La Femme Nikita review http://www.joebobbriggs.com/drivein/1991/lafemmenikita.htm
Speech at Woolwich (30 January 1976)
Foreign Secretary
Source: Way Station (1963), Ch. 18
Context: Hank Fisher would tell how he'd tried to break into the house and couldn't and there'd be others who would try to break into the house and there'd be hell to pay.
Enoch sweated, thinking of it.
All the years of keeping out of people's way, all the years of being unobtrusive would be for nothing then. This strange house upon a lonely ridge would become a mystery for the world, and a challenge and a target for all the crackpots of the world.
Life Without and Life Within (1859), Sub Rosa, Crux
Context: The pass-word now is lost
To that initiation full and free;
Daily we pay the cost
Of our slow schooling for divine degree.
We know no means to feed an undying lamp;
Our lights go out in every wind or damp.
Vorkosigan Saga, A Civil Campaign (1999)
Context: You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.
As quoted in "World Series Prediction: 'Pirates in Six Games,' Says Clemente" by Bill Nunn, Jr. in The New Pittsburgh Courier (October 8, 1960), p. 25
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1960</big>
Context: "The Yankees aren't going to frighten this club. Except for power, we are a better all-round club than the Yankees and this is going to pay off in a world championship for Pittsburgh in six games." Clemente [... ] isn't worried about the Pirates being affected by Series jitters. "We don't have that kind of a club. We've been a relaxed team all season and I expect us to be the same in the Series. Pressure didn't get us down during the National League race. We fought off Milwaukee, St. Louis and Los Angeles without cracking. Now that we have come this far, we aren't going to look back now. As a team I would have to rate the Braves over the Yankees. If the Braves had won the pennant, I believe they would have been good enough to beat the Yankees, too. We have a better field club and better pitching than they do. We'll get our share of runs, too." Clemente, who played in Yankee Stadium during the All-Star Game, admitted the late afternoon shadows in the New York park could be a disadvantage to the Pirates outfielders. "The ball is hard to follow and it may give us some trouble. I really don't think it will make a difference in the outcome of the Series though."
Part I : Ambiguity and Freedom http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/ch01.htm
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Context: At the present time there still exist many doctrines which choose to leave in the shadow certain troubling aspects of a too complex situation. But their attempt to lie to us is in vain. Cowardice doesn’t pay. Those reasonable metaphysics, those consoling ethics with which they would like to entice us only accentuate the disorder from which we suffer.
2010s, Why Penn Jillette is Terrified of a President Trump (2016)
Context: Someone who is paying attention can do the same thing that Trump is doing with hate, and do it with love, and become president … That’s kind of beautiful. There’s nothing more optimistic than that. … Donald Trump does, when it comes right down to it, fuck up everything … He fucks up his casinos. He fucks up his buildings.... Maybe he’ll fuck up his campaign before he fucks up the country.
Johnny Got His Gun (1938)
Context: There's nothing noble about dying. Not even if you die for honor. Not even if you die the greatest hero the world ever saw. Not even if you're so great your name will never be forgotten and who's that great? The most important thing is your life, little guys. You're worth nothing dead except for speeches. Don't let them kid you any more. Pay no attention when they tap you on the shoulder and say come along we've got to fight for liberty, or whatever their word is. There's always a word.
The Marshall Plan Speech (1947)
Context: The truth of the matter is that Europe's requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products — principally from America — are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character.
The remedy lies in breaking the vicious circle and restoring the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole. The manufacturer and the farmer throughout wide areas must be able and willing to exchange their product for currencies, the continuing value of which is not open to question.
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, lines 790–794 (tr. E. D. A. Morshead)
“Smith didn't pay attention to that, he was looking the horse in the eye.”
Seabiscuit (2003)
Context: He was a small horse, barely fifteen hands. He was hurting, too. There was a limp in his walk, a wheezing when he breathed. Smith didn't pay attention to that, he was looking the horse in the eye.
Eupsychian Management : A Journal (1965), p. 213.
1940s-1960s
Context: If swindling pays, then it will not stop. The definition of the good society is one in which virtue pays. I can now add a slight variation on this; you cannot have a good society unless virtue pays. But here we get very close to the whole subject of metaneeds, and also of the ideal conditions where dichotomies are resolved and transcended.
Progress and Poverty (1879)
Context: But there is another form of monopoly, far more general and far more insidious. The accumulation of large amounts of capital under consolidated control creates a new kind of power—essentially different from the power of increase. Increase is constructive in its nature. Power from accumulation is destructive. It is often exercised with reckless disregard, not only to industry but to the personal rights of individuals. A railroad approaches a small town as a highwayman approaches his victim. “Agree to our terms or we will bypass your town” is as effective a threat as “your money or your life.” As robbers unite to plunder and divide the spoils, the trunk lines of railroads unite to raise rates and pool their earnings. The public is then forced to pay the cost of the whole maneuver, as the vanquished are forced to pay the cost of their own enslavement by a conquering army.
The Greening of America turns 40 (2010)
Context: I see self-destruction now on a grand scale. That is, the unwillingness to pay for the things society needs. That's the most basic kind of self-destruction. That we're not prepared to pay for schools, we're not prepared to pay for highways. That is self-destruction. What are we doing to ourselves? It is nuts.
“At some point when I wasn’t paying attention, comedic genocide just stopped working for me.”
Review of T. Kingfisher's Nine Goblins http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/basically-i-have-no-sense-of-humour, 2013
2010s
Context: At some point when I wasn’t paying attention, comedic genocide just stopped working for me. This is a shame because so much fantasy and SF depends on genocide as positive plot element. This trifling oddity of taste must have robbed me of hours of morally equivocal entertainment.
A Sense of the Mysterious : Science and the Human Spirit (2005), p. 200<!-- Pantheon Books isbn=0375423206 -->
Context: In the 1950s, academics forecast that as a result of new technology, by the year 2000 we could have a twenty-hour workweek. Such a development would be a beautiful example of technology at the service of the human being.... According to the Bureau of Statistics, the goods and services produced per hour of work in the United States has indeed more than doubled since 1950.... However, instead of reducing the workweek, the increased efficiencies and productivities have gone into increasing the salaries of workers.... Workers... rather have used their increased efficiencies and resulting increased disposable income to purchase more material goods.... Indeed, in a cruel irony, the workweek has actually lengthened.... More work is required to pay for more consumption, fueled by more production, in an endless, vicious circle.
The Emperor's Old Clothes
Context: [About PL/I] At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way — and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay.
"To Lucasta on Going to the War — For the Fourth Time"
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)
Context: Let statesmen bluster, bark and bray,
And so decide who started
This bloody war, and who's to pay,
But he must be stout-hearted,
Must sit and stake with quiet breath,
Playing at cards with Death.
Don't plume yourself he fights for you;
It is no courage, love, or hate,
But let us do the things we do;
It's pride that makes the heart be great;
It is not anger, no, nor fear —
Lucasta he's a Fusilier,
And his pride keeps him here.
“The negro worked and took his pay in religion and the lash”
1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)
Context: Companies and associations may yet be formed to promote this Mongolian invasion. The loss of the negro is to gain them the Chinese, and if the thing works well, abolition, in their opinion, will have proved itself to be another blessing in disguise. To the statesman it will mean Southern independence. To the pulpit, it will be the hand of Providence, and bring about the time of the universal dominion of the Christian religion. To all but the Chinaman and the negro it will mean wealth, ease and luxury. But alas, for all the selfish invention and dreams of men! The Chinaman will not long be willing to wear the cast off shoes of the negro, and, if he refuses, there will be trouble again. The negro worked and took his pay in religion and the lash. The Chinaman is a different article and will want the cash. He may, like the negro, accept Christianity, but, unlike the negro, he will not care to pay for it in labor. He had the Golden Rule in substance five hundred years before the coming of Christ, and has notions of justice that are not to be confused by any.
“Each gives to each, and like the star
Gets back its gift in tenfold pay.”
The Building of the City Beautiful (1905), Ch. V : How Beautiful!, p. 48.
Context: p>Each gives to each, and like the star
Gets back its gift in tenfold pay.To get and give and give amain
The rivers run and oceans roll.
O generous and high-born rain
When reigning as a splendid whole!
That man who lives for self alone
Lives for the meanest mortal known.</p
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 38
Context: Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken the wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for his own sake. What purports to be art begins to looks like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalised action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in an artistic creation the personality does not assert itself it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always the servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of the self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitably, losing all sense of human calling.
Remarks on the House floor, in debates on Cod Fishery bill (February 1792) http://books.google.com/books?id=DmkFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA363&dq=%22they+may+take+into+their+own+hands+the+education%22&hl=en&ei=3lGmTpvpEcOftweb7YQg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22they%20may%20take%20into%20their%20own%20hands%20the%20education%22&f=false
1790s
Context: If Congress can apply money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may establish teachers in every State, county, and parish, and pay them out of the public Treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post roads. In short, every thing, from the highest object of State legislation, down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare.
“For a deadly blow let him pay with a deadly blow; it is for him who has done a deed to suffer.”
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), The Libation Bearers, line 312
David D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War https://ia802604.us.archive.org/9/items/incidentsanecdot00port/incidentsanecdot00port.pdf (1885), p. 274.
Context: It looked queer to me to see boxes labeled 'His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America'. The packages so labeled contained Bass ale or Cognac brandy, which cost 'His Excellency' less than we Yankees had to pay for it. Think of the President drinking imported liquors while his soldiers were living on pop-corn and water!
Source: The Sand Pebbles (1962), Ch. 5; speech of Lt. Collins, the commander of the San Pablo to his crew at the start of summer cruising on the Yangtze River
Context: "Tomorrow we begin our summer cruising to show the flag on Tungting lake and the Hunan rivers," he said. "At home in America, when today reaches them, it will be Flag Day. They will gather to do honor and hear speeches. For us who wear the uniform, every day is Flag Day. We pay our honor in act and feeling and we have little need of words. But on this one day it will not hurt us to grasp briefly in words the meaning of our flag. That is what I want to talk about this morning.
"Our flag is the symbol of America. I want you to grasp what America really is," Lt. Collins said, nodding for emphasis. "It is more than marks on a map. It is more than buildings and land. America is a living structure of human lives, of all the American lives that ever were and ever will be. We in San Pablo are collectively only a tiny, momentary bit of that structure. How can we, standing here, grasp the whole of America?" He made a grasping motion. "Think now of a great cable," he said, and made a circle with his arms. "The cable has no natural limiting length. It can be spun out forever. We can unlay it into ropes, and the ropes, into strands, and the strands into yarns, and none of them have any natural ending. But now let us pull a yarn apart into single fibers —" he made plucking motions with his fingers " — and each man of us can find himself. Each fiber is a tiny, flat, yellowish thing, a foot or a yard long by nature. One American life from birth to death is like a single fiber. Each one is spun into the yarn of a family and the strand of a home town and the rope of a home state. The states are spun into the great, unending, unbreakable cable that is America."
His voice deepened on the last words. He paused, to let them think about it....
"No man, not even President Coolidge, can experience the whole of America directly," Lt. Collins resumed. "We can only feel it when the strain comes on, the terrible strain of hauling our history into a stormy future. Then the cable springs taut and vibrant. It thins and groans as the water squeezes out and all the fibers press each to each in iron hardness. Even then, we know only the fibers that press against us. But there is another way to know America."
He paused for a deep breath. The ranks were very quiet.
"We can know America through our flag which is its symbol," he said quietly. "In our flag the barriers of time and space vanish. All America that ever was and ever will be lives every moment in our flag. Wherever in the world two or three of us stand together under our flag, all America is there. When we stand proudly and salute our flag, that is what we know wordlessly in the passing moment....
"Understand that our flag is not the cloth but the pattern of form and color manifested in the cloth," Lt. Collins was saying. "It could have been any pattern once, but our fathers chose that one. History has made it sacred. The honor paid it in uncounted acts of individual reverence has made it live. Every morning in American schoolrooms children present their hearts to our flag. Every morning and evening we render it our military salutes. And so the pattern lives and it can manifest itself in any number of bits of perishable cloth, but the pattern is indestructible."
The Echo of Greece (1957)
Context: What the people wanted was a government which would provide a comfortable life for them, and with this as the foremost object ideas of freedom and self-reliance and service to the community were obscured to the point of disappearing. Athens was more and more looked on as a co-operative business, possessed of great wealth, in which all citizens had a right to share... Athens had reached the point of rejecting independence, and the freedom she now wanted was freedom from responsibility. There could be only one result... If men insisted on being free from the burden of a life that was self-dependent and also responsible for the common good, they would cease to be free at all. Responsibility was the price every man must pay for freedom. It was to be had on no other terms.
Madison's notes (2 June 1787) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_602.asp
1780s, The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)
Context: Mr. MASON. Some mode of displacing an unfit magistrate is rendered indispensable by the fallibility of those who choose, as well as by the corruptibility of the man chosen. He opposed decidedly the making the Executive the mere creature of the Legislature as a violation of the fundamental principle of good Government.
Mr. MADISON & Mr. WILSON observed that it would leave an equality of agency in the small with the great States; that it would enable a minority of the people to prevent ye. removal of an officer who had rendered himself justly criminal in the eyes of a majority; that it would open a door for intrigues agst. him in States where his administration tho' just might be unpopular, and might tempt him to pay court to particular States whose leading partizans he might fear, or wish to engage as his partizans. They both thought it bad policy to introduce such a mixture of the State authorities, where their agency could be otherwise supplied.
Mr. DICKENSON considered the business as so important that no man ought to be silent or reserved. He went into a discourse of some length, the sum of which was, that the Legislative, Executive, & Judiciary departments ought to be made as independent. as possible; but that such an Executive as some seemed to have in contemplation was not consistent with a republic: that a firm Executive could only exist in a limited monarchy.
“Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty.”
Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part II, p. 927.
Context: Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.
5 February 1991
CNN
War in the Gulf with Bob Cain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scmhi2Ub_g0
1990s
Source: Prometheus Bound, lines 637–639 (tr. Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.23
Context: As there is a difference between works of nature and productions of human handicraft, so there is a difference between God's rule, providence, and intention in reference to all natural forces, and our rule, providence, and intention in reference to things which are the objects of our rule, providence, and intention. This lesson is the principal object of the whole Book of Job; it lays down this principle of faith, and recommends us to derive a proof from nature, that we should not fall into the error of imagining His knowledge to be similar to ours, or His intention, providence, and rule similar to ours. When we know this, we shall find everything that may befall us easy to bear; mishap will create no doubts in our hearts concerning God, whether He knows our affairs or not, whether He provides for us or abandons us. On the contrary, our fate will increase our love of God; as is said in the end of this prophecy: "Therefore I abhor myself and repent concerning the dust and ashes" (xlii. 6); and as our Sages say: "The pious do everything out of love, and rejoice in their own afflictions." If you pay to my words the attention which this treatise demands, and examine all that is said in the Book of Job, all will be clear to you, and you will find that I have grasped and taken hold of the whole subject; nothing has been left unnoticed, except such portions as are only introduced because of the context and the whole plan of the allegory. I have explained this method several times in the course of this treatise.
“We must be prepared to pay the price for peace, or assuredly we shall pay the price of war.”
Special Message to the Congress on the Threat to the Freedom of Europe (1948)
Context: The recommendations I have made represent the most urgent steps toward securing the peace and preventing war. We must be ready to take every wise and necessary step to carry out this great purpose. This will require assistance to other nations. It will require an adequate and balanced military strength. We must be prepared to pay the price for peace, or assuredly we shall pay the price of war. We in the United States remain determined to seek peace by every possible means, a just and honorable basis for the settlement of international issues.
Civil-suit deposition against the Herring-Curtiss Company (1909), reported in The Dayton News (31 May 1912) http://home.dayton.lib.oh.us/archives/wbcollection/wbscrapbooks1/WBScrapbooks10079.html
Context: My brother and I became seriously interested in the problem of human flight in 1899... We knew that men had by common consent adopted human flight as the standard of impossibility. When a man said, “It can’t be done; a man might as well try to fly,” he was understood as expressing the final limit of impossibility. Our own growing belief that man might nevertheless learn to fly was based on the idea that while thousands of the most dissimilar body structures, such as insects, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals, were flying every day at pleasure, it was reasonable to suppose that man might also fly... We accordingly decided to write to the Smithsonian Institution and inquire for the best books relating to the subject.... Contrary to our previous impression, we found that men of the very highest standing in the profession of science and invention had attempted to solve the problem... But one by one, they had been compelled to confess themselves beaten, and had discontinued their efforts. In studying their failures we found many points of interest to us.
At that time there was no flying art in the proper sense of the word, but only a flying problem. Thousands of men had thought about flying machines and a few had even built machines which they called flying machines, but these were guilty of almost everything except flying. Thousands of pages had been written on the so-called science of flying, but for the most part the ideas set forth, like the designs for machines, were mere speculations and probably ninety per cent was false. Consequently those who tried to study the science of aerodynamics knew not what to believe and what not to believe. Things which seemed reasonable were often found to be untrue, and things which seemed unreasonable were sometimes true. Under this condition of affairs students were accustomed to pay little attention to things that they had not personally tested.
" Cargo Cult Science http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm", adapted from a 1974 Caltech commencement address; also published in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, p. 345
Context: All experiments in psychology are not of this [cargo cult] type, however. For example there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on — with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train rats to go to the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe they were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and still the rats could tell.He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go to the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell.Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-number-one experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat-running experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using — not what you think it's using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat-running.I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The next experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or of being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn't discover anything about rats. In fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science.
Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 2 : Struggle, CP 5.51
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)
Source: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 142.
Context: By willing endurance we cause suffering to pass. Evil becomes a spent force when we put up no resistance. By refusing to pay back the enemy with his own coin, and preferring to suffer without resistance, the Christian exhibits the sinfulness of contumely and insult. Violence stands condemned by its failure to evoke counter-violence.
2000s, Democratic National Convention speech (2008)
Context: And you know, what struck me when I first met Barack was that even though he had this funny name, even though he'd grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was so much like mine. He was raised by grandparents who were working-class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did. Like my family, they scrimped and saved so that he could have opportunities they never had themselves. And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them, and even if you don't agree with them.
“Walking on thin ice, I'm paying the price.
I'm throwing the dice in the air.”
"Walking On Thin Ice" on Season of Glass (1981) - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1DHm7p1sm4
Context: Walking on thin ice, I'm paying the price.
I'm throwing the dice in the air.
Why must we learn it the hard way
And play the game of life with your heart?
“To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply.”
Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter VIII, The Great Compromise, p. 90
Context: In numerous years following the war the Federal government ran a heavy surplus. It could not pay off it's debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply.
To Barack Obama, as quoted in The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006), Ch. 5
Context: I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I’d been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can’t run very fast. I’m not particularly strong. I’d probably end up as some wild animal’s dinner.
But I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing — and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1960s, American Power and the New Mandarins, 1969
Context: No less insidious is the cry for 'revolution,' at a time when not even the germs of new institutions exist, let alone the moral and political consciousness that could lead to a basic modification of social life. If there will be a 'revolution' in America today, it will no doubt be a move towards some variety of fascism. We must guard against the kind of revolutionary rhetoric that would have had Karl Marx burn down the British Museum because it was merely part of a repressive society. It would be criminal to overlook the serious flaws and inadequacies in our institutions, or to fail to utilize the substantial degree of freedom that most of us enjoy, within the framework of these flawed institutions, to modify them or even replace them by a better social order. One who pays some attention to history will not be surprised if those who cry most loudly that we must smash and destroy are later found among the administrators of some new system of repression.
Part V: More Rage. More Rage., page 191.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)
Context: One reason why our society has failed to curb bullying is that we like bullies. Hell, we are bullies. Research has shown that bullies are not the anti-social misfits that adults, in their forced amnesia, want them to be. Rather, bullies are usually the most popular boys, second only on the clique-ranking to those described as friendly, outgoing, and self-confident. The Santana High kids and parents both felt that there was no point in complaining to the administration because they wouldn't have done anything anyway, a reflection of the fact that popular winners are treated better than losers. At Columbine, parents and students both felt that bullies were favored by teachers and administrators, and that complainers were often ignored or blamed. Indeed, losers pay for being losers twice over in our schools, taking both the punishment and the blame.
Boston Massacre Oration (1774)
Context: Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves. Remember, my friends, from whom you sprang. Let not a meanness of spirit, unknown to those whom you boast of as your fathers, excite a thought to the dishonor of your mothers I conjure you, by all that is dear, by all that is honorable, by all that is sacred, not only that ye pray, but that ye act; that, if necessary, ye fight, and even die, for the prosperity of our Jerusalem. Break in sunder, with noble disdain, the bonds with which the Philistines have bound you. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed, by the soft arts of luxury and effeminacy, into the pit digged for your destruction. Despise the glare of wealth. That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue.
Statement broadcast to the United States and the Pacific Fleet, after ceremonies in Tokyo Bay accepting the official surrender of Japan (2 September 1945); a portion of this is engraved on the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Context: Today all freedom-loving peoples of the world rejoice in the victory and feel pride in the accomplishments of our combined forces. We also pay tribute to those who defended our freedom at the cost of their lives.
On Guam is a military cemetery in a green valley not far from my headquarters. The ordered rows of white crosses stand as reminders of the heavy cost we have paid for victory. On these crosses are the names of American soldiers, sailors and marines — Culpepper, Tomaino, Sweeney, Bromberg, Depew, Melloy, Ponziani — names that are a cross-section of democracy. They fought together as brothers in arms; they died together and now they sleep side by side. To them we have a solemn obligation — the obligation to insure that their sacrifice will help to make this a better and safer world in which to live. … Now we turn to the great tasks of reconstruction and restoration. I am confident that we will be able to apply the same skill, resourcefulness, and keen thinking to these problems as were applied to the problems of winning the victory.
Interview by Yifat Susskind, August 2001 http://www.madre.org/articles/chomsky-0801.html.
Quotes 2000s, 2001
Context: Take the Kyoto Protocol. Destruction of the environment is not only rational; it's exactly what you're taught to do in college. If you take an economics or a political science course, you're taught that humans are supposed to be rational wealth accumulators, each acting as an individual to maximize his own wealth in the market. The market is regarded as democratic because everybody has a vote. Of course, some have more votes than others because your votes depend on the number of dollars you have, but everybody participates and therefore it's called democratic. Well, suppose that we believe what we are taught. It follows that if there are dollars to be made, you destroy the environment. The reason is elementary. The people who are going to be harmed by this are your grandchildren, and they don't have any votes in the market. Their interests are worth zero. Anybody that pays attention to their grandchildren's interests is being irrational, because what you're supposed to do is maximize your own interests, measured by wealth, right now. Nothing else matters. So destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies, but within a framework of institutional lunacy. If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational.
“Simplicity is worth buying if we do not have to pay too great a loss of precision for it.”
Mathematical Methods in Science (1977), p.215
1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)
Context: The evidence of this is all about us, in our wealth, our educational facilities, our charities, our religious institutions, and in the moral influence which we exert on the world. Most of all, it is apparent in the unexampled place which is held by the people who toil. Our inhabitants are especially free to promote their own welfare. They are unburdened by militarism. They are not called upon to support any imperialistic designs. Every mother can rest in the assurance that her children will find here a land of devotion, prosperity and peace. The tall shaft near which we are gathered and yonder stately memorial remind us that our standards of manhood are revealed in the adoration which we pay to Washington and Lincoln. They are unrivaled and unsurpassed. Above all else, they are Americans. The institutions of our country stand justified both in reason and in experience. I am aware that they will continue to be assailed. But I know they will continue to stand. We may perish, but they will endure. They are founded on the Rock of Ages.
Direct Action (1912)
Context: The Puritans had accused the Quakers of "troubling the world by preaching peace to it." They refused to pay church taxes; they refused to bear arms; they refused to swear allegiance to any government. (In so doing they were direct actionists, what we may call negative direct actionists.) So the Puritans, being political actionists, passed laws to keep them out, to deport, to fine, to imprison, to mutilate, and finally, to hang them. And the Quakers just kept on coming (which was positive direct action); and history records that after the hanging of four Quakers, and the flogging of Margaret Brewster at the cart's tail through the streets of Boston, "the Puritans gave up trying to silence the new missionaries"; that "Quaker persistence and Quaker non-resistance had won the day."
1930s, Fireside Chat in the night before signing the Fair Labor Standards (1938)
Context: Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employees over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company's undistributed reserves, tell you – using his stockholders’ money to pay the postage for his personal opinions — tell you that a wage of $11.00 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry. Fortunately for business as a whole, and therefore for the Nation, that type of executive is a rarity with whom most business executives heartily disagree.
Summation for the Prosecution, July 26, 1946
Quotes from the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946)
Context: These men saw no evil, spoke none, and none was uttered in their presence. This claim might sound very plausible if made by one defendant. But when we put all their stories together, the impression which emerges of the Third Reich, which was to last a thousand years, is ludicrous. If we combine only the stories of the front bench, this is the ridiculous composite picture of Hitler's Government that emerges. It was composed of:
A No. 2 man who knew nothing of the excesses of the Gestapo which he created, and never suspected the Jewish extermination programme although he was the signer of over a score of decrees which instituted the persecution of that race;
A No. 3 man who was merely an innocent middleman transmitting Hitler's orders without even reading them, like a postman or delivery boy;
A Foreign Minister who knew little of foreign affairs and nothing of foreign policy;
A Field-Marshal who issued orders to the armed forces but had no idea of the results they would have in practice …
… This may seem like a fantastic exaggeration, but this is what you would actually be obliged to conclude if you were to acquit these defendants.
They do protest too much. They deny knowing what was common knowledge. They deny knowing plans and programmes that were as public as Mein Kampf and the Party programme. They deny even knowing the contents of documents which they received and acted upon. … The defendants have been unanimous, when pressed, in shifting the blame on other men, sometimes on one and sometimes on another. But the names they have repeatedly picked are Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels, and Bormann. All of these are dead or missing. No matter how hard we have pressed the defendants on the stand, they have never pointed the finger at a living man as guilty. It is a temptation to ponder the wondrous workings of a fate which has left only the guilty dead and only the innocent alive. It is almost too remarkable.
The chief villain on whom blame is placed — some of the defendants vie with each other in producing appropriate epithets — is Hitler. He is the man at whom nearly every defendant has pointed an accusing finger.
I shall not dissent from this consensus, nor do I deny that all these dead and missing men shared the guilt. In crimes so reprehensible that degrees of guilt have lost their significance they may have played the most evil parts. But their guilt cannot exculpate the defendants. Hitler did not carry all responsibility to the grave with him. All the guilt is not wrapped in Himmler's shroud. It was these dead men whom these living chose to be their partners in this great conspiratorial brotherhood, and the crimes that they did together they must pay for one by one.
The bolded section is often incorrectly reported as "The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish".
78 U.S. 94-95
Judicial opinions, United States v. Ballard (1944)
“I didn’t hire you to come here and lie! That’s a true note. I signed it. I’ll pay it.…”
Courtroom exclamation to his lawyer, who had begun to deny that Allen's signature on a document was genuine, as quoted in "In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!" - American Heritage magazine Vol. 14, Issue 6 (October 1963)
Context: I didn’t hire you to come here and lie! That’s a true note. I signed it. I’ll pay it.… What I employed you for was to get this business put over to the next court — not come here and lie and juggle about it!
"Edward Albee : An Interview", in Edward Albee : Planned Wilderness (1980) edited by Patricia De La Fuente, p. 8
Context: I've noticed that there is not necessarily a great relationship between what the majority of critics have to say and what is actually true. Some of them are so busy trying to mold the public taste according to the limits of their perceptions, and others are so busy reflecting what they consider to be the public taste — that view limited again by their perception. You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid — but most people don't take the trouble.
GWU interview (1997)
Context: You know, you have to really decide where you want to live: if you want to live in the jungle or in the zoo. Because if you want the beauty, if you want freedom, the jungle is... that's your world. But you're in danger there, you have to live with snakes, sharks, tigers, skunks, you know, mosquitoes, leeches. You want to be safe, you have to live in the zoo. You are protected. You know, if you are a lamb, the tiger will not attack you. You know, you'll get a little bit something to eat every day; that's fine. You have to work hard, but you live behind the bars, and what's wonderful — you live there behind the bars and you dream about the beauty of the jungle. Now what happened was that the bars opened, and everybody runs after the dream. And suddenly, well, yeah, it's beautiful — yes, I am free to go wherever I want, do whatever I want, but where do I want to go? Oh, my God, and here is a tiger and here's a snake. Oh, oh, and people have a tendency to, you know, back. And you will be surprised how many people prefer to live in the zoo; they are not ready to pay for the freedom; they think that freedom should be, you know, for free, even for granted, which never is, never is.
Reported in Eugene Gerhart, America's Advocate: Robert H. Jackson (1958), p. 289
Vol. I : The Dedication (March 1772)
Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion (1772–1774)
Context: Respect a parliamentary king, and chearfully pay all parliamentary taxes; but have nothing to do with a parliamentary religion, or a parliamentary God.
Religious rights, and religious liberty, are things of inestimable value. For these have many of our ancestors suffered and died; and shall we, in the sunshine of prosperity, desert that glorious cause, from which no storms of adversity or persecution could make them swerve? Let us consider if as a duty of the first rank with respect to moral obligation, to transmit to our posterity, and provide, as far as we can, for transmitting, unimpaired, to the latest generations, that generous zeal for religion and liberty, which makes the memory of our forefathers so truly illustrious.
Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)
Saying 15
Râmakrishna : His Life and Sayings (1898)
Context: The Master said: "Everything that exists is God." The pupil understood it literally, but not in the true spirit. While he was passing through a street, he met with an elephant. The driver (mahut) shouted aloud from his high place, "Move away, move away!" The pupil argued in his mind, "Why should I move away? I am God, so is the elephant also God. What fear has God of Himself?" Thinking thus he did not move. At last the elephant took him up by his trunk, and dashed him aside. He was severely hurt, and going back to his Master, he related the whole adventure. The Master said, "All right, you are God. The elephant is God also, but God in the shape of the elephant-driver was warning you also from above. Why did you not pay heed to his warnings?"
“We pay for it by losing all or many of the values we have set out to defend.”
Section 73
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice
Context: ... though hatred is a convenient instrument for mobilizing a community for defense, it does not, in the long run, come cheap. We pay for it by losing all or many of the values we have set out to defend.
Commenting on Henry Ford's currency plan in ”Ford sees wealth in Muscle Shoals”, New York Times (6 December 1921), p. 6 http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30E11F63B5A1B7A93C4A91789D95F458285F9.
Context: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. … It is absurd to say our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people.
Free the Airwaves! (2002)
Context: The battle for the airwaves cannot be limited to only those who have the bank accounts to pay for the battle and win it. Democracy is in danger. Seats in Congress, seats in the state legislature, that big seat in the White House itself, can be purchased by those who have the greatest campaign resources, who have the largest bank accounts or own riches.
That, I submit to you, is no democracy. It is an oligarchy of the already powerful. It is no less than a conspiracy of the powerful to deny access to government to those who literally cannot afford to run for public office with any realistic hope of getting elected.
“Keeping house is as unpleasant and filthy as coal mining, and the pay's a lot worse.”
The Bachelor Home Companion (1986)
"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.
Context: These “worldly” people have cleared the forests, plowed the land, built the cities, the steamships, the telegraphs, and have produced all there is of worth and wonder in the world. Yet the preachers denounce them. Were it not for “worldly” people how would the preachers get along? Who would build the churches? Who would fill the contribution boxes and plates, and who (most serious of all questions) would pay the salaries?
Sex Slavery (1890)
Context: This, then, is the tyranny of the State; it denies, to both woman and man, the right to earn a living, and grants it as a privilege to a favored few who for that favor must pay ninety per cent toll to the granters of it. These two things, the mind domination of the Church, and the body domination of the State are the causes of sex slavery.
To My People (July 4, 1973)
Context: we who rip off billions of dollars every year through tax evasions, illegal price fixing, embezzlement, consumer fraud, bribes, kickbacks, and swindles. They call us bandits, yet every time most Black people pick up our paychecks we are being robbed. Every time we walk into a store in our neighborhood we are being held up. And every time we pay our rent the landlord sticks a gun into our ribs.
Johnny Got His Gun (1938)
Context: Just say "mister I'm sorry, I got no time to die, I'm too busy" and then turn and run like hell. If they say coward why don't pay any attention because it's your job to live not to die. If they talk about dying for principles that are bigger than life, you say "mister you're a liar. Nothing is bigger than life". There's nothing noble in death. What's noble about lying in the ground and rotting? What's noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What's noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What's noble about being an idiot? What's noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What's noble about being dead? Because when you're dead, mister, it's all over. It's the end. You're less than a dog, less than a rat, less than a bee or an ant, less than a white maggot crawling around on a dungheap. You're dead, mister, and you died for nothing.
“Good work deserves fair pay, no matter who you are.”
Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Orlando, Florida (September 21, 2016)
Context: We’re going to focus on jobs and incomes. I’m going to fight to give more Americans with disabilities the chance to work alongside those without disabilities and do the same jobs for the same pay and benefits. People with disabilities shouldn’t be isolated. They should be given the chance to work with everyone else. And we’re going to eliminate the subminimum wage, which is a vestige from an ugly, ignorant past. Good work deserves fair pay, no matter who you are. Second, we’re going to work with our colleges and universities to make them more accessible to students with disabilities. To have a truly inclusive economy, we need a truly inclusive education system. So let’s raise our standards.... Third, we’re going to partner with businesses and other stakeholders to ensure those living with a disability can get hired and stay hired.... Fourth, let’s build on the success of the Americans with Disabilities Act by finally ratifying the United Nations. It has the strong backing of leaders across the political spectrum, and it’s a chance to show American values and American leadership.
2010s, Trends in South Korea’s Nationalist-Left Discourse (June 2018)
Context: Moon camp: You can talk as loudly as you want, and the Americans won’t pay the slightest attention. Least of all Trump. As far as they’re concerned, the North Koreans are communists, and you’re liberal democrats.
“Since it gives me so much bliss
to give you everything I can
The more I pay you, the more I owe.”
Quoted by Elizabeth Bishop in the dedication of Questions of Travel (1965) to Lota de Macedo Soares, her Brazilian lover.
Lyric poetry, Não pode tirar-me as esperanças, Quem vê, Senhora, claro e manifesto
People's Education interview (2007)
Context: Pay attention to your students. Hear what they say, try to find out what their capacities are, what make sense to them. Adapt what you are doing and saying to those capacities, but make your students stretch upward. I think the trick is to adapt to the level of a student, but never rest on that level — always make them reach out. … If a student does not quite get it the first time, he or she will come back and get it later. If you don’t set your writing — and teaching — at a level that makes them stretch, they are never going to develop their intellectual muscle.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Democritus Junior to the Reader
Hansard, HC 6Ser vol 191 col 413 (16 May 1991) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199091/cmhansrd/1991-05-16/Orals-1.html.
“An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not.”
Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.
"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC30/Berry.htm in Farming: A Hand Book (1970).
Poems
Context: Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Part III: La Clé des Chants (p. 93)
The Unquiet Grave (1944)
Context: Flaubert spoke true: to succeed a great artist must have both character and fanaticism and few in this country are willing to pay the price. Our writers have either no personality and therefore no style or a false personality and therefore a bad style; they mistake prejudice for energy and accept the sensation of material well-being as a system of thought.
SALON Interview (1995)
Context: I've long thought about how life is influenced by death, how it influences what you believe in and what you look for. Yes, I think I was pushed in a way to write this book by certain spirits — the yin people — in my life. They've always been there, I wouldn't say to help, but to kick me in the ass to write.... Yin people is the term Kwan uses, because "ghosts" is politically incorrect. People have such terrible assumptions about ghosts — you know, phantoms that haunt you, that make you scared, that turn the house upside down. Yin people are not in our living presence but are around, and kind of guide you to insights. Like in Las Vegas when the bells go off, telling you you've hit the jackpot. Yin people ring the bells, saying, "Pay attention." And you say, "Oh, I see now." Yet I'm a fairly skeptical person. I'm educated, I'm reasonably sane, and I know that this subject is fodder for ridicule.... To write the book, I had to put that aside. As with any book. I go through the anxiety, "What will people think of me for writing something like this?" But ultimately, I have to write what I have to write about, including the question of life continuing beyond our ordinary senses.
“Cash Payment the sole nexus; and there are so many things which cash will not pay!”
Source: 1840s, Chartism (1840), Ch. 7, Not Laissez-Faire.
Context: Cash Payment the sole nexus; and there are so many things which cash will not pay! Cash is a great miracle; yet it has not all power in Heaven, nor even on Earth. 'Supply and demand' we will honour also; and yet how many 'demands' are there, entirely indispensable, which have to go elsewhere than to the shops, and produce quite other than cash, before they can get their supply? On the whole, what astonishing payments does cash make in this world!
"Intense Ornate" interview with Amazon.co.uk (1999)
Context: I went to college to study drama where I discovered I had no talent and after a period of dropping out majored in cultural anthropology which of course meant more masks and dancing … I studied what interested me and so I had to become a writer because my education had left me unsuited for a decent well-paying job.
“Let every man who fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in”
1810s, Letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval) (1816)
Context: The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management. Try by this, as a tally, every provision of our constitution, and see if it hangs directly on the will of the people. Reduce your legislature to a convenient number for full, but orderly discussion. Let every man who fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in their election.
“And the food for the soul passes, candid and free, without paying tribute to the customs.”
Source: Platero and I (1917), Ch. 2 : White Butterflies, as translated by Eloïse Roach (1957).
Context: The man wants to stick his iron pick in the little basket, and I do not prevent him. I open the knapsack, and he sees nothing in it. And the food for the soul passes, candid and free, without paying tribute to the customs.
“There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.”
Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 21
Context: Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some supposed cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to draw the exact line of demarcation few will undertake tho' for a fee some professional experts will. There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.
Speaking at a political fundraiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York, as quoted in Henry Goldman, "Buffett, at Clinton Fund-Raiser, Says Congress Favors the Rich" in Bloomberg (27 June 2007) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aks_E_vUEip8
Context: The 400 of us pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you're in the luckiest 1 percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent.
“Inside me I'm screaming, nobody pays any attention.”
Johnny Got His Gun (1938)
Context: Inside me I'm screaming, nobody pays any attention. If I had arms, I could kill myself. If I had legs, I could run away. If I had a voice, I could talk and be some kind of company for myself. I could yell for help, but nobody would help me.
1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress
Context: Military and economic assistance has been a heavy burden on our citizens for a long time, and I recognize the strong pressures against it; but this battle is far from over, it is reaching a crucial stage, and I believe we should participate in it. We cannot merely state our opposition to totalitarian advance without paying the price of helping those now under the greatest pressure. We cannot merely state our opposition to totalitarian advance without paying the price of helping those now under the greatest pressure.
XVI. Concerning sacrifices and other worships, that we benefit man by them, but not the Gods.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
“People will pay more to be entertained than educated.”
“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. ”
“Life is full of regrets, but it doesn't pay to look back.”
