Quotes about year
page 65

Milton Berle photo

“I'm 83, and I feel like a 20-year-old, but unfortunately there's never one around.”

Milton Berle (1908–2002) American comedian and actor

Interview for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Assata Shakur photo
June Vincent photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Simon Stevin photo

“Many of the most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they happen. … Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”

Richard C. Lewontin (1929) American evolutionary biologist

" Billions and Billions of Demons http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jan/09/billions-and-billions-of-demons/" in: The New York Review of Books, 9 January 1997, p. 31
Review of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
Quote often taken out of context, see Lewontin on materialism http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/Lewontin_on_materialism on evolutionwiki.org, and for example this example http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102006325?q=Lewontin&p=par at Watchtower Online Library.

Joseph Stella photo
Steve Jobs photo

“[Miele] really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers. I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

On design excellence, in WIRED magazine (February 1996)
1990s

Warren Buffett photo

“If you invested in a very low cost index fund — where you don’t put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years — you’ll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting (2004), as quoted at The Buffett http://www.thebuffett.com/quotes.html

Glen Cook photo

“He had learned self-control in a hard school. He had been married for thirty years.”

Source: The Silver Spike (1989), Chapter 26 (p. 528)

Mia Love photo
Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
Allen West (politician) photo

“The first thing you’ve got to do is study and understand what we’re up against. You must realize that this is not a religion that you’re fighting against. You’re fighting against a theo-political belief system and construct. You’re fighting against something that’s been doing this thing since 622 AD - 7th century - 1,388 years. You want to dig up Charles Martel and ask him why he was fighting the Muslim army at the Battle of Tours in 732? You want to ask the Venetian fleet at LePonto why they were fighting a Muslim fleet in 1571? You want to ask the Christian – I mean the Germanic and Austrian – knights why they were fighting at the gates of Vienna in 1683? You want to ask people what happened at Constantinople and why today it’s called Istanbul? Because they lost that fight in 1453. You need to get into the Qur'an, you need to understand their precepts, you need to read the Sunnah, you need to read the Hadith and then you can really understand this is not a perversion: They are doing exactly what this book says. I want to close by saying this, and I think we’ve said this all through this morning so far: Until we get principled leadership in the United States that is willing to say that, we will continue to chase our tail, because we will never clearly define who this enemy is and then understand their goals and objectives - which is on any jihadist website - and then come up with the right and proper goals and objectives to not only secure our republic, but to secure western civilization.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

Response to question: Why would [Islamist terrorists] warp a religion to justify attacking the United States. [Hudson Institute, Reclaim American Liberty Conference, January 13, 2010, http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=hudson_upcoming_events&id=741, March 22, 2011]
2010s

Edsger W. Dijkstra photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Sarah Palin photo

“Then say–how come the years to seem so swift,
The days, the days so slow?”

Jan Struther (1901–1953) British writer

A PARADOX, BETSINDA DANCES AND OTHER POEMS

Daniel Kahneman photo

“As you know I have been preaching along with El Duce and Sickie Wifebeater for many years against homosexuality in rock and it's time to take revenge on people that try to stop rock. The real rock, hetero rock. There for Bowie is going on trial within Rock Kourt.”

Steve Broy (1958) American musician

Mentors Heathen Scum Rock Kourt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWg1EuUPmrk by Dr. Heathen Scum at Dr. Heathen Scum's channel http://www.youtube.com/user/sbroy at YouTube

“Like our sauce — we harvest a whole crop of organic tomatoes — 10 tons of tomatoes every year. Can them all, store them in the basement, have like a harvest party when it gets loaded in.”

James Alefantis American chef and restaurateur

2015 interview http://www.metroweekly.com/2015/04/from-scratch-james-alefantis/

“Now there was one of these Essens, whose name was Manahem, who had this testimony, that he not only conducted his life after an excellent manner, but had the foreknowledge of future events given him by God also. This man once saw Herod when he was a child, and going to school, and saluted him as king of the Jews; but he, thinking that either he did not know him, or that he was in jest, put him in mind that he was but a private man; but Manahem smiled to himself, and clapped him on his backside with his hand, and said," However that be, thou wilt be king, and wilt begin thy reign happily, for God finds thee worthy of it. And do thou remember the blows that Manahem hath given thee, as being a signal of the change of thy fortune. And truly this will be the best reasoning for thee, that thou love justice [towards men], and piety towards God, and clemency towards thy citizens; yet do I know how thy whole conduct will be, that thou wilt not be such a one, for thou wilt excel all men in happiness, and obtain an everlasting reputation, but wilt forget piety and righteousness; and these crimes will not be concealed from God, at the conclusion of thy life, when thou wilt find that he will be mindful of them, and punish time for them." Now at that time Herod did not at all attend to what Manahem said, as having no hopes of such advancement; but a little afterward, when he was so fortunate as to be advanced to the dignity of king, and was in the height of his dominion, he sent for Manahem, and asked him how long he should reign. Manahem did not tell him the full length of his reign; wherefore, upon that silence of his, he asked him further, whether he should reign ten years or not? He replied, "Yes, twenty, nay, thirty years;" but did not assign the just determinate limit of his reign. Herod was satisfied with these replies, and gave Manahem his hand, and dismissed him; and from that time he continued to honor all the Essens. We have thought it proper to relate these facts to our readers, how strange soever they be, and to declare what hath happened among us, because many of these Essens have, by their excellent virtue, been thought worthy of this knowledge of Divine revelations.”

AJ 15.11.4-5
Antiquities of the Jews

Elvis Costello photo
John Constable photo

“And however one's mind may be elevated, and kept us to what is excellent, by the works of the Great Masters — still Nature is the fountain's head, the source from whence all originally must spring — and should an artist continue his practice without referring to nature he must soon form a manner, & be reduced to the same deplorable situation as the French painter mentioned by Sir J. Reynolds, who told him that he had long ceased to look at nature for she only put him out.For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind — but have neither endeavoured to make my performances look as if really executed by other men….. There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth.I am come to a determination to make no idle visits this summer, nor to give up my time to common-place people. I shall return to Bergholt, where I shall make some laborious studies from nature — and I shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

3 quotes in Constable's letter to John Dunthorne (29 May 1802), from John Constable's Correspondence, ed. R.B. Beckett (Ipswich, Suffolk Records Society, 1962-1970), part 2, pp. 31-32
1800s - 1810s

Gudrun Ensslin photo

“If we made a mistake, then we made a mistake (I don't see it myself); after all, what's been missing in the European fight for socialism over the last 100 years, is the element of 'madness”

Gudrun Ensslin (1940–1977) German terrorist

Letter to Baader in The element of madness, July 12, 2009, Perlentaucher Medien GmbH, February 22, 2010 http://www.signandsight.com/features/1964.html,

Herbert Spencer photo
Robert Crumb photo
Bukola Saraki photo
Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet photo
Mark Ames photo
Makoto Shinkai photo

“If I had been born 10 years earlier, I don’t think I would be an animator.”

Makoto Shinkai (1973) Japanese anime director and former graphic designer

About Your Name

H.L. Mencken photo

“Wealth — Any income that is at least $100 more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Kumar Sangakkara photo

“He is an extremely messy person, the messiest on earth. But he loves to cook and absolutely loves making pasta at home. We never discussed cricket at home and always made sure there was life away from the sport at home. Conversations revolved around kids and made sure there was life beyond the sport. Kumar is a very relaxed, open sort of person. He has never demanded much. (But) He will have to get used to our routine now. He will of course still play some cricket for a year or two.”

Kumar Sangakkara (1977) Sri Lankan cricketer

Kumar's wife, Yehali Sangakkara, quoted on sports.ndtv, "Kumar Sangakkara is Extremely Messy, Would Love to Have Him at Home Now: Yehali Sangakkara" http://sports.ndtv.com/sri-lanka-vs-india-2015/news/247313-kumar-sangakkara-is-extremely-messy-would-love-to-have-him-at-home-now-yehali-sangakkara, August 21, 2015.
About

River Phoenix photo
Ron White photo

“She got convinced in her crazy head that I had sex with this girl in Columbus, Ohio…and I did, and I'll tell you why. When you enter into a monogamous relationship with somebody, you usually do it at a point in the relationship when you're having a lot of sex. So you're willing to sign the papers. "I'll only have sex with you, ever-ever-ever…ever." Well, if that person stops having sex altogether… why, you find yourself in quite a pickle. I'm a pretty good dog, but if you don't pet me every once in awhile, it's hard to keep me under the porch. I'm not as flexible as real dog. And I'll tell you what happened, too. I was in Columbus, Ohio, and I haven't been laid in three months. Three months! You can't go three months without having sex with me. I'll go have sex with somebody else. I know, I've seen me do it. I did a show one night. I came offstage, there's gorgeous woman, maybe 35, 40 years old, long black dress, slit up to her waist, GORGEOUS. Gimme a second. Just…And I walk off stage, she goes, "I thought you were hilarious. I wanna buy you a drink." I'm like, "I can't do that, I'm married." And she says, "I didn't ask if you wanna have sex, big boy. I asked if you wanna have a drink at my place."…Alright. Now, you know of that little guy that sits on your shoulder and reminds you of your prior commitments and your moral fortitude? I didn't hear a peep out of that guy. He hadn't been laid in 3 months either. He was speechless for like 20 minutes then he was like, "Suck her titty!"…"I was gonna!" I was having a 3-way with my conscience. Soon as the whole thing's over, he's back at his post, saying, "That was wrong, mister!" "Hey! 15 minutes ago, you were beating off on my shoulder, monkey boy!"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

I hate him. He smokes pot. He burned a hole in my other jacket.
They Call Me Tater Salad

Peter Jennings photo
Paul Weller (singer) photo

“If the story of my early years with Russ sound like they were years of battle, then the sound is correct.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

C. West Churchman (1990, p. 130) cited in: Magnus Ramage, Karen Shipp (2009) Systems Thinkers. p. 140
1980s and later

Tao Yuanming photo

“White hair covers my temples,
I am wrinkled and gnarled beyond repair,
And though I have got five sons,
They all hate paper and brush.
A-shu is eighteen:
For laziness there is none like him.
A-hsuan does his best,
But really loathes the Fine Arts.
Yung and Tuan are thirteen,
But do not know "six" from "seven."
T'ung-tzu in his ninth year
Is only concerned with things to eat.
If Heaven treats me like this,
What can I do but fill my cup?”

Tao Yuanming (365–427) Chinese poet

白发被双鬓,
肌肤不复实/虽有五男儿,
总不好纸笔/阿舒已二八,
懒惰固无匹/阿宣行治学,
而不爱文术 /雍端年十三 ,
不识六与七/通子垂九龄,
但觅梨与栗/天运够如此,
且进杯中物
"Blaming Sons" (An apology for his own drunkenness, A.D. 406)
Translated by Yuanchong Xu, in Gems of Classical Chinese Poetry in Various English Translations (1988), p. 100
Variant translations:
White hair covers my temples—
My flesh is no longer firm,
And though I have five sons
Not one cares for brush and paper.
Ah-shu is sixteen years of age;
For laziness he surely has no equal.
Ah-hsuan tries his best to learn
But does not really love the arts.
Yung and Tuan at thirteen years
Can hardly distinguish six from seven;
T'ung-tzu with nine years behind him
Does nothing but hunt for pears and chestnuts.
If such was Heaven's decree
In spite of all that I could do,
Bring on, bring on
"the thing within the cup."
William Acker, T'ao the Hermit: Sixty Poems by T'ao Ch'ien (1952), p. 89
My temples are grey, my muscles no longer full.
Five sons have I, and none of them likes school.
Ah-shu is sixteen and as lazy as lazy can be.
Ah-hsuan is fifteen and no taste for reading has he.
Thirteen are Yung and Tuan, yet they can't tell six from seven.
A-tung wants only pears and chestnuts—in two years he'll be eleven.
Then, come! let me empty this cup, if such be the will of Heaven.
Lin Yutang, My Country and My People (1935), p. 68

John Bright photo

“The Corn Law is as great a robbery of the man who follows the plough as it is of him who minds the loom…If there be one view of the question which stimulates me to harder work in this cause than another, it is the fearful sufferings which I know to exist amongst the rural laborers in almost every part of this kingdom…And then a fat and sleek dean, a dignitary of the Church and a great philosopher, recommends for the consumption of the people—he did not read a paper about the supplies that were to be had in the great valley of the Mississippi—but he said that there were swede, turnip and mangel-wurzel; and the Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, if to out-Herod Herod himself, recommends hot water and a pinch of curry-powder. The people of England have not, even under thirty years of Corn Law influence, been sunk so low as to submit tamely to this insult and wrong. It is enough that a law should be passed to make your toil valueless, to make your skill and labor unavailing to procure for you a fair supply of the common necessaries of life—but when to this grievous iniquity they add the insult of telling you to go, like beasts that perish, to mangel-wurzel, or to something which even the beasts themselves cannot eat, then I believe the people of England will rise, and with one voice proclaim the downfall of this odious system.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech at an Anti-Corn Law League meeting (summer 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 93-94.
1840s

Amir Taheri photo
Glen Cook photo
Dave Barry photo
Arun Shourie photo

“The press is a ready example of their efforts, and of the skills they have acquired in this field. They have taken care to steer their members and sympathizers into journalism. And within journalism, they have paid attention to even marginal niches. Consider books. A book by one of them has but to reach a paper, and suggestions of names of persons who would be specially suitable for reviewing it follow. As I mentioned, the editor who demurs, and is inclined to send the book to a person of a different hue is made to feel guilty, to feel that he is deliberately ensuring a biased, negative review. That selecting a person from their list may be ensuring a biased acclamation is talked out. The pressures of prevailing opinion are such, and editors so eager to evade avoidable trouble, that they swiftly select one of the recommended names…
You have only to scan the books pages of newspapers and magazines over the past fifty years to see what a decisive effect even this simple stratagem has had. Their persons were in vital positions in the publishing houses: and so their kind of books were the ones that got published. They then reviewed, and prescribed each other’s books. On the basis of these publications and reviews they were able to get each other positions in universities and the like…. Even positions in institutions which most of us would not even suspect exist were put to intense use. How many among us would know of an agency of government which determines bulk purchases of books for government and other libraries. But they do! So that if you scan the kinds of books this organization has been ordering over the years, you will find them to be almost exclusively the shades of red and pink….
So, their books are selected for publication. They review each other’s books. Reputations are thereby built. Posts are thereby garnered. A new generation of students is weaned wearing the same pair of spectacles – and that means yet another generation of persons in the media, yet another generation of civil servants, of teachers in universities….”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero photo

“Peace needs and takes time, it needs and takes caution, it needs and takes patience after 30 years of terrorism and violence.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

Presidential press release after ETA's 2006 ceasefire declaration, September 2006.
Sources: Efe Agency, PSOE PSOE http://www.psoe.es/ambito/saladeprensa/news/index.do?id=89659&action=View and the general press.
As President, 2006

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo

“I was born near a station. The first things that I saw in my life were the moving locomotives and trains, and I drew them as a three-year-old. Perhaps it is because of this that observations of movement are my impetus for my inspiration to create. Out of this I receive a creative experience of life, which is the source of creativity.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Kirchner had been inspired by movement and trains his whole life. He painted a. o. 'Nollendorfplatz' in West Berlin https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ernst_Ludwig_Kirchner_-_Nollendorfplatz.jpg - it was one of the stops on the first electrical tram (Straßenbahn) in 1896, according to 'Lexicon der Berliner Stadtentwicklung'. Berlin, 2002. The Underground (Untergrundbahn) followed in 1902, also with a stop at 'Nollendorfplatz'
undated
Source: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann; Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 17 (transl. Claire Albiez)

Andy Gray (footballer born 1955) photo

“My school was 17 years as a player and another 16 watching more games probably than any coach has - all over the world, all systems. I couldn't go to school and write it down for people who are far less experienced, telling me what to do and how to do it.”

Andy Gray (footballer born 1955) (1955) footballer, commentator

Andy on the experience he as gained over the years.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/sport/football.html?in_article_id=370173&in_page_id=1779&in_a_source=&ct=5

Scott McClellan photo

“The days wear out the months and the months wear out the years, and a flux of moments, like an unquiet tide, eats at the black coast of futurity.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 51, section 5 (p. 667)

Richard Rodríguez photo
William H. Starbuck photo
John Lewis (civil rights leader) photo

“It's bullshit, what the hell do they want me to do? The sport is going down. It's not even worth competing, because you do all the work for a year and you don't get what you deserve.”

Iris Kyle (1974) American bodybuilder

2004-01-01
Iris sees red.(Iris Kyle finishes second at Ms. Olympia)(Brief Article)
Flex
Internet
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-111506207.html
Sourced quotes, 2004

Tom Petty photo
John Maynard Keynes photo
Henry R. Towne photo

“I know that when I write, I'm writing for people who can handle high-school math, read at the Grade 12 level, and appreciate subtle humor as opposed to the toilet-bowl kind. I guess that makes the lower cutoff about 17-18 years old.”

Sean Punch (1967) Canadian editor

Steve Jackson Games Forums http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=536888&postcount=3
Answer to the question about which age group GURPS is aimed at

Charles Boarman photo
Kent Hovind photo

“I haven't filed a tax return in 30 years.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

As quoted by Seth Scheisel, "Your Own Affair, More (VCR) or Less (MP3)", New York Times, (Oct 2, 2003)

John Wallis photo
Mahendra Chaudhry photo

“The 18 years since 1987 brought us nothing but bad leadership and bad governance.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

Address to the conference of the Fiji Labour Party, Lautoka, 31 July 2005

Arshile Gorky photo
Dean Acheson photo
Michael Elmore-Meegan photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo

“You must remember what the concert of Europe is. The concert, or, as I prefer to call it, the inchoate federation of Europe, is a body which acts only when it is unanimous…remember this—that this federation of Europe is the embryo of the only possible structure of Europe which can save civilization from the desolating effects of a disastrous war. (Cheers.) You notice that on all sides the instruments of destruction, the piling up of arms, are becoming larger and larger. The powers of concentration are becoming greater, the instruments of death more active and more numerous, and are improved with every year; and each nation is bound, for its own safety's sake, to take part in this competition. These are the things which are done, so to speak, on the side of war. The one hope that we have to prevent this competition from ending in a terrible effort of mutual destruction which will be fatal to Christian civilization—the one hope we have is that the Powers may gradually be brought together, to act together in a friendly spirit on all questions of difference which may arise, until at last they shall be welded in some international constitution which shall give to the world, as a result of their great strength, a long spell of unfettered and prosperous trade and continued peace.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech at the Guildhall (9 November 1897), quoted in The Times (10 November 1897), p. 6
1890s

George Lincoln Rockwell photo
David Berg photo
Edmund Clarence Stedman photo
Fali Sam Nariman photo
Alan Kay photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
Ellen DeGeneres photo
Jiang Zemin photo

“We want to learn from the west about science and technology and how to manage the economy, but this must be combined with specific conditions here. That's how we have made great progress in the last twenty years.”

Jiang Zemin (1926) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

As quoted in "Jiang Zemin Talks With Wallace" https://web.archive.org/web/20140306052558/http://www.cbsnews.com/news/jiang-zemin-talks-with-wallace/ (August 2000), CBS.
2000s

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The Concept of Dread, by Soren Kierkegaard, appeared in 1844, first year of the commercial telegraph…It mentions the telegraph as a reason for dread and nowness or existenz.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1970s, Culture Is Our Business (1970)

John Stossel photo

“I'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse.”

John Stossel (1947) American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist

John Stossel: Not Afraid to Tell the Truth, Sigall, Ed, NewsMax, 2006-06-03, 2007-09-24 http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/6/2/91815.shtml?s=lh,

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi photo

“…If you see that I am wrong, advise me and put me on the right track, and obey me as long as I obey God in you… God gave your mujahedeen brothers victory after long years of jihad and patience… so they declared the caliphate and placed the caliph in charge. This is a duty on Muslims that has been lost for centuries…”

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (1971–2019) leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

As quoted in "Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi addresses Muslims in Mosul", The Telegraph (5 July 2014)
2014
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10948480/Islamic-State-leader-Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi-addresses-Muslims-in-Mosul.html

Benjamin Stanton photo

“That is the naked, undisguised proposition of the Democratic Party in the year of grace 1860.”

Benjamin Stanton (1809–1872) American politician

Speech (1860)

John Banville photo
Thomas Frank photo

“Derangement is the signature expression of the Great Backlash, a style of conservatism that first came snarling onto the national stage in response to the partying and protests of the late sixties. While earlier forms of conservatism emphasized fiscal sobriety, the backlash mobilizes voters with explosive social issues — summoning public outrage over everything from busing to un-Christian art — which it then marries to pro-business economic polices. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends. And it is these economic achievements — not the forgettable skirmishes of the never-ending culture wars — that are the movement’s greatest monuments. The backlash is what has made possible the international free-market consensus of recent years, with all the privatization, deregulation, and de-unionization that are its components. Backlash ensures that Republicans will continue to be returned to office even when their free-market miracles fail and their libertarian schemes don’t deliver and their "New Economy" collapses. It makes possible the police pushers’ fantasies of “globalization” and a free-trade empire that are foisted upon the rest of the world with such self-assurance. Because some artist decides to shock the hicks by dunking Jesus in urine, the entire plant must remake itself along the lines preferred by the Republican Party, U. S. A.The Great Backlash has made the laissez-faire revival possible, but this does not mean that it speak to us in the manner of the capitalists of old, invoking the divine right of money or demanding that the lowly learn their place in the great chain of being. On the contrary; the backlash imagines itself as a foe of the elite, as the voice of the unfairly persecuted, as a righteous protest of the people on history’s receiving end. That is champions today control all three branches of government matters not a whit. That is greatest beneficiaries are the wealthiest people on the plant does not give it pause.”

Introduction: What's the Matter with America (pp. 5-6).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Walker Percy photo
Tanith Lee photo
Thomas Sowell photo
Ned Kelly photo
Mokshagundam Visveshvaraya photo
William L. Shirer photo
Kent Hovind photo
Eric Holder photo