text:
Sin City

Sin City is a 2005 neo-noir film about the violent denizens of Basin City.
 * Directed by Robert Rodriguez (Frank Miller is credited as Co-Director, and Quentin Tarantino as Special Guest Director). Based on Frank Miller's graphic novels of the same name.

Dwight

 * You shut the hell up, Jackie Boy. You're dead. I'm just imagining this, so shut the hell up.

 * Dozens of them, armed to the teeth. I'm outnumbered, outgunned... but the alley is crooked, dark, and very narrow. They can't surround me. Sometimes you can beat the odds by a careful choice of where to fight...Where to fight counts for a lot, but there's nothing like having your friends show up with lots of guns.

 * Most people think Marv is crazy. He just had the rotten luck of being born in the wrong century. He'd be right at home on some ancient battlefield swinging an axe into somebody's face. Or in a Roman arena, taking his sword to other gladiators like him. They would've tossed him girls like Nancy back then.

 * I'm Shellie's new boyfriend, and I'm out of my mind. If you so much as talk to her or even think her name, I'll cut you in ways that'll make you useless to a woman.

 * You made a big mistake yourself...you didn't flush.

 * A hardtop with a decent engine. And make sure it's got a big trunk.

 * It's time to prove to your friends that you're worth a damn. Sometimes that means dying, sometimes it means killing a whole lot of people.

 * I let him know I'm not fooling around.

 * She doesn't quite chop his head off. She makes a Pez dispenser out of him.

 * Sure, he's an asshole. Sure he's dead. Sure, I'm just imagining that he's talking. That doesn't stop the bastard from being absolutely right.

 * I don't have a chance in hell of outrunning this cop. Not in this heap. The only question left is whether I'm gonna kill him or not. Tough call. For all I know, he's an honest cop, regular guy. Working stiff with a mortgage, a wife and a pile of kids.

 * Little Miho, you're an angel, you're a saint, you're Mother Teresa, you're Elvis. You're God. And if you'd gotten here about ten minutes sooner, we'd still have Jackie-Boy's head.

 * The girls all know the score. No escape. No surrender. No mercy. We got to kill every last rat bastard one of them, every last one. Not for revenge. Not because they deserve it. not because it'll make the world a better place. We need a heap of bloody bodies so when the mob boss, Wallenquist, looks over his charts of profits and losses, he'll see what it cost him to mess with the girls of Old Town. The valkyrie at my side is shouting and laughing with the pure, hateful, bloodthirsty joy of the slaughter. And so am I. The fire, baby. It'll burn us both. There's no place in this world for our kind of fire. My warrior woman. My valkyrie. You'll always be mine. Always. And never.

 * Miho, I hope to hell ya left one of them alive enough to talk.

 * Just look at that trunk. We'll never fit them all in.

Hartigan

 * Hell of a way to end a partnership. Hell of a way to start my retirement.

 * [While police brutally try to blackmail him] This is just a price I promised myself I'd pay, now I'm paying it. You don't save a little girl's life and then turn around and throw her to the dogs. Not in my book you don't.. They want a confession? They won't get it.

 * I take his weapons away from him. Both of them.

 * Things go dark. I don't mind much. It's okay. She'll be safe. An old man dies. A little girl lives. Fair trade.

 * Skinny little Nancy Callaghan. She grew up. She filled out.

 * [after being shot several times] I'm doing fine, Bob. Never better...ready to kick your ass.

 * When it comes to reassuring a traumatized 19-year-old, I'm about as expert as a palsy victim doing brain surgery with a pipe wrench.

 * There's wrong and there's wrong and then there's this.

 * Let go of my coat, Bob.

 * This guy smells awful. Like bad food. Like a corpse left in a garbage dumpster in the middle of summer, he stinks so bad I want to throw up.

 * Just one hour to go. My last day on the job. Not my idea. Doctor's orders; heart condition. Angina, he calls it. I'm polishing my badge and getting myself used to the idea of saying goodbye to it. It and the thirty odd years of protecting and serving and...blood and terror and triumph it represents. I think about Eileen's slow smile, about the thick fat steaks she picked up from the butcher's today. I think about the one loose end I haven't tied up. A young girl who's out there, somewhere, helpless in the hands of a drooling lunatic.

 * [Last thoughts as he shoots himself] An old man dies, a young woman lives. Fair trade. I love you, Nancy.

Marv

 * You can scream now if you want.

 * [During his execution] Will you get a move on, I haven't got all night.

 * Lucille's my parole officer. She's a dyke, but God knows why. With that body of hers she could have any man she wants.

 * Aww, Jerks! They should've shot me in the head...and enough times to make sure. It's so stupid. Everybody knows what's coming but they go through the motions anyway, what a waste of time. Month's fall off the calandar while I breath and eat through tubes. Night after night I wait for someone to come and finish me off. After awhile I realize it's not going to be so easy as that. I'm on my feet for about ten minutes before the cops kick them out from under me. They don't ask me any questions. They just keep knocking the crap out of me and waving a confession in my face, and I keep spitting blood all over it and laughing at how many fresh copies they come up with. Then along comes this worm assistant district attorney who turns the recorder off and says if I don't sign their confession, they'll kill my mom. I break his arm in three places and I sign it. From then on, it's the circus everybody wants it to be. They nail me for the works. Not just the people I did kill but even Lucille and the girls that Roark and Kevin ate and even Goldie.

 * He never screams. Not even when the mutt's had its fill. Kevin's guts are lying all over the place and somehow the bastard is still alive, still staring at me. Not even when I grab the saw and finish the job, he never screams.

 * I've been framed for murder and the cops are in on it. But the real enemy, the son of a bitch who killed the angel lying next to me, he's out there somewhere, out of sight, the big missing piece that'll give me how and the why and a face and a name and a soul to send screaming into hell.

 * Guess when I shot you in the belly, I aimed a little too high. [Shoots him in the crotch]

 * The night is hot as hell. it's a lousy room in a lousy part of a lousy town. I'm staring at a goddess, she's telling me she wants me.  I'm not going to waste one more second wondering how I've gotten so lucky. She smells like angels ought to smell. The perfect woman. The goddess. Goldie.

 * She says her name is Goldie.

 * Walk down the right back alley in Sin City and you can find anything...

 * It's beautiful Goldie, it's just like I said it would be, only better And when his eyes go dead, the hell I sent him to must seem like heaven after what I've done to him.

 * That there is one damn fine coat you're wearin'. [repeated on several occasions]

 * I love hitmen. No matter what you do to them, you don't feel bad.

 * This is blood for blood, and by the gallons! This is the old days, the bad days, the all-or-nothing days!, they're back, there's no choices left, and i'm ready for war.

 * When I need to find something out, I just go out and find somebody that knows more than me, and I go and I ask them. Sometimes I ask pretty hard.

 * Worth dying for. [gunshot] Worth killing for. [gunshot] Worth going to hell for. [final gunshot] Amen. [said while shooting the priest in a church]

 * Modern cars — they all look like electric shavers.

 * When you got a condition, it's bad to forget your medicine.

 * I was pretty steamed about what he had done to Lucille, so I took my time with that son of a bitch. It wasn't until I showed him all of those pieces of himself that he gave me a name.

 * Patrick Henry Roark. A man of the cloth. Could've become president but chose to serve God, and along the way just happened to become one of the most powerful men in the state. He's brought down mayors and govenors like they were nothin'. Even made his rotten brother a US senator. And now here he's gonna die in the name of a dead hooker. More and more I like the sound of it.

 * Then it hits me like a kick in the nuts: What if I'm wrong? I've got a condition. I get confused sometimes. What if I've imagined all this? What if I've finally turned into what they've always said I'd turn into: A maniac? A psycho killer?
 * Can't kill a man unless you know for sure you ought to.

 * I know it's pretty damn weird to eat people.

 * I got 'em good for you, didn't I, Goldie?

 * [Last words] Is that the best you can do, you pansies?

 * Hell's waking up every goddamn day and not even knowing why you're here.

 * The cops- they're telling me too much. showing up before anybody but me and the killer could know there's been a murder. somebody paid good money for this frame. No reason at all to play it Quiet. No reason to play it anyway but my way.

 * Well, i'm gonna find that son of a bitch that killed you, and i'm gonna give him the hard Goodbye.

 * Dames! Sometimes all they got to do is let it out- and a few buckets later, you'd never know.

 * I don't know about you, but I'm having a ball.

Shellie

 * Jackie-Boy, it's a regular African love-fest in here. I got me all five starters and half the bench of the Basin City Blues keeping me company. You feel like taking them on?

 * Shut up and keep your hands to yourself or I'll cut your little pecker off!

 * Wish you coulda dropped by earlier, Jackie-Boy. You coulda met my new boyfriend. Coulda seen what a real man looks like.

Nancy

 * And here I thought you'd forgotten all about me. Me and my dumb letters.
 * Let me stay close. Nothing can happen to me when I'm with you. Please? Let me stay close.
 * It's always been you, Hartigan. All these years.
 * I didn't scream, Hartigan. Not once. I didn't scream

Jackie Boy

 * I know you're angry, baby. And I forgive you for that without you even asking me to.
 * It's one thing for you to play hard to get... but don't go trying to cut my nuts off.
 * I've had me one hell of a day. I've been beat up every time I turn around. But the day I get turned down by a hooker when I got good hard earned cash to pay her with... well, there's only so much a man can take.
 * [after getting slashed by Miho] Out of nowhere... without any reason!
 * This is a career-ending wound, whore!
 * Nobody ever really quits. A smoker's a smoker when the chips are down. And your chips are down.
 * You're makin' a big mistake, man... a big mistake.
 * Those hookers let you down!

Gail

 * I tied those knots — that's my specialty!
 * Yeesh.
 * He's dead. He's just too damn dumb to know it.
 * We got guns. We'll fight the cops, and the mob, and anybody who tries to move in on us. We'll go to war!
 * You stupid little bitch!
 * Your precious scrawny little neck.[said before tearing a piece of skin off Becky's neck with her teeth.]
 * My man will find a way. He always finds a way.

Becky

 * It's not a woman you need, it's a good night's sleep. You couldn't handle a woman in the state you're in.
 * Aw, sugar, you just gone and done the dumbest thing in your whole life.
 * I didn't have no choice. They were gonna hurt my mom.
 * You could've ripped my throat out, you crazy whore!

Burt Shlubb and Douglas Klump

 * Klump: It is inclement upon me to comment with marked displeasure on your rash impulsiveness in selecting such an eye-catching and impractical car to heist, Mr. Shlubb.

 * Shlubb: Protest though you might, Mr. Klump, you must nonetheless admit the phallic magistry of said Ferrari's performance. An engine of Cyclopean power throbs beneath this steel stallion's hood.

 * Klump: Irrelevant to said mission is the following query, which I now put forth to you. Wherein this most streamlined and trunkless of transports, boner-inspiring though it may be, wherein are we to reposit our recently deceased cargo?

 * Shlubb: A worthy concern. Neatly elucidated.

Others

 * Wendy: Kill him for me, Marv. Kill him good.

 * The Salesman: Turn the right corner in Sin City and you can find anything

 * The Salesman: Care for a smoke? [repeated line]

 * Brian: I coulda put a bullet in your ear just now, laddy, if I hadn't gone off and got me revolver all wet and useless.

 * Brian: Better come clean with ya now, sweetheart. That was an outright lie I was giving ya about my revolver.

 * Junior: You recognize my voice, Hartigan? You recognize my voice, you piece-of-shit cop? I look different, but I bet you can recognize my voice.

 * Senator Roark: Power don't come from a badge or a gun. Power comes from lying. Lying big and gettin' the whole damn world to play along with you. Once you've got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain't true, you've got 'em by the balls.

 * Senator Roark: Everyone would lie for me. Everyone who counts. Otherwise, their own lies — everything that runs Sin City — it all comes tumbling down like a pack of cards.

 * Cardinal Roark: When he came to me he was a tormented boy. Tormented by guilt. I tried to counsel him, but the eating, it filled him with white light. Tearful, he swore to me that he felt the touch of God Almighty. He didn't just eat their bodies. He ate their souls. And I joined in.

Dialogue

 * The Salesman: [voiceover] She shivers in the wind like the last leaf on a dying tree. I let her hear my footsteps, she only goes stiff for a moment.
 * The Salesman: Care for a smoke?"
 * The Customer: Sure, I'll take one. Are you as bored by that crowd as I am?
 * The Salesman: I didn't come here for the party, I came here for you. I've watched you for days, you're everything a man could ever want.  It's not just your face or your figure. It's your eyes, all the things I see in your eyes.
 * The Customer: What is it you see in my eyes?
 * The Salesman: I see a crazy calm. You're sick of running, you're ready to face what you have to face but you don't want to face it alone.
 * The Customer: No, I don't want to face it alone.
 * The Salesman: [voiceover] The wind rises electric. She's soft and warm and almost weightless.  Her perfume with sweet promise that brings tears to my eyes.  I tell her that everything will be alright.  That I'll save her from whatever she's running from and take her far far away.  I tell her I love her.  [gunshot]  The silencer makes a whisper of the gunshot.  I hold her close until she's gone. I'll never know what she was running from...  I'll cash her check in the morning.

 * Cardinal Roark: Will that bring you satisfaction, my son? Killing a helpless, old, fart?
 * Marv: Killing? No. No satisfaction. Everything up until the killing, well that'll be a gas.

 * Marv: I had a fight with some cops.
 * Lucille: Oh, that's lovely. You didn't happen to kill any of them, did you?
 * Marv: Not that I know of, but they know they been in a fight, that's for damn sure.

 * Gail: Those boys in that Chrysler are one mistake away from seeing what Miho can do, and she's been aching for some practice.
 * Dwight: [voiceover] She guides my glance upwards to the pixy perched on the roof's edge. Deadly little Miho.

 * Wendy: You sat there and took it... when you could've taken my gun away from me any time you wanted to...
 * Marv: Sure, but I thought I might be able to talk some sense into you. And I probably would've had to paste you one, and I don't hurt girls.

 * Marv: Wait a minute. Why'd she call you Wendy?
 * Wendy: Because that's my name, you ape. Goldie was my sister, my twin sister.
 * Marv: I guess she was the nice one.

 * Hartigan: Excuse me miss, I was wondering if you could help me. I'm looking for someone.
 * Shelley: Cold night like this, everyone is looking for someone, stranger.
 * Hartigan: It's not like that. Her name is Nancy.
 * Shellie: Eyes to the stage, pilgrim. She's just warming up.

 * Gail: Those four in the Chrysler, are they some of the barmaid's boyfriends?
 * Dwight: One of them thinks he is. I followed him here to make sure he didn't hurt any of the girls.
 * Gail: Us helpless little girls.

 * Marv: Hey, there is no settling down. This is blood for blood and by the gallons! It's the good old days! The bad days! The all-or-nothing days! They're back! There's no choices left and I'm ready for war.
 * Lucille: Prison was hell for you, Marv. It'll be life this time.
 * Marv: Hell is waking up every goddamn day and not even knowing why you're here. But I'm out now. It took someone who was kind to me, getting killed to do it. But I'm out and I know exactly what I got to do.

About

 * Robert Rodriguez: Mickey [Rourke] had this one piece of music he would play on the set to get him into the character of Marv. We couldn't use it in the movie because it was too expensive. It was a Johnny Cash song - it was actually a remake of a Nine Inch Nails song called Hurt. You play that song and if you listen to that song that's how he did Marv for all the voiceover. It would just help him to get into that place - that Marv place. We got some remarkable work from him just from playing that song. That's his time machine. His transport.
 * Q: Why did you think Elijah Wood would make such a convincing psycho?
 * Robert Rodriguez: I worked with him in The Faculty and he has these really piercing blue eyes that women love but that I always found quite creepy. I told him back then, "One day I will cast you as a psychopath," never thinking that it would actually come about. He was one of the first people to see my early tests for Sin City and said, "Oh, I would kill to be in that movie!" So when he said that...
 * Robert Rodriguez in "Robert Rodriguez Sin City Interview" by Stella Papamichael, BBC, (05/25/2005).

Cast

 * Mickey Rourke - Marv
 * Bruce Willis - John Hartigan
 * Clive Owen - Dwight McCarthy
 * Benicio del Toro - Det. Jack Rafferty ("Jackie-Boy")
 * Jessica Alba - Nancy Callahan
 * Nick Stahl - Yellow Bastard ("Junior")
 * Brittany Murphy - Shellie
 * Elijah Wood - Kevin
 * Jaime King - Goldie (and Wendy)
 * Carla Gugino - Lucille
 * Rosario Dawson - Gail
 * Powers Boothe - Senator Roark
 * Rutger Hauer - Cardinal Roark
 * Devon Aoki - Miho
 * Alexis Bledel - Becky
 * Michael Clarke Duncan - Manute
 * Josh Hartnett - the Salesman
 * Michael Madsen - Bob
 * Frank Miller - the Priest

Taglines

 * In a city, there is a shaky truce between those who rule the streets, and those who rule everything.
 * Walk down the right back alley in Sin City, and you can find anything.
 * There is no justice without sin.

title: Sin City


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Abraham Polonsky

Abraham Lincoln Polonsky (December 5, 1910 – October 26, 1999) was an American novelist, screenwriter and film director. In the late 1930s he joined the American Communist Party, and was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s.

Quotes

 * First of all, directing is an idea that you have of a total flow of images that are going on, which are incidentally actors, words, and objects in space. It's an idea you have of yourself, like the idea you have of your own personality which finds its best representation in the world in terms of specific flows of imaginary images. That's what directing is.
 * as quoted in Directing the Film, Ed Sherman, 1976.

 * It was a great pleasure to make a movie again. Nothing is better; perhaps revolution, but there you have to succeed and be right, dangers which never attach themselves to making movies, and dreaming.
 * as quoted in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson, page 689, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003, ISBN 0-375-41128-3.

 * What are you gonna do? Kill me? Everybody dies.
 * Body and Soul (1947).

 * What do you mean "gangsters"? It's business.
 * Force of Evil (1948).

 * Yeah, yeah, I know I got rid of the headache. Now I got cancer.
 * Odds Against Tomorrow (1959).

 * "What you doin' with such a big ol' dog in New York?" "Never had a wife."
 * Odds Against Tomorrow (1959).

 * Indians don't last in prison. They weren't born for it like the whites.
 * Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969).

About

 * Twenty-one years between first and second films is longer than any director should have to wait. The case of Polonsky is one of the most dismal hangovers from the McCarthy period.
 * David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, page 689, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003, ISBN 0-375-41128-3
 * Polonsky, along with Chaplin and Losey, remains one of the great casualties of the anti-Communist hysteria of the fifties.
 * Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968, E.P. Dutton & Co., 1968, ISBN 0-525-47227-4.

title: Abraham Polonsky


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Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol (Russian: Никола́й Васи́льевич Го́голь) (1 April 1809 – 4 March 1852) was a Ukrainian-born Russian writer, whose best known work is perhaps Dead Souls, seen by many as the first "modern" Russian novel.

Quotes

 * What a dreary world we live in, gentlemen.
 * How the Two Ivans Quarrelled (1835)

 * I am very fond of the modest manner of life of those solitary owners of remote villages, who in Little Russia are commonly called "old-fashioned," who are like tumbledown picturesque little houses, delightful in their simplicity and complete unlikeness to the new smooth buildings whose walls have not yet been discolored by the rain, whose roofs are not yet covered with green lichen, and whose porch does not display its bricks through the peeling stucco.
 * "Old World Landowners" (1835)

 * "Turn around, son! What a funny figure you are! Are those priests' cassocks you are wearing? And do they all go about like that at the academy?" With these words old Bulba greeted his two sons who had been studying at the Kiev college and had come home to their father.
 * "Taras Bulba" (1835)

 * And ruined is the Cossack! He is lost for all the chivalry of the Cossacks! He will see Zaporozhye no more; nor his father's farms, nor the church of God. Ukraine will see no more the bravest of the sons who undertook to defend her. Old Taras will tear the gray hair from his head and curse the day and hour when he begot such a son to shame him.
 * "Taras Bulba" (1835)

 * When the priest went in, he stopped short at the sight of this defamation of God's holy place, and dared not serve the requiem on such a spot. And so the church was left forever, with monsters stuck in the doors and windows, was overgrown with forest trees, roots, rough grass and wild thorns, and no one can now find the way to it.
 * "Viy" (1835)

 * In the course of reading he became more and more melancholy and finally became completely gloomy. When the reading was over he uttered in a voice full of sorrow: "Goodness, how sad is our Russia!"
 * On Alexander Pushkin in Four Letters Concerning Dead Souls (1843)

 * I shall laugh my bitter laugh.
 * Epitaph on Gogol's tombstone

 * ...it's not my job to preach a sermon. Art is anyhow a homily. My job is to speak in living images, not in arguments. I must exhibit life full-face, not discuss life.
 * A letter to Zhukovsky, January 1848, quoted in Sculpting in Time (p49) by Andrei Tarkovsky

Diary of a Madman (1835)
Note 1: The whole text of this short story the author attributes to Poprischin, a low-ranking civil servant gradually descending into madness.

Note 2: Quotes given as translated by Claud Field in The Mantle and Other Stories (1916 collection of Gogol's short stories)
 * Dogs are clever fellows; they know all about politics [...]
 * The year 2000: April 43rd.—To-day is a day of splendid triumph. Spain has a king; he has been found, and I am he.
 * Marchember 86. Between day and night.
 * No date. The day had no date.
 * [P]eople think that the human brain is in the head. Nothing of the sort; it is carried by the wind from the Caspian Sea.
 * To tell the truth, I often felt uneasy when I thought of the excessive brittleness and fragility of the moon. The moon is generally repaired in Hamburg, and very imperfectly. It is done by a lame cooper, an obvious blockhead who has no idea how to do it. He took waxed thread and olive-oil—hence that pungent smell over all the earth which compels people to hold their noses. And this makes the moon so fragile that no men can live on it, but only noses. Therefore we cannot see our noses, because they are on the moon.
 * All the world knows that France sneezes when England takes a pinch of snuff.
 * [Final lines] mother, mother, save your unhappy son! Let a tear fall on his aching head! See how they torture him! Press the poor orphan to your bosom! He has no rest in this world; they hunt him from place to place. Mother, mother, have pity on your sick child! And do you know that the Bey of Algiers has a wart under his nose?

The Inspector General (1836)

 * It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.
 * Epigraph

 * Of course, Alexander the Great was a hero, but why smash the chairs?
 * Epigraph; said of a history teacher who smashed a chair in his excitement when discussing the conqueror

 * The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities.
 * Act I, sc. i

 * I tell everyone very plainly that I take bribes, but what kind of bribes? Why, greyhound puppies. That's a totally different matter.
 * Act I, sc. i

 * The sergeant's widow told you a lie when she said I flogged her. I never flogged her. She flogged herself.
 * Act IV, sc. xv

 * What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourselves!
 * Act V, sc. viii

Dead Souls (1842)

 * The gentleman lolling back in the chaise was neither dashingly handsome nor yet unbearably ugly, neither too stout nor yet too thin; it could not be claimed he was old but he was no stripling, either. His arrival in the town created no stir and was not marked by anything out of the ordinary.
 * Chapter I
 * [Women's] boarding schools, as we know, hold the three principal subjects which constitute the basis of human virtue to be the French language (a thing indispensable to the happiness of married life), piano-playing (a thing wherewith to beguile a husband’s leisure moments), and that particular department of housewifery which is comprised in the knitting of purses and other “surprises.” Nevertheless changes and improvements have begun to take place, since things now are governed more by the personal inclinations and idiosyncracies of the keepers of such establishments. For instance, in some seminaries the regimen places piano-playing first, and the French language second, and then the above department of housewifery; while in other seminaries the knitting of “surprises” heads the list, and then the French language, and then the playing of pianos—so diverse are the systems in force!
 * Vol. 1, ch. 2

 * As it is so strangely ordained in this world, what is amusing will turn into being gloomy, if you stand too long before it, and then God knows what ideas may not stray into the mind... Why is it that even in moments of unthinking, careless gaiety a different and strange mood comes upon one?
 * Vol. I, ch. 3

 * There are people who exist in this world not like entities but like the speckles or spots on something.
 * Vol. I, ch. 5

 * And for a long time yet, led by some wondrous power, I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone.
 * Vol. I, ch. 7

 * Oh troika, winged troika, tell me who invented you? Surely, nowhere but among a nimble nation could you have been born in a country which has taken itself in earnest and has evenly spread far and wide over half of the globe, so that once you start counting the milestones you may count on till a speckled haze dances before your eyes... Rus, are you not similar in your headlong motion to one of those nimble troikas that none can overtake? The flying road turns into smoke under you, bridges thunder and pass, all fall back and is left behind!... And what does this awesome motion mean? What is the passing strange steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?... Rus, whither are you speeding to? Answer me. No answer. The middle bell trills out in a dream its liquid soliloquy; the roaring air is torn to pieces and becomes wind; all things on earth fly by and other nations and states gaze askance as they step aside and give her the right of way.
 * Vol. I, ch. 11

 * Rus! Rus! I see you, from my lovely enchanted remoteness I see you: a country of dinginess, and bleakness and dispersal; no arrogant wonders of nature crowned by the arrogant wonders of art appear within you to delight or terrify the eyes... So what is the incomprehensible secret force driving me towards you? Why do I constantly hear the echo of your mournful song as it is carried from the sea through your entire expanse?... And since you are without end yourself, is it not within you that a boundless thought will be born?
 * Vol. II, ch. 2

 * Why are you being so stingy?", Sobakevich demanded. "It's cheap at the price. A rogue would cheat you, sell you some worthless rubbish instead of souls, but mine are as juicy as ripe nuts, all picked—they are all either craftsmen or sturdy peasants.

 * there is no word so perk and quick, which bursts from the heart with such spontaneity, which seethes and bubbles with such vitality, as the aptly spoken Russian word
 * Chapter V

 * The reason why Proshka wore such large boots can be explained at once: Plyushkin kept only one pair of boots for all of his servants, however numerous they were, and they always stood in the hall.
 * Chapter VI

 * They insist that an author should write in the strictest, purest and noblest language: in short, they expect the Russian language to drop from the clouds, already refined, and that it should come naturally to the lips, so that all they have to do is to open their mouth and stick out their tongue. It goes without saying, of course, that the feminine half of the human species is very wise; but it must be confessed that our respected readers are even wiser.

 * Apparently that does sometimes happen. Apparently even men like Chichikov are transformed into poets for a few moments in their lives: though the word "poet" would be an exaggeration here.
 * Chapter VIII

 * Among a number of intelligent suggestions there was finally this one too, strange as it may seem, that Chichikov might be Napoleon in disguise...
 * Chapter X

 * However, nothing turned out as Tchitchikoff had intended.

 * Russia! Russia! I see you now, from my wondrous, beautiful past I behold you! How wretched, dispersed, and uncomfortable everything is about you...

 * Russia, are you not speeding along like a fiery and matchless troika?
 * Chapter XI

Quotes about Gogol

 * Homeland, tenderer than first caresses,/you have taught me to protect and guard/golden language in all Pushkin's treasures,/Gogol's magic, captivating word.
 * Margarita Aliger poem translated into English, anthologized in An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature edited by Maxim D. Shrayer (2007)

 * I belong to the first generation of Latin American writers brought up reading other Latin American writers...Many Russian novelists influenced me as well: Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Nabokov, Gogol, and Bulgarov.
 * Isabel Allende Interview

title: Nikolai Gogol


text:
User:131.247.240.221

The static IP of User:TheCustomOfLife.

title: User:131.247.240.221


text:
Norman Vincent Peale

Norman Vincent Peale (31 May 1898 – 24 December 1993) was the author of The Power of Positive Thinking and chief progenitor of the theory of positive thinking. With his wife, Ruth Stafford Peale, he founded Guideposts magazine in 1945.

Quotes

 * In a large congregation, while there is a wide diversification of interest, it is also true that there are only a few basic human problems. It must also be taken into consideration that people are people regardless of who they are or what their backgrounds may be. There are certain deep universal appeals to human interest and to these human nature always responds.
 * Confident Living (1948), p. 5

 * Faced with the election of a Catholic, our culture is at stake.
 * Opposing the candidacy of John F. Kennedy for US President, as quoted in "The Religious Issue: Hot and Getting Hotter" in Newsweek (19 September 1960)

 * Every human being is a child of God and has more good in him than evil — but circumstances and associates can step up the bad and reduce the good. I've got great faith in the essential fairness and decency — you may say goodness — of the human being.
 * Interview in Modern Maturity magazine (December-January 1975-76)

 * It's not necessary to be born again. You have your way to God, I have mine. I found eternal peace in a Shinto shrine … I've been to Shinto shrines and God is everywhere. … Christ is one of the ways! God is everywhere.
 * On a Phil Donahue Show in 1984, as quoted in The Sword of the Lord (14 December 1984)

 * Our problem is to become acquainted with our own selves, letting our personalities loose upon the world for the sheer adventure of their full development and in the positive hope that they may in their own way lift the level of humanity.
 * The New Art of Living (1986), p. 13

 * When obstacles or difficulties arise, the positive thinker takes them as creative opportunities. He welcomes the challenge of a tough problem and looks for ways to turn it to advantage.
 * Have a Great Day (1986), p. 2

 * Optimism is a philosophy based on the belief that basically life is good, that, in the long run, the good in life overbalances the evil.
 * Have a Great Day (1986), p. 14

 * Who is God? Some theological being? He is so much greater than theology. God is vitality. God is life. God is energy. As you breathe God in, as you visualize His energy, you will be reenergized!
 * "No More Stress or Tension" in Plus : The Magazine of Positive Thinking (May 1986), p. 22

 * Believe that problems do have answers. Believe that they can be overcome. Believe that they can be handled. And finally, believe that you can solve them.
 * You Can If You Think You Can (1987), p. 36

 * People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.
 * Positive Thinking Every Day : An Inspiration for Each Day of the Year (1993), "April 13"
 * Earlier variant: People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. And those who have learned to have a realistic, nonegotistical belief in themselves, who possess a deep and sound self-confidence, are assets to mankind, too, for they transmit their dynamic quality to those lacking it.
 * You Can If You Think You Can (1987), p. 84

 * Happiness will never come if it's a goal in itself; happiness is a by-product of a commitment to worthy causes.
 * The Power of Positive Living (1992), p. 63

 * If you put off everything till you're sure of it, you'll get nothing done.
 * As quoted in Behavior in Organizations : Understanding & Managing the Human Side of Work (1995) by Jerald Greenberg and Robert A. Baron, p. 371

 * Change your thoughts and you can change the world.
 * As quoted in Back on Track : How to Straighten Out Your Life When It Throws You a Curve (1997) by Deborah Norville, p. 201

 * Empty pockets never held anyone back...it's only empty heads and empty hearts that do it.
 * "Enthusiasm makes the difference" (2003), p. 58

Stay Alive All Your Life (1957)

 * Every individual forms his own estimate of himself and that basic estimate goes far toward determining what he becomes. You can do no more than you believe you can. You can be no more than you believe you are. Belief stimulates power within yourself. Have faith in faith. Don't be afraid to trust faith.
 * Stay Alive All Your Life (1957), Epigram, Ch. 1 : The Magnificent Power of Belief

 * The dynamic and positive attitude is a strong magnetic force which, by its very nature, attracts good results. This, of course, does not mean you will get everything you want. When you live on a faith basis your desire will be only for that which you can ask in God's name. But whatever you should have, whatever is good for you will be granted.

 * By success, of course, I do not mean that you may become rich, famous, or powerful for that does not, of necessity, represent achievement. Indeed, not infrequently, such individuals represent pathetic failure as persons. By success I mean the development of mature and constructive personality. Through the application of the principle of constructive thinking you can attain your worthy goals. The natural outcome of living by creative principles is creative results. Believe and create is a basic fact of successful living.

 * The more jealousy one has in his nature the more critical he is of those who have accomplished things. If you are critical and mouthing negativisms it could be that your own failures are caused by a mixed-up, hate-filled mind. A sign of mental health is to be glad when others achieve, and to rejoice with them. Never compare yourself or your achievements with others, but make your comparisons only with yourself. Maintain a constant competition with yourself This will force you to attain higher standards and achievements. do not defeat yourself by holding spiteful or jealous thoughts. Think straight, with love, hope and optimism and you will attain victory in life.

Power Of The Plus Factor (1987)

 * Power of the Plus Factor : The Little Extra That Makes You a Winner (1987)

 * The power of the Plus Factor is potential but it is not self-activating. It is latent in human beings and will remain latent until it is activated.

 * The Plus Factor makes its appearance in a person's life in proportion as that person is in harmony with God and His universal laws.

 * And now we get down to two magic words that tell us how to accomplish just about anything we want to accomplish, two powerful words that can change any situation, two dynamic words that all too few people use. And what are these two amazing words? Do it!

 * So what are you afraid of? What is holding you back? What is it that stands in your way? Do it!

 * Sometimes we see people persevering in the face of what seem to be insuperable odds. When that happens, I can't help but think that through their Plus Factor information has been conveyed to them that even they are unaware of.

 * Of vast importance in achieving peace of mind is dealing with the contents of mind itself: the mass of all ill thoughts you have stored up over the years, all the regrets, all the futilities, all the hidden sins, all the hates, all the grudges, all the vindictiveness. The minds of many people are filled with pockets of poison.

 * Tell yourself every morning as you go to work that you love your job. Think of it as interesting, even fascinating. By so doing you will ultimately get enthusiastic about your work — and you will undoubtedly do a better job.

 * Just a moment ago nature put on one of its most spectacular demonstrations.The widest rainbow I have ever seen stretched from the lake over a high snow-clad mountain to touch down in a deep valley in the Alps. There was about this gigantic rainbow a deep benediction of peace and hope. But as ineffable as nature is in the effect of natural beauty on the mind, it cannot match the peace of God in its healing effect on the human mind.

Misattributed

 * It is inconceivable that a Roman Catholic president would not be under extreme pressure by the hierarchy of his church to accede to its policies with respect to foreign relations in matters, including representation to the Vatican.
 * Formal statement of the committee of 150 Protestant clergymen he represented, opposing the candidacy of John F. Kennedy for US President in September 1960, quoted in The Religious Issue: Hot and Getting Hotter in Newsweek (19 September 1960), and in A Question of Character : A Life of John F. Kennedy (1992) by Thomas C. Reeves, p. 191; though as a primary spokesman of the committee, he endorsed the statement, and it is likely he had major influence on its drafting, he was not cited as its author.

Quotes about Peale

 * Norman Peale saw psychology and Christian experience as very compatible… he had the courage to stand pat on this position in spite of the opposition of the entire Christian church for nearly half a century. His genius was that he… translated psycho-theology into the language of the people.
 * J. Harold Ellens, the founder and editor of the Journal of Psychology and Christianity as quoted in a Los Angeles Times interview and Ohioana authors : Norman Vincent Peale

 * With saccharine terrorism, Mr. Peale refuses to allow his followers to hear, speak or see any evil. For him real human suffering does not exist; there is no such thing as murderous rage, suicidal despair, cruelty, lust, greed, mass poverty, or illiteracy. All these things he would dismiss as trivial mental processes which will evaporate if thoughts are simply turned into more cheerful channels. This attitude is so unpleasant it bears some search for its real meaning. It is clearly not a genuine denial of evil but rather a horror of it. A person turns his eyes away from human bestiality and the suffering it evokes only if he cannot stand to look at it. By doing so he affirms the evil to be absolute, he looks away only when he feels that nothing can be done about it ... The belief in pure evil, an area of experience beyond the possibility of help or redemption, is automatically a summons to action: "evil" means "that which must be attacked ..." Between races for instance, this belief leads to prejudice. In child-rearing it drives parents into trying to obliterate rather than trying to nurture one or another area of the child's emerging personality ... In international relationships it leads to war. As soon as a religious as a religious authority endorses our capacity for hatred, either by refusing to recognize unpleasantness in the style of Mr Peale or in the more classical style of setting up a nice comfortable Satan to hate, it lulls our struggles for growth to a standstill ... Thus Mr Peale's book is not only inadequate for our needs but even undertakes to drown out the fragile inner voice which is the spur to inner growth.
 * R. C. Murphy, in "Think Right : Reverend Peale's Panacea." in The Nation (7 May 1955), p. 398

 * The man who has impacted and influenced my thinking and my theology and my life more than any other living person
 * Robert Schuller, in a speech during The Hour of Power in 1985, published in Power of the Plus Factor (1987), p. 3.

 * Well, speaking as a Christian, I would like to say that I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the Apostle Peale appalling.
 * Adlai Stevenson, in the opening sentence of remarks to a Baptist convention in Texas during his 1952 Presidential campaign, after the host had declared that Stevenson had been asked to speak "just as a courtesy, because Dr. Norman Vincent Peale has already instructed us to vote for your opponent." As quoted in Humor in the White House: The Wit of Five American Presidents (2001) by Arthur A. Sloane

 * My grandfather was an adherent to Norman Vincent Peale's doctrine of positive thinking. It certainly... didn't begin with... Peale. My grandfather had always been the kind of person who could not deal with negativity. He had no patience... It allowed room for nothing else, and there are times in our lives when we are legitimately distressed... sad... in pain. ...[T]o be prevented to feel those feelings honestly and openly is a form of torture.
 * Mary L. Trump, "ABC News Exclusive: Mary Trump Interview with Stephanopoulos" (Jul 16, 2020) 36:30.

title: Norman Vincent Peale


text:
Robert Fulghum

Robert Fulghum (born 4 June 1937) is an American author, primarily of short essays. He has worked as a Unitarian minister, artist, teacher and was a founding member of the authors' collective rock-and-roll band, the "Rock Bottom Remainders". He came to prominence when his first essay collection, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986), stayed on the New York Times bestseller lists for nearly two years.

Quotes

 * I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge — That myth is more potent than history. I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts — That hope always triumphs over experience — That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.
 * "Credo" at his official website; this may be partly influenced by remarks of Albert Einstein in "What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck" The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929): I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

 * The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.
 * It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It (1988)

 * For all my good intentions, there are days when things go wrong or I fall into old habits. When things are not going well, when I'm grumpy or mad, I'll realize that I've not been paying attention to my soul and I've not been following my best routine.
 * "Pay Attention" in Handbook for the Soul (1995) edited by Benjamin Shield

 * The older I get, the more I realize the importance of exercising the various dimensions of my body, soul, mind and heart. Taken together, these aspects give me a sense of wholeness. I want to be a whole human being rather than one who limps on one leg because I don't know how to use all of my parts. Intellectual, emotional, and physical activity are not separate entities. Rather, they are dimensions of the same human being.
 * "Pay Attention" in Handbook for the Soul (1995) edited by Benjamin Shield

 * My convictions have validity for me because I have experimented with the compounds of ideas of others in the laboratory of my mind. And I've tested the results in the living out of my life. At twenty-one, I had drawn an abstract map based on the evidence of others. At sixty, I have accumulated a practical guide grounded in my own experience. At twenty-one, I could discuss transportation theory with authority. At sixty, I know which bus to catch to go where, what the fare is, and how to get back home again. It is not my bus, but I know how to use it.
 * Words I Wish I Wrote (1997)

 * You want my opinion? We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.
 * True Love (1998)

 * To insist on one's place in the scheme of things and to live up to that place. To empower others in their reaching for some place in the scheme of things. To do these things is to make fairy tales come true.
 * Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door (2001), p. 43, Wikiquote-logo.svg QOTD 2008·06·04 Sound file

 * One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.
 * Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door (2001), p. 146

 * Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.
 * As quoted in Reflections for Tending the Sacred Garden (2003) by Bonita Jean Zimmer, p. 182

 * Love the battle between chaos and imagination. Remember: Acting is living truthfully in imaginary circumstances. Remember: Acting is the way to live the greatest number of lives. Remember: Acting is the same as real life, lived intentionally. Never forget: The Fruit is out on the end of the limb. Go there.
 * "Alice-Alice" in Third Wish (2006)

 * I don't do art to address other people but to address myself. I've never done art with a thought of being a professional artist who makes a living by selling his art. I've never had a commercial show in a gallery. I suppose I'm like those who write poetry or songs without seeking publication. I make art in and for the experience itself — to satisfy a need to express myself in a creative, colorful, non-verbal way.
 * Introduction to the Art gallery at his website (2006)

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)

 * All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things ISBN 0449908577

 * Too much high-content information, and I get the existential willies. I keep sputtering out at intersections where life choices must be made and I either know too much or not enough. The examined life is no picnic.

 * All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned. These are the things you already know:
 * Share everything.
 * Play Fair.
 * Don’t hit people.
 * Put things back where you found them.
 * Clean up your own mess.
 * Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
 * Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

 * Live a balanced life — learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

 * Be aware of wonder. And then remember the Dick and Jane books and the first word you learned — the biggest word of all — LOOK.

 * Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all — the whole world — had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess. And it is still true, no matter how old you are — when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

 * A six-year-old will not understand that “By and large it has been demonstrated that violence is counterproductive to the constructive interaction of persons and societies.” True. But a child can better understand that the rule out in the world and in the school is the same: Don’t hit people. Bad things happen. The child must understand this rule is connected to the first rule: People won’t share or play fair if you hit them.

 * It’s hard to explain the cost and consequences of environmental pollution and destruction to a six year old. But we are paying a desperate price even now because adults did not heed the instructions of kindergarten: Clean up your own mess; put things back where you found them; don’t take what’s not yours.

 * From the first day we are told in words we can handle what has come to be prized as the foundation of community and culture. Though the teacher may call these first lessons “simple rules,” they are in fact the distillation of all the hard-won, field-tested working standards of the human enterprise.

 * Knowledge is meaningful only if it is reflected in action. The human race has found out the hard way that we are what we do, not just what we think. This is true for kids and adults — for schoolrooms and nations.

 * Life-and-death. Lifedeath. One event. One short event. Don’t forget.

 * There’s another thing not everyone figures out right away: It’s almost impossible to go through life all alone. We need to find our support group — family, friends, companion, therapy gatherings, team, church or whatever. The kindergarten admonition applies as long as we live: “When you go out into the world, hold hands and stick together.” It’s dangerous out there — lonely, too. Everyone needs someone. Some assembly is always required.

 * What we learn in kindergarten comes up again and again in our lives as long as we live. In far more complex, polysyllabic forms, to be sure. In lectures, encyclopedias, bibles, company rules, courts of law, sermons, and handbooks. Life will examine us continually to see if we have understood and have practiced what we were taught that first year of school.

 * You can't always explain everything you do to everybody, you know.

 * Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.

 * There are places we all come from — deep-rooty-common places — that make us who they are. And we disdain them or treat them lightly at our peril. We turn our backs on them at the risk of self-contempt. There is a sense in which we need to go home again — and can go home again. Not to recover home, no. But to sanctify memory.

 * Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A Beauty Bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air — explode softly — and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth — boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap either — not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination instead of death. A child who touched one wouldn't have his hand blown off.

 * I recall an old Sufi story of a good man who was granted one wish by God. The man said he would like to go about doing good without knowing about it. God granted his wish. And then God decided that it was such a good idea, he would grant that wish to all human beings. And so it has been to this day.

Robert Fulghum : Philosopher King

 * Interview, "Robert Fulghum : Philosopher King" by Linda Richards at January magazine

 * I play in a rock and roll band called The Rock Bottom Remainders. It's other authors. It's Stephen King and Amy Tan and Dave Barry and a bunch of others of us. We play to raise money for charities, because we're kind of a freak show, but we're not bad. I play a guitar and a mandocello... And since you don't know what a mandocello sounds like or how it should be played, you can say with some authority I'm the most interesting mandocello player you've ever heard. Anyhow, we're in this hotel and this maid comes in and she keeps looking at me and she smiled and she said, "I know who you are." And I said, "No you don't. Who am I?" And said, "You're Kenny Rogers." And I of course said, "No, no, no." And she said, "If you were Kenny Rogers you wouldn't say you were Kenny Rogers would you? So you must be Kenny Rogers." … So that evening I'm walking along with my guitars going to the elevator and she went up like a skyrocket, "See! I knew you were Kenny Rogers!" So I signed her card, "Love and kisses, Kenny Rogers."

 * I did not set out to be a writer. It's something that came to me after I was 50 years of age. And I already had the life that I wanted and the wife I wanted and at that age I was fairly clear about what was important. The success that my writing is enjoying is like finding out your rich uncle has left you a train full of hammers. I mean, how many hammers can you use? It's chocolate syrup. It's an extra. So I take it very lightly. And if I were to fall off the charts tomorrow, I've already had more fame than I deserve and more money than I've ever had in my life. The thought that I could finally pay off my Visa bill! That's rich.

 * The kindergarten essay got into that underground press we all belong to where something just sort of has a life of its own and moves around and it gets on refrigerators and in the work place and people copy it... I was a minister in the Unitarian church at the time and teaching and I was ready to stop that and do the next phase of my life. So I had quit both those jobs and I was all set up with my studio in Seattle when this other horse came riding by … I'm not a great writer and I'll never get the Nobel Prize or a Pulitzer Prize but I've won the refrigerator door award. And you don't see Faulkner on people's refrigerator.

 * We've associated that word philosophy with academic study that in its own way has gotten so far beyond the layman that if you read contemporary philosophy you've no clue, because it's almost become math. And it's odd that if you don't do that and you call yourself a philosopher that you always get 'homespun' attached to it.

 * I tend to keep books of art more than anything else now. I'm interested in visual things. And astronomy books. Things you can look at over and over and over again and see something new. … My notions of God and the universe have always been too small. And limited by language. So now I'm looking at picture books. My children say I'm just beginning to enter my dotage: can't read, just looks at picture books.

 * I don't think the thing is to be well known, but being worth knowing.

Web Journal

 * The four of us are talking dancing, and laughing, and recalling the joys of being out on the floor and having that timeless feeling that comes from being caught up in the music. "Nobody should miss that," says Dave. On the face of it, Dave's family and I don't have a lot in common. They're Mormons and Republicans. I'm a Unitarian and a Democrat. When Dave was on the County Council, we were on different sides of some important issues. I grew up a Southern Baptist in Texas where dancing was a mortal sin in the eyes of Almighty God, but coffee was OK. Dave grew up a Latter Day Saint where dancing was considered righteous – but not coffee. But . . . we're dancers. And laughers. That's a strong bond right there. And we're committed to being useful in our world. And if you love something, like dancing, and you pass it on, like Dave and his wife do, you've been very useful by my standards. Dancing is a lifetime, equal opportunity sport. And I will never drive by Dave's garage again without having the finest feelings for the man and his wife and mother who are inside taking good care of their corner of this world. They've added an important dimension to the lives of the young people of their town — that lightness of being that belongs to dancers.
 * "The Lightness Of Being" (25 April 2007) Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah

title: Robert Fulghum


text:
Thomas Robert Malthus

Thomas Robert Malthus (13 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) was an English demographer and political economist best known for his pessimistic but highly influential views on population growth.

An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised)

 * It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment.
 * Chapter I, paragraph 9, lines 1-2

 * Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio, Subsistence, increases only in an arithmetical ratio.
 * Chapter I, paragraph 18, lines 1-2

 * The love of independence is a sentiment that surely none would wish to see erased from the breast of man, though the parish law of England, it must be confessed, is a system of all others the most calculated gradually to weaken this sentiment, and in the end may eradicate it completely.
 * Chapter IV, paragraph 13, lines 11-15

 * To remedy the frequent distresses of the common people, the poor laws of England have been instituted; but it is to be feared that though they may have alleviated a little the intensity of individual misfortune, they have spread the general evil over a much larger surface.
 * Chapter V, paragraph 2, lines 1-5

 * The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to every labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country. There is not at present enough for all to have a decent share. What would then be the consequence?
 * Chapter V, paragraph 3, lines 5-8

 * I feel no doubt whatever that the parish laws of England have contributed to raise the price of provisions and to lower the real price of labour.
 * Chapter V, paragraph 13, lines 1-3

 * The labouring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it, but all that is beyond their present neccessities goes, generally speaking, to the ale house.
 * Chapter V, paragraph 13, lines 8-13

 * Every endeavor should be used to weaken and destroy all those institutions relating to corporations, apprenticeships, &c, which cause the labours of agriculture to be worse paid than the labours of trade and manufactures.
 * Chapter V, paragraph 23, lines 3-7

 * To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.
 * Chapter V, paragraph 25, lines 4-5

 * It accords with the most liberal spirit of philosophy to suppose that not a stone can fall, or a plant rise, without the immediate agency of divine power.
 * Chapter VII, paragraph 10, lines 8-10

 * The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other vist the human race.
 * Chapter VII, paragraph 20, lines 2-4

 * With regard to the duration of human life, there does not appear to have existed from the earliest ages of the world to the present moment the smallest permanent symptom or indication of increasing prolongation.
 * Chapter IX, paragraph 7, lines 1-4

 * Though I may not be able to in the present instance to mark the limit at which further improvement will stop, I can very easily mention a point at which it will not arrive.
 * Chapter IX, paragraph 8, lines 14-16

 * It cannot be true, therefore, that among animals some of the offspring will possess the desirable qualities of the parents in greater degree, or that animals are indefinitely perfectible.
 * Chapter IX, paragraph 9, lines 1-3

 * I know of no well-directed attempts of this kind, except in the ancient family of the Bickerstaffs, who are said to have been very successful in whitening the skins and increasing the height of their race by prudent marriages, particularly by that very judicious cross with Maud, the milk- maid, by which some capital defects in the constitutions of the family were corrected.
 * Chapter IX, paragraph 14, lines 22-27 ( see also eugenics)

 * Man cannot live in the midst of plenty.
 * Chapter X, paragraph 7, line 1

 * It has appeared that from the inevitable laws of our nature, some human beings must suffer from want. These are the unhappy persons who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank.
 * Chapter X, paragraph 29, lines 12-15

 * No move towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes has taken place in the five or six thousand years that the world has existed.
 * Chapter XI, paragraph 1, lines 6-8

 * I happen to have a very bad fit of the tooth-ache at the time I am writing this.
 * Chapter XII, paragraph 6, lines 8-9

 * The moon is not kept in her orbit round the earth, nor the earth in her orbit round the sun, by a force that varies merely in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances.
 * Chapter XIII, paragraph 2, lines 19-22

 * The lower classes of people in Europe may at some future period be much better instructed then they are at present; they may be taught to employ the little spare time they have in many better ways than at the ale-house; they may live under better and more equal laws than they have hitherto done, perhaps, in any country; and I even conceive it possible, though not probable, that they may have more leisure; but it is not in the nature of things, that they can be awarded such a quantity of money or substance, as will allow them all to marry early, in the full confidence that they shall be able to provide with ease for a numerous family.
 * Chapter XIV, paragraph 9

 * Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.
 * Chapter XVIII, paragraph 11, lines 16-17

 * The greatest talents have been frequently misapplied and have produced evil proportionate to the extent of their powers. Both reason and revelation seem to assure us that such minds will be condemned to eternal death, but while on earth, these vicious instruments performed their part in the great mass of impressions, by the disgust and abhorrence which they excited.
 * Chapter XIX, paragraph 2, lines 1-6

 *  Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.
 * Chapter XIX, paragraph 15, line 1

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

 * The most successful supporters of tyranny are without doubt those general declaimers who attribute the distresses of the poor, and almost all evils to which society is subject, to human institutions and the iniquity of governments.

 * If I saw a glass of wine repeatedly presented to a man, and he took no notice of it, I should be apt to think that he was blind or uncivil. A juster philosophy might teach me rather to think that my eyes deceived me, and that the offer was not really what I conceived it to be.

 * The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years.

 * The perpetual tendency of the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of animated nature, which we can have no reason to expect to change.

 * The immediate cause of the increase of population is the excess of the births above deaths; and the rate of increase, or the period of doubling, depends upon the proportion which the excess of the births above the deaths bears to the population.

 * The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals, is the means of his support, is the power which he possesses of very greatly increasing these means.

 * The finest minds seem to be formed rather by efforts at original thinking, by endeavours to form new combinations, and to discover new truths, than by passively receiving the impressions of other men's ideas.

 * we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations.*12 But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders. [Book IV, Chapter V]

Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

 * PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY CONSIDERED WITH A VIEW TO THEIR PRACTICAL APPLICATION Second Edition With Considerable Additions From The Author's Own Manuscript And An Original Memoir

 * Not many years had elapsed after the first edition of this work, when it became known to all with whom Mr. Malthus had the opportunity of communicating on the subject, or who were acquainted with his last publications, that his opinions on the subject of value had undergone some change.
 * Advertisement to the Second Edition, p. vii

 * It has been said, and perhaps with truth, that the conclusions of Political Economy partake more of the certainty of the stricter sciences than those of most of the other branches of human knowledge.
 * Book I, Introduction, p. 1

 * To minds of a certain cast there is nothing so captivating as simplification and generalization.
 * Book I, Introduction, p. 5

 * The first business of philosophy is to account for things as they are; and till our theories will do this, they ought not to be the ground of any practical conclusion.
 * Book I, Introduction, p. 8

 * The science of political economy is essentially practical, and applicable to the common business of human life. There are few branches of human knowledge where false views may do more harm, or just views more good.
 * Book I, Introduction, p. 9

 * The question is, what is saving?
 * Book I, Chapter I, Of The Definitions of Wealth and of Productive Labour, Section II, p. 40

 * Surely then some distinction between the different kinds of labour, with reference to their different effects on national wealth, must be admitted to be not only useful, but necessary; and if so, the question is what this distinction should be, and where the line between the different kinds of labour should be drawn.
 * Book I, Chapter I, Of The Definitions of Wealth and of Productive Labour, Section II, p. 43

 * To estimate the value of Newton's discoveries, or the delight communicated by Shakespeare and Milton, by the price at which their works have sold, would be but a poor measure of the degree in which they have elevated and enchanted their country; nor would it be less grovelling and incongruous to estimate the benefit which the country has derived from the Revolution of 1688, by the pay of the soldiers, and all other payments concerned in effecting it.
 * Book I, Chapter I, Of The Definitions of Wealth and of Productive Labour, Section II, p. 49

 * The proposition of Mr. Ricardo, which states that a rise in the price of labour lowers the price of a large class of commodities, has undoubtedly a very paradoxical air; but it is, nevertheless, true, and the appearance of paradox would vanish, if it were stated more naturally and correctly.
 * Book I, Chapter II, On the Nature, Causes, and Measures of Value, Section IV, p. 88

 * If a country can only be rich by running a successful race for low wages, I should be disposed to say at once, perish such riches!
 * Book I, Chapter III, Of the Rent of Land, Section IX, p. 214

 * But, fortunately for mankind, the neat rents of the land, under a system of private property, can never be diminished by the progress of cultivation.
 * Book I, Chapter III, Of the Rent of Land, Section IX, p. 216

 * It is quite obvious therefore, that the knowledge and prudence of the poor themselves, are absolutely the only means by which any general and permanent improvement in their condition can be effected. They are really the arbiters of their own destiny; and what others can do for themselves. These truths are so important to the happiness of the great mass of society, that every opportunity should be taken of repeating them.
 * Book I, Chapter V, Of the Profits of Capital, Section III, p. 279

 * THERE is scarcely any inquiry more curious, or, from its importance, more worthy of attention, than that which traces the causes which practically check the progress of wealth in different countries, and stop it, or make it proceed very slowly, while the power of production remains comparatively undiminished, or at least would furnish the means of a great and abundant increase of produce and population.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section I, p. 309

 *  In general it may be said that demand is quite as necessary to the increase of capital as the increase of capital is to demand.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section IV, p. 349 ( See also; Says Law)

 * A feather will weigh down a scale when there is nothing in the opposite one.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section V, p. 355

 * Thirty or forty proprietors, with incomes answering to between one thousand and five thousand a year, would create a much more effectual demand for the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, than a single proprietor possessing a hundred thousand a year.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section VII, p. 374

 * Every exchange which takes place in a country, effects a distribution of its produce better adapted to the wants of society.... If two districts, one of which possessed a rich copper mine, and the other a rich tin mine, had always been separated by an impassable river or mountain, there can be no doubt that an opening of a communication, a greater demand would take place, and a greater price be given for both the tin and the copper;and this greater price of both metals, though it might be only temporary, would alone go a great way towards furnishing the additional capital wanted to supply the additional demand; and the capitals of both districts, and the products of both mines, would be increased both in quantity and value to a degree which could not have taken place without the this new distribution of the produce, or some equivalent to it.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section VIII, p. 382-383

 * It is a mere futile process to exchange one set of commodities for another, if the parties; after this new distribution of goods has taken place, are not better off than they were before.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section VIII, p. 384

 * But such consumption is not consistent with the actual habits of the generality of capitalists. The great object of their lives is to save a fortune, both because it is their duty to make a provision for their families, and because they cannot spend an income with so much comfort to themselves, while they are obliged perhaps to attend a counting house for seven or eight hours a day... ...There must therefore be a considerable class of persons who have both the will and power to consume more material wealth than they produce, or the mercantile classes could not continue profitably to produce so much more than they consume.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 400 (See also: David Ricardo and aggregate demand)

 * It is not the most pleasant employment to spend eight hours a day in a counting house.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 403

 * ...where are we to look for the consumption required but among the unproductive labourers of Adam Smith?...
 * Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 406

 * It is also very important to observe, that menial servants are absolutely necessary to make the resources of the higher and middle classes of society efficient in the demand for material products.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 408

 * The effect therefore on national wealth of those classes of unproductive consumers which are supported by taxation, must be very various in different countries, and must depend entirely upon the powers of production, and upon the manner in which the taxes are raised in each country.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 410

 * On the whole it may be observed, that the specific use of a body of unproductive consumers, is to give encouragement to wealth by maintaining such a balance between produce and consumption as will give the greatest exchangeable value to the results of the national industry.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 412-413

 * If one fourth of the capital of a country were suddenly destroyed, or entirely transferred to a different part of the world, without any other cause occurring of a diminished demand for commodities, this scantiness of capital would certainly occasion great inconvenience to consumers, and great distress among the working classes; but it would be attended with great advantages to the remaining capitalists.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section X, p. 414 (See also: Karl Marx,, Chapter 25, Section 4(e), p. 742

 * When Hume and Adam Smith prophesied that a little increase of national debt beyond the then amount of it, would probably occasion bankruptcy; the main cause of their error was the natural one, of not being able to see the vast increase of productive power to which the nation would subsequently obtain.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section X, p. 422

 * The employment of the poor in roads and public works, and a tendency among landlords and persons of property to build, to improve and beautify their grounds, and to employ workmen and menial servants, are the means most within our power and most directly calculated to remedy the evils arising from that disturbance in the balance of produce and consumption.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section X, p. 430

 * In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future; but unfortunately the working classes, though they share in the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as in the general adversity.
 * Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section X, p. 437

Quotes about Malthus

 * And these riches, that are derived from this art of wealth-getting, are truly unlimited; for just as the art of medicine is without limit in respect to health, and each of the arts is without limit in respect of its end...
 * Aristotle, Politics, I, III-17

 * MALTHUSIAN, adj. Pertaining to Malthus and his doctrines. Malthus believed in artificially limiting population, but found that it could not be done by talking. One of the most practical exponents of the Malthusian idea was Herod of Judea, though all the famous soldiers have been of the same way of thinking.
 * Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

 * Malthus was not wrong in the ways commonly supposed. From his 18th-century perspective, he simply had no basis for seeing the human ability to "overshoot" carrying capacity. It was inconceivable to Malthus that human societies could, by taking advantage of favorable conditions (new technology, abundant fossil fuels), temporarily increase human numbers and appetites above the long-term capacity of environments to provide needed resources and services. But it is inexcusable today not to recognize the way populations can sometimes overshoot sustainable carrying capacity and what happens to them after they have done it.
 * William R. Catton, Malthus: More Relevant Than Ever

 * "Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?" The bell struck twelve.
 * Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Verlag Edition, Berlin 1885, p. 113

 * Malthus ... quotes the words of a poet, that the poor man comes to the feast of Nature and finds no cover laid for him, and adds that 'she bids him begone', for he did not before his birth ask of society whether or not he is welcome. This is now the pet theory of all genuine English bourgeois, and very naturally, since it is the most specious excuse for them.
 * Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England

 * If, then, the problem is not to make the 'surplus population' useful, ... but merely to let it starve to death in the least objectionable way, ... this, of course, is simple enough, provided the surplus population perceives its own superfluousness and takes kindly to starvation. There is, however, in spite of the strenuous exertions of the humane bourgeoisie, no immediate prospect of its succeeding in bringing about such a disposition among the workers. The workers have taken it into their heads that they, with their busy hands, are the necessary, and the rich capitalists, who do nothing, the surplus population.
 * Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England

 * Population trends have always provoked doom-fraught oracles, because their popular interpreters suppose that every new series will be infinitely sustained; yet, beyond the short term, expectations based on them are never fulfilled.
 * Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Millennium, Epilogue, p. 723

 * Anyone would expect that Malthus, who taught the future servants of the East India Company, would draw, for his pessimistic evidence, on the huge, poor and prolific population of India. There is, however, only passing reference to Hindustan in his great Essay on The Principle of Population.
 * John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, Chapter 4, p. 109-110

 * Mr. Malthus's first octavo volume on this subject (published in the year 1798) was intended as an answer to Mr. Godwin's Enquiry concerning Political Justice. It was well got up for the purpose, and had an immediate effect. It was what in the language of the ring is called a facer. It made Mr. Godwin and the other advocates of Modern Philosophy look about them. It may be almost doubted whether Mr. Malthus was in the first instance serious in many things that he threw out, or whether he did not hazard the whole as an amusing and extreme paradox, which might puzzle the reader as it had done himself in an idle moment, but to which no practical consequence whatever could attach.
 * William Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age; Or, Contemporary Portraits

 * Nature herself in times of great poverty or bad climatic conditions, as well as poor harvest, intervenes to restrict the increase of population of certain countries or races; this, to be sure, by a method as wise as it is ruthless.
 * Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Chapter IV, Munich, p. 131

 * In 1860, sixty-three per cent of the couples married in Great Britain had families of four or more children; in 1925 only twenty per cent had more than four.
 * Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers, Chapter IV, p. 84

 * The doctrine of population has been conspicuously absent, not because I doubt in the least its truth and vast importance, but because it forms no part of the direct problem of economics.
 * William Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, Chapter VIII, p. 214

 * In short, we can say that the theory of Malthus, by shaping into a pseudo-scientific form the secret desires of the wealth-possessing classes, became the foundation of a whole system of practical philosophy, which permeates the minds of both the educated and uneducated, and reacts, (as practical philosophy always does) upon the theoretical philosophy of our century.
 * Peter Kropotkin, Fields, Factories and Workshops (1899)

 * Malthus… has been the whipping boy of idealists and techno-optimists for two hundred years. His famous essay proposed that human population, if unconstrained, would grow exponentially while food supplies grew only arithmetically, and that therefore population growth faced strict and inevitable natural limits. Most commentators, however, took the math at face value and overlooked the part about constraints. These “checks’ on population come in the form of famine, pestilence, war, and ‘moral restraint,” i.e., the will to postpone marriage or forgo parenthood (from a perhaps antiquated notion that the ability to support a family might enter into anyone’s plans for forming one, or even that society could influence such choices). Malthus’s essay has been mostly misconstrued to mean that the human race was doomed at a certain arbitrary set point, and the pejorative ‘malthusian” is attached to any idea that suggests that human ingenuity cannot make accommodation for more human beings to join the party on Spaceship Earth. Interestingly, Malthus’s essay was aimed at the reigning Enlightenment idealists of his own youth, the period of the American and French Revolutions, in particular the seminal figures of William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet. Both held that mankind was infinitely improvable and that a golden age of social justice, political harmony, equality, abundance, brotherhood, happiness, and altruism loomed imminently. Although sympathetic to social improvement, Malthus deemed these claims untenable and thought it necessary to debunk them.
 * James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency, Chapter 1, pp. 6–7

 * Capitals accumulate faster than population;
 * Karl Marx, Grundrisse, Notebook III, The Chapter on Capital, p. 271

 * Malthus was wrong only in his optimism that population will saturate and stabilize. Thomas Malthus worried that finite land (from which all energy derived via captured sunlight prior to the exploitation of fossil fuels) would translate to a cessation of population growth once saturated. His prediction of when that would happen missed the mark by perhaps a few centuries due to the unforeseen arrival of fossil fuels onto the scene. Economists use “Malthusian” as a derogatory synonym for “wrong,” and bludgeon any similar-sounding suggestion about future limits by employing an expression of (blind) faith that something else as transformational as fossil fuels will surely always come along in time to obviate the concern. The ironic problem here is that the reason Malthus was “wrong” (fossil fuels) will also make him wrong about saturating population at some presumably steady-state peak. The connection is overshoot.
 * Tom Murphy, "The Cult of Civilization" (October 4, 2022)

 * Population regulates itself by the funds which are to employ it, and therefore always increases or diminishes with the increase or the diminution of capital. Every reduction of capital is therefore necessarily followed by a less effective demand for corn, by a fall in price, and by a diminished cultivation.
 * David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, (Third Edition),Chapter II, p. 41

 * It is true that the attempt made by Malthus to destroy the foundations of the Ricardian system failed and that the chief tenets of classical political economy continued to enjoy considerable authority.
 * Eric Roll, A History of Economic Thought, Chapter 4, p. 143

 * In his comfortable parsonage, he contemplated the misery of the great majority of mankind with equanimity, and pointed out the fallacies of the reformers who hoped to alleviate it.
 * Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, Chapter VII, p. 132

 * The most effectual encouragement to population is, the activity of industry, and the consequent multiplication of the national products.
 * Jean-Baptiste Say, A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition), Book II, Chapter XI, Section I, p. 375

 * The liberal reward of labour, as it is to the effect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. To complain of it, is to lament over the necessary effect and cause of the greatest public prosperity.
 * Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter 8, p. 97

title: Thomas Robert Malthus


text:
Raymond Williams

Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist academic, novelist and critic. He was Professor of Drama at the University of Cambridge (1974–1983).

Quotes

 * If from poetry we expect a succession of signals for the release of miscellaneous private emotion we are likely to find Tears, Idle Tears  valuable.
 * Reading and Criticism (1950)

 * We all like to think of ourselves as a standard, and I can see that it is genuinely difficult for the English middle class to suppose that the working class is not desperately anxious to become just like itself. I am afraid this must be unlearned.
 * Culture and Society (1958)
 * Shaw's association with Fabianism is of great importance, for it marks the confluence of two traditions which had been formerly separate and even opposed. Fabianism, in the orthodox person of Sidney Webb, is the direct inheritor of the spirit of John Stuart Mill; that is to say, of an utilitarianism refined by experience of a new situation in history. Shaw, on the other hand, is the direct successor of the spirit of Carlyle and of Ruskin, but he did not go the way of his elder successor, William Morris.
 * Culture and Society (1958) p. 181
 * The shaping influence of economic change can of course be distinguished, as most notably in the period with which this book is concerned. But the difficulty lies in estimating the final importance of a factor which never, in practice, appears in isolation.
 * Culture and Society (1958) p. 280
 * My own view is that if, in a socialist society, the basic cultural skills are made widely available, and the channels of communication widened and cleared, as much as possible has been done in the way of preparation, and what then emerges will be an actual response to the whole reality, and so valuable.
 * Culture and Society (1958) p. 283

 * Every aspect of personal life is radically affected by the quality of general life, and yet the general life is seen at its most important in completely personal terms.
 * Realism and the Contemporary Novel (1961): The Long Revolution

 * The gap between our feelings and our social observation is dangerously wide.
 * Realism and the Contemporary Novel (1961): The Long Revolution

 * Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.
 * Keywords (1983)

 * It is then in making hope practical, rather than despair convincing, that we must resume and change and extend our campaigns.
 * "The Politics of Nuclear Disarmament" (1980), in Resources of Hope p. 188 (1989).

 * It is as if a really secure nationalism, already in possession of its nation-state, can fail to see itself as 'nationalist' at all. Its own distinctive bonding is perceived as natural and obvious by contrast with the mere projections of any nationalism which is still in active progress and thus incomplete. At this point radicals and minority nationalists emphasize the artificialities of the settled 'common sense' nation-state and to their own satisfaction shoot them to pieces from history and from social theory.
 * Who Speaks For Wales?: Nation, Culture, Identity (published posthumously in 2003), p. 193

 * Real independence is a time of new and active creation: people sure enough of themselves to discard their baggage; knowing the past is past, as shaping history, but with a new confident sense of the present and the future, where the decisive meanings and values will be made.
 * (1975)

 * There has never been a time, until the last fifty years, when a majority of any population had regular and constant access to drama, and used this access. . . . It seems probable that in societies like Britain and the United States more drama is watched in a week or weekend, by the majority of viewers, than would have been watched in a year or in some cases a lifetime in any previous historical period. It is clearly one of the unique characteristics of advanced industrial societies that drama as an experience is now an intrinsic part of everyday life, at a quantitative level which is so very much greater than any precedent as to seem a fundamental qualitative change. Whatever the social and cultural reasons may finally be, it is clear that watching dramatic simulation of a wide range of experiences is now an essential part of our modern cultural pattern.
 * Television: Technology and Cultural Form

Quotes about Raymond Williams

 * The most advanced socialist thought in England is Raymond Williams’ superbly intricate and persuasive work... Any English Marxism will have to measure itself against this landmark in our social thought.
 * Perry Anderson "Socialism and pseudo-empiricism". New Left Review 1/35 (1966): 2-42; as cited in: Blackledge, Paul. Perry Anderson, Marxism and the New Left. Merlin Press, 2004. p. 91.

title: Raymond Williams