty fluourishes, so that you may applaud me and depart, with neither shoulder, nor head, nor issue, nor abscess a whit the better for your visit? Is it then for this that young men are to quit their homes, and leave parents, friends, kinsmen and substance to mouth out Bravo to your empty phrases! (121).
H.P. Lovecraft
(1890–1937) American author
Letter to J. Vernon Shea (7 August 1931), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, p. 579
Non-Fiction, Letters