Anthropology and Politics (1995)
Context: I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. I am a liberal person opposed to all unnecessary state limitation of individual liberties. Hermeneutics between consenting adults should not, in my view, be the object of any statutory restrictions. I know, only too well, what it would entail. Hermeneutic speakeasies would spring up all over the place, smuggled Thick Descriptions would be brought in by the lorry-load from Canada by the Mafia, blood and thick meaning would clot in the gutter as rival gangs of semiotic bootleggers slugged it out in a series of bloody shoot-outs and ambushes. Addicts would be subject to blackmail. Consumption of deep meanings and its attendant psychic consequences would in no way diminsh, but the criminal world would benefit, and the whole fabric of civil society would be put under severe strain. Never!
“I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.”
TV interview with David Frost and quoted in The Sunday Times Magazine 16 September 1973 http://books.google.com/books?id=4cl5c4T9LWkC&lpg=PA754&q=%22I'm+all+for+bringing+back+the+birch+but+only+between+consenting+adults%22&pg=PA754#v=onepage
1970s
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Gore Vidal 163
American writer 1925–2012Related quotes
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. The riddle of "man-manly love": the pioneering work on male homosexuality, Volume 2, Prometheus Books, 1994. p. 604
“In Defense of Jacko’s Doctor,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=626 WorldNetDaily.com, November 11, 2011.
2010s, 2011
“So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.”
1984: Spring (1984)
1980s
“The difference between children and adults is that they're shorter - not dumber.”