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George F. Kennan

George Frost Kennan (16 February 1904 – 17 March 2005) was an American diplomat and historian, who served as ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. He was known best as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War on which he later reversed himself. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly histories of the relations between the USSR and the United States. He was also one of the group of foreign policy elders known as "The Wise Men".

Quotes

 * If humiliation and rejection are to be the rewards of faithful and effective service in this field, what are those of us to conclude who have also served prominently in this line of work but upon whom this badge has not yet been conferred? We cannot deceive ourselves into believing that it was merit, rather than chance, that spared some of us the necessity of working in areas of activity that have now become controversial, of recording opinions people now find disagreeable, of aiding in the implementation of policies now under question. … In no field of endeavor is it easier than in the field of foreign affairs to be honestly wrong; in no field is it harder for contemporaries to be certain they can distinguish between wisdom and folly; in no field would it be less practicable to try to insist on infallibility as a mark of fitness for office.
 * In defense of a colleague undergoing investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951; published in Memoirs : 1950-1963 (1967), p. 218

 * A political society does not live to conduct foreign policy; it would be more correct to say that it conducts foreign policy in order to live.
 * Lecture at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (March 1954); published in “The Two Planes of International Reality” in Realities of American Foreign Policy (1954), p. 4

 * There is, let me assure you, nothing in nature more egocentrical than the embattled democracy. It soon becomes the victim of its own war propaganda. It then tends to attach to its own cause an absolute value which distorts everything else. Its enemy becomes the embodiment of all evil. Its own side, on the other hand, is the center of all virtue. The contest comes to be viewed as having a final, apocalyptic quality. If we lose, all is lost; life will no longer be worth living; there will be nothing to be salvaged. If we win, then everything will be possible; all our problems will become soluble; the one great source of evil--our enemy--will have been crushed; the forces of good will then sweep forward unimpeded; all worthy aspirations will be satisfied.
 * From Russia and the West under Lenin by George Kennan (1960)

 * Now this problem of the adjustment of man to his natural resources, and the problem of how such things as industrialization and urbanization can be accepted without destroying the traditional values of a civilization and corrupting the inner vitality of its life — these things are not only the problems of America; they are the problems of men everywhere. To the extent that we Americans become able to show that we are aware of these problems, and that we are approaching them with coherent and effective ideas of our own which we have the courage to put into effect in our own lives, to that extent a new dimension will come into our relations with the peoples beyond our borders, to that extent, in fact, the dreams of these earlier generations of Americans who saw us as leaders and helpers to the peoples of the world at large will begin to take on flesh and reality.
 * Lecture at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (March 1954); published in “The Unifying Factor” in Realities of American Foreign Policy (1954), p. 116

 * A foreign policy aimed at the achievement of total security is the one thing I can think of that is entirely capable of bringing this country to a point where it will have no security at all. And a ruthless, reckless insistence on attempting to stamp out everything that could conceivably constitute a reflection of improper foreign influence in our national life, regardless of the actual damage it is doing to the cost of eliminating it, in terms of other American values, is the one thing I can think of that should reduce us all to a point where the very independence we are seeking to defend would be meaningless, for we would be doing things to ourselves as vicious and tyrannical as any that might be brought to us from outside. This sort of extremism seems to me to hold particular danger for a democracy, because it creates a curious area between what is held to be possible and what is really possible — an area within which government can always be plausibly shown to have been most dangerously delinquent in the performance of its tasks. And this area, where government is always deficient, provides the ideal field of opportunity for every sort of demagoguery and mischief-making. It constitutes a terrible breach in the dike of our national morale, through which forces of doubt and suspicion never cease to find entry. The heart of our problem, here, lies in our assessment of the relative importance of the various dangers among which we move; and until many of our people can be brought to understand that what we have to do is not to secure a total absence of danger but to balance peril against peril and to find the tolerable degree of each, we shall not wholly emerge from these confusions.
 * Radcliffe Commencement Address (16 June 1954), published as "The Illusion of Total Security" in The Atlantic Monthly, # 194 (August 1954)

 * Trotsky, and all that Trotsky represented, was Stalin's real fear.
 * Quoted in

 * I lived, particularly in childhood but with lessening intensity right on to middle age, in a world that was peculiarly and intimately my own, scarcely to be shared with others or even made plausible to them. I habitually read special meanings into things, scenes and places — qualities of wonder, beauty, promise, or horror — for which there was no external evidence visible or plausible to others. My world was peopled with mysteries, seductive hints, vague menaces, "intimations of immortality."
 * A passage from the first volume of his Memoirs as quoted in Political Realism in American Thought (1977) by John W. Coffey, p. 26

 * A guest of one's time and not a member of its household.
 * Referring to himself, as quoted in Political Realism in American Thought (1977) by John W. Coffey, p. 26

 * For the love of God, for the love of your children and of the civilization to which you belong, cease this madness. You are mortal men. You are capable of error. You have no right to hold in your hands — there is no one wise enough and strong enough to hold in his hands — destructive power sufficient to put an end to civilized life on a great portion of our planet.
 * As quoted in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Vol. 37 (1981); also in Boston Globe obituary of George F. Kennan by Mark Feeney (18 March 2005) D23. Cited in James Carroll, House of War, Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., (2006), chapter 7, note 140, p. 581.

 * The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian.
 * As quoted in US-Soviet Relations : The First 50 Years WNET TV (17 April 1984)

 * The very concept of history implies the scholar and the reader. Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning.
 * As quoted in The New York Times (27 May 1984)

 * Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith —  a desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will — but faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world — faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity.
 * As quoted in The New York Times (27 May 1984)

 * Fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship.
 * On postwar accords regarding Eastern Europe, as quoted in The Wise Men (1986) by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas

 * The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been.
 * On trying to understand Soviet policies, as quoted in The Wise Men (1986) by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas

 * Russia, Russia — unwashed, backward, appealing Russia, so ashamed of your own backwardness, so orientally determined to conceal it from us by clever deceit. So sensitive and so suspicious in the face of the wicked, civilized west. I shall always remember you — slyly, touchingly, but with great shouting and confusion — pumping hot water into our sleeping car in the frosty darkness of a December morning in order that we might not know, in order that we might never realize, to how primitive a land we had come.
 * Written about an incident where hot water was pumped from a switch engine on the next track into a diplomats sleeping-car; as quoted in George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy (1988) by David Allan Mayers, p. 30

 * There will be no room, here, for the smug myopia which views American civilization as the final solution to all world problems; which recommends our institutions for universal adoption and turns away with contempt from the serious study of the institutions of peoples whose civilizations may seem to us to be materially less advanced.
 * As quoted in Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy (1989) by Anders Stephanson, p. 160

 * Reading, in contrast to sitting before the screen, is not a purely passive exercise. The child, particularly one who reads a book dealing with real life, has nothing before it but the hieroglyphics of the printed page. Imagination must do the rest; and imagination is called upon to do it. Not so the television screen. Here everything is spelled out for the viewer, visually, in motion, and in all three dimensions. No effort of imagination is called upon for its enjoyment.
 * “American Addictions” in New Oxford Review (June 1993)

 * I write to say that in the idea of the three American states' ultimate independence, whether separately or in union, I see nothing fanciful. [Such] are at present the dominating trends in the U.S. that I see no other means of ultimate preservation of cultural and societal values that will not only be endangered but eventually destroyed by an endlessly prolonged association … with the remainder of what is now the U.S.A.
 * In a 1993 letter to Thomas Naylor, on the idea of the secession of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont from the US, as quoted in "Most Likely to Secede" by Christopher Ketcham in Good magazine'' (10 January 2008)

 * We are, if territory and population be looked at together, one of the great countries of the world — a monster country, one might say, along with others such as China, India, the recent Soviet Union, and Brazil. And there is a real question as to whether "bigness" in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name.
 * Around the Cragged Hill : A Personal and Political Philosophy (1994), p. 143

 * I said that wherever these people, meaning the Soviet leadership, confronted us with dangerous hostility anywhere in the world, we should do everything possible to contain it and not let them expand any further. I should have explained that I didn't suspect them of any desire to launch an attack on us. This was right after the war, and it was absurd to suppose that they were going to turn around and attack the United States. I didn't think I needed to explain that, but I obviously should have done it.
 * Interview on Online NewsHour : "George Kennan" (PBS) (18 April 1996)

 * [P]erhaps it is not too late to advance a view that, I believe, is not only mine alone but is shared by a number of others with extensive and in most instances more recent experience in Russian matters. The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.
 * "A Fateful Error", New York Times (5 February 1997)

 * Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.
 * "Foreword to 'The Pathology of Power'" by Norman Cousins (Norton, 1987), from At a Century's Ending: Reflections 1982-1995 (Norton, 1997, ISBN 0-393-31609-2 ), Part II: Cold War in Full Bloom, p. 118

 * I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.
 * Quoted in Foreign Affairs; Now a Word From X, New York Times, (2 May 1998)  (Kennan’s response to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman 1998 question about the US Cold War strategy of containment—about NATO expansion)

 * Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before … In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.
 * As quoted in "George Kennan Speaks Out About Iraq" at History News Network (26 September 2002)

 * Whenever you have a possibility of going in two ways, either for peace or for war, for peaceful methods of for military methods, in the present age there is a strong prejudice for the peaceful ones. War seldom ever leads to good results.
 * As quoted in "George Kennan Speaks Out About Iraq" at History News Network (26 September 2002)

 * A doctrine is something that pins you down to a given mode of conduct and dozens of situations which you cannot foresee, which is a great mistake in principle. When the word ‘containment’ was used in my ‘X’ article, it was used with relation to a certain situation then prevailing, and as a response to it.
 * As quoted in "George Kennan Speaks Out About Iraq" at History News Network (26 September 2002)

Memo PPS23 (1948)

 * We must be very careful when we speak of exercising "leadership" in Asia. We are deceiving ourselves and others when we pretend to have answers to the problems, which agitate many of these Asiatic peoples. Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3 of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. All of the Asiatic peoples are faced with the necessity for evolving new forms of life to conform to the impact of modern technology. This process of adaptation will also be long and violent. It is not only possible, but probable, that in the course of this process many peoples will fall, for varying periods, under the influence of Moscow, whose ideology has a greater lure for such peoples, and probably greater reality, than anything we could oppose to it. All this, too, is probably unavoidable; and we could not hope to combat it without the diversion of a far greater portion of our national effort than our people would ever willingly concede to such a purpose. In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to 'be liked' or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague — and for the Far East — unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
 * "Memo PPS23", written 28 February 1948, declassified 17 June 1974

World War I

 * There are certain sad appreciations we have to come to about human nature on the basis of these recent wars. One of them is that suffering does not always make men better. Another is that people are not always more reasonable than governments; that public opinion, or what passes for public opinion, is not invariably a moderating force in the jungle of politics. It may be true, and I suspect it is, that the mass of people everywhere are normally peace-loving and would accept many restraints and sacrifices in preference to the monstrous calamities of war. But I also suspect that what purports to be public opinion in most countries that consider themselves to have popular government is often not really the consensus of the feelings of the mass of the people at all, but rather the expression of the interests of special highly vocal minorities — politicians, commentators, and publicity-seekers of all sorts: people who live by their ability to draw attention to themselves and die, like fish out of water, if they are compelled to remain silent. These people take refuge in the pat and chauvinistic slogans because they are incapable of understanding any others, because these slogans are safer from the standpoint of short-term gain, because the truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the market place of ideas — complicated, unsatisfying, full of dilemma, always vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse. The counsels of impatience and hatred can always be supported by the crudest and cheapest symbols; for the counsels of moderation, the reasons are often intricate, rather than emotional, and difficult to explain. And so the chauvinists of all times and places go their appointed way: plucking the easy fruits, reaping the little triumphs of the day at the expense of someone else tomorrow, deluging in noise and filth anyone who gets in their way, dancing their reckless dance on the prospects for human progress, drawing the shadow of a great doubt over the validity of democratic institutions. And until people learn to spot the fanning of mass emotions and the sowing of bitterness, suspicion, and intolerance as crimes in themselves — as perhaps the greatest disservice that can be done to the cause of popular government — this sort of thing will continue to occur.

 * A democracy is peace-loving. It does not like to go to war. It is slow to rise to provocation. When it has once been provoked to the point where it must grasp the sword, it does not easily forgive its adversary for having produced this situation. The fact of the provocation then becomes itself the issue. Democracy fights in anger — it fights for the very reason that it was forced to go to war. It fights to punish the power that was rash enough and hostile enough to provoke it — to teach that power a lesson it will not forget, to prevent the thing from happening again. Such a war must be carried to the bitter end. This is true enough, and, if nations could afford to operate in the moral climate of individual ethics, it would be understandable and acceptable. But I sometimes wonder whether in this respect a democracy is not uncomfortably similar to one of those prehistoric monsters with a body as long as this room and a brain the size of a pin: he lies there in his comfortable primeval mud and pays little attention to his environment; he is slow to wrath — in fact, you practically have to whack his tail off to make him aware that his interests are being disturbed; but, once he grasps this, he lays about him with such blind determination that he not only destroys his adversary but largely wrecks his native habitat. You wonder whether it would not have been wiser for him to have taken a little more interest in what was going on at an earlier date and to have seen whether he could have prevented some of these situations from arising instead of proceeding from an undiscriminating indifference to a holy wrath equally undiscriminating.

Germany

 * Here, for the first time, I felt an unshakable conviction that no momentary military advantage — even if such could have been calculated to exist — could have justified this stupendous, careless destruction of civilian life and of material values, built up laboriously by human hands over the course of centuries for purposes having nothing to do with war. Least of all could it have been justified by the screaming non sequitur: "They did it to us." And it suddenly appeared to me that in these ruins there was an unanswerable symbolism which we in the West could not afford to ignore. If the Western world was really going to make a pretense of a higher moral departure point — of greater sympathy and understanding for the human being as God made him, as expressed not only in himself but in the things he had wrought and cared about — then it had to learn to fight its wars morally as well as militarily, or not fight them at all; for moral principles were a part of its strength. Shorn of this strength, it was no longer itself; its victories were not real victories; and the best it would accomplish in the long run would be to pull down the temple over its own head. The military would stamp this as naïve; they would say that war is war, that when you're in it you fight with every means you have, or go down in defeat. But if that is the case, then there rests upon Western civilization, bitter as this may be, the obligation to be militarily stronger than its adversaries by a margin sufficient to enable it to dispense with those means which can stave off defeat only at the cost of undermining victory.
 * Written in regard to the Allied destruction of Hamburg and other German cities, p. 437

Russia — Seven Years Later (September 1944)

 * The average Russian of mature age today may some day have the moral satisfaction of seeing his government exercise a power unprecedented in history over the land masses of Asia and Europe. But it is not likely that he will ever know the comforts, in the line of housing, clothing, and other conveniences of civilized living, comparable to those that have existed in the advanced countries of the West. That renunciation of comfort is his involuntary contribution to something: either to the future comfort of his own children or to the increased military power of Russia. He hopes — and we hope with him — that it will not be only the latter.

The Kennan Diaries
edited by Frank Costigliola, published in 2014
 * Although the Georgian nationalists do not like Stalin, they have every reason to be thankful to him.
 * The Caucasus, March, 1936

 * This is to me one of the most poignant communities of the world: a great, sad city, where the spark of human genius has always had to penetrate the darkness, the dampness, and the cold in order to make its light felt, and has acquired, for that very reason, a strange warmth, a strange intensity, a strange beauty. I know that in this city, where I have never lived, there has nevertheless, by some strange quirk of fate—a previous life, perhaps?—been deposited a portion of my own capacity to feel and to love, a portion, in other words, of my own life; and that this is something which no American will ever understand and no Russian ever believe.
 * Leningrad, September 1945

 * The dilemma is this: We all know that this aid cannot materially affect the course of events of China. We are obliged to put the bill before Congress by virtue of our past commitments and of the pressures that exist in favor of aid to China.
 * January 27, 1948

 * Talked at lunch with a gentleman just returned from Japan, who told me some disturbing things about the influences behind our policies of extreme democratization and de-concentration of economic life in Japan. Of all the failures of United States policy in the wake of World War II, history will rate as the most grievous our failure to approach realistically the responsibilities of power over the defeated nations which we ourselves courted by the policy of unconditional surrender.
 * January 30, 1948

 * My own position is somewhere in between. I am not sure that the economic arguments for an early step toward real union are very compelling. I have deep feelings, however, about the political necessity of creating in Western Europe an international framework which would bridge national sovereignties to such a degree as to give a different aspect to the German question by providing a home for the German people other than the national home and thus lifting German horizons beyond those national limits with which the Germans have shown themselves so incapable of coping.
 * October 17-21, 1949

 * I am like a person who has placed poison in one of two glasses before a person he loves—and looks back upon his act with horror and incredulity—but still does not know from which glass the person will drink.
 * Princeton, April 2, 1951

 * I have never been any good at training children or dogs; that is why I am no good at training myself.
 * April 6, 1951

 * At one time, I was an actor in the conduct of foreign policy. I became convinced that I was accomplishing nothing in that capacity, that the problems were deeper, that the answer lay in a direct approach to the public and in an effort to explain to the public what it was really about. Today, even that seems futile. Myths and errors are being established in the public mind more rapidly than they can be broken down. The mass media are too much for us. There is nothing that can be done about it. To correct this, you would have to educate the educators. I must say that I have lost all confidence in the freedom of the mass media. The fact of the matter is that in this country McCarthyism has already won, in the sense of making impossible the conduct of an intelligent foreign policy.
 * April 17, 1951

 * Surely one of the reasons for our continued failures throughout these areas [Asia and the Middle East] has been our inability to understand how profound, how irrational, and how erratic has been the reaction generally of the respective peoples to the ideas and impulses that have come to them from the West in recent decades. This applies particularly to the intellectuals who play so prominent a part in political leadership and in the molding of public opinion. To ascertain the reasons for the intensely anti-American attitudes manifested by these people would be to delve deeply into psychological reactions and the origins of various forms of neuroses. I have thoughts about these matters, but will not take up your time with them here. Only one thing I would emphasize. The respective reactions are obviously emotional and subconscious, and not likely to be altered by any attempts on our part to meet them by any verbal appeal to rational processes.
 * January 23, 1952

Misattributed

 * Heroism is endurance for one moment more.
 * This was an old saying of mountaineers of the Caucasus which Kennan quoted in a 1921 letter to Henry Munroe Rogers, as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 16th Edition, and in Mental Disorders In The Social Environment : Critical Perspectives (2005) by Stuart A. Kirk, p. 31

Quotes about Kennan

 * It was his enormous curiosity that kept him alive so long. He had an enormous interest in the world, and I remember, even toward the end, he would get so angry at the paper, angry at the TV.
 * His oldest daughter, Grace Kennan, after his death at the age of 101, as quoted in "Known worldwide, at home in Princeton" in The Daily Princetonian (21 March 2005)
 * Concerned about Communism on the global level, and about the stability of Europe and the future of Germany, the Americans, both government and public, did not intend to repeat their interwar isolationism when they had not responded to the expansion of Nazi Germany and, without getting the blame, had, in practice, been prominent among the appeasers. Containment as a concept that was to be applied in American political and military strategy received its intellectual rationale in 1947 from George Kennan, the acting head of the American diplomatic mission in Moscow. The emphasis on inherent Soviet antagonism under Stalin in Kennan’s ‘long telegram’ of 22 February 1946 had an impact in Washington and elsewhere. Kennan’s thesis was understood as advocating containment, a view also taken by the Canadian Escott Reid. Kennan followed up with a ‘Mr X’ article, drawing on the ‘long telegram’, in Foreign Affairs in April 1947, an article that made much use of the word containment. In 1947, Kennan, who argued that the division of Europe was reversible, became Director of Policy Planning in the State Department. The concept of containment was developed with the Truman government advancing the idea of America’s perimeter of vital interests. The perimeter was to be consolidated by the establishment of regional security pacts, notably the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), created in 1949.
 * Jeremy Black, The Cold War: A New History (2015)

 * The Great Siberian Road has been feelingly described by Mr. Kennan.
 * Catherine Breshkovsky in The Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution edited by Alice Stone Blackwell 1918

 * [His ideas] were misinterpreted both by those who shared them as well as by those who rejected them.
 * Zbigniew Brzezinski

 * The hagiography of George Kennan’s foreign policy acumen omits some blemishes on his record. For all of his conceptual clarity, Kennan erred in many of his predictions. He opposed the creation of NATO, the most successful alliance in world history. By the early 1990s, when he wrote Around the Cragged Hill, he clearly believed the United States was doomed to decline. Asserting that the United States was devoid of “any sort of discriminating administration,” he proposed several democracy-restricting measures. And the less said about Kennan’s view of non-WASPs, the better. While Kennan was a brilliant analyst of the Soviet Union, he evinced little understanding of his own country.
 * Daniel Drezner, The Ideas Industry (2017), Chap. 1 : Do Ideas Even Matter?
 * This new firmness in Washington coincided with a search for explanations of Soviet behavior: why had the Grand Alliance broken apart? What else did Stalin want? The best answer came from George F. Kennan, a respected but still junior Foreign Service officer serving in the American embassy in Moscow. In what he subsequently acknowledged was an "outrageous encumberment of the telegraphic process," Kennan responded to the latest in a long series of State Department queries with a hastily composed 8,000-word cable, dispatched on February 22, 1946. To say that it made an impact in Washington would be to put it mildly: Kennan's "long telegram" became the basis for United States strategy toward the Soviet Union throughout the rest of the Cold War. Moscow's intransigence, Kennan insisted, resulted from nothing the West had done: instead it reflected the internal necessities of the Stalinist regime, and nothing the West could do within the foreseeable future would alter that fact. Soviet leaders had to treat the outside world as hostile because this provided the only excuse "for the dictatorship without which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they did not dare not to inflict, for sacrifices they felt bound to demand." To expect concessions to be reciprocated was to be naive: there would be no change in the Soviet Unions strategy until it encountered a sufficiently long string of failures to convince some future Kremlin leader—Kennan held out little hope that Stalin would ever see this—that his nations behavior was not advancing its interests. War would not be necessary to produce this result. What would be needed, as Kennan put it in a published version of his argument the following year, was a "long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies."
 * John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (2005), p. 29

 * In the winter of that year (1890) the radical ranks were aroused over the report brought from Siberia by George Kennan, an American journalist. His account of the harrowing conditions of the Russian political prisoners and exiles moved even the American press to lengthy comments.
 * Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931)

 * Very well known representatives of your society, such as George Kennan, say: We cannot apply moral criteria to politics. Thus, we mix good and evil, right and wrong, and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world. On the contrary, only moral criteria can help the West against communism's well planned world strategy. There are no other criteria. Practical or occasional considerations of any kind will inevitably be swept away by strategy. After a certain level of the problem has been reached, legalistic thinking induces paralysis; it prevents one from seeing the size and meaning of events. In spite of the abundance of information, or maybe because of it, the West has difficulties in understanding reality such as it is. There have been naive predictions by some American experts who believed that Angola would become the Soviet Union's Vietnam or that Cuban expeditions in Africa would best be stopped by special U.S. courtesy to Cuba. Kennan's advice to his own country -- to begin unilateral disarmament -- belongs to the same category. If you only knew how the youngest of the Kremlin officials laugh at your political wizards. As to Fidel Castro, he frankly scorns the United States, sending his troops to distant adventures from his country right next to yours.
 * Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "A World Split Apart" 8 June 1978

 * Churchill’s warning was echoed by a young and talented US diplomat, George F. Kennan, who had served in Moscow during the war. Kennan’s Long Telegram, as it became known, sent from Moscow on 22 February 1946 to the State Department, became an influential, widely distributed document in the Administration. In it Kennan described Moscow’s policy as inherently aggressive and expansionist because of its Marxist-Leninist ideology. While the Russian people preferred peace, they were held hostage by a party that exploited traditional Russian insecurities against the more advanced parts of Europe. The past had told Russians that only through destroying an enemy could security be achieved. And the current Soviet aim was to weaken foreign powers, through splits and subversion, until Moscow’s predominance was complete.
 * Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (2017)
 * George Kennan’s message was more a summing up of where many US policy-makers were already heading than an innovative policy prescription. It was also in parts contradictory: the Soviets were inherently aggressive but also able to compromise. But for officials hungry for ways of explaining an increasingly complicated world, it resonated. In spite of some compromises being reached at the Paris foreign ministers’ meeting, other worries, such as a new flare-up of the Greek civil war and new Soviet demands on Turkey, darkened the picture in late 1946. Truman was increasingly concerned that the Soviets were planning to take control of the Black Sea Straits and help the Communists win in Greece. Such a breakthrough would put the Soviet Union in control of the eastern Mediterranean. It would also be a serious blow to Britain, the traditionally predominant power there, at a time when the British domestic economic situation seemed to be going from bad to worse. In a calculated attempt at getting the United States to back up London’s interests in deeds as well as words, the British Labour government formally appealed to Truman for assistance.
 * Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A World History (2017)

 * The original purpose of this essay was to clear up confusion about George Kennan's containment policy, to determine what Mr. "X" really meant. However, after thoroughly analyzing the record for 1944-47, one is left with the unsatisfying conclusion that Kennan did not fully recognize the implications of his own policy. His mastery of the English language is undeniable, but one should not confuse the gift of expression with clarity of thought. In fact, this gift may have been one of his problems, for according to colleagues, once Kennan committed ideas to paper the could become "intellectually locked in." Being a stylist, he was reluctant to alter his analysis or the flow of his language.
 * C. Ben Wright, "Mr. "X" and Containment", Slavic Review, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Mar., 1976)

title: George F. Kennan


text:
Bull Durham

Bull Durham is a 1988 comedy about a fan (who has an affair with one minor-league baseball player each season) that meets an up-and-coming pitcher and the experienced catcher assigned to him.
 * Directed and written by Ron Shelton.

It's all about sex and sport. What else is there? Taglines

Annie Savoy

 * [Opening narration] I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. [sigh] But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology.

 * You see, there's no guilt in baseball, and it's never borin' [giggle] - which makes it like sex. There's never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn't have the best year of his career. Makin' love is like hitting a baseball, you just gotta relax and concentrate. Besides, I'd never sleep with a player hitting under .250, unless he had a lot of RBIs or was a great glove man up the middle.

 * You see, there's a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. I can expand their minds. Sometimes when I've got a ballplayer alone, I'll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him. And the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. Of course, a guy'll listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay. I make them feel confident, and they make me feel safe - and pretty. Of course, what I give them lasts a lifetime. What they give me lasts 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade, but bad trades are part of baseball. Now who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for God's sake! It's a long season, and you gotta trust it. I've tried them all, I really have. And the only church that truly feeds the soul day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.

 * This is the damndest season I've ever had; the Durham Bulls can't lose and I can't get laid!

 * [narrating] Baseball may be a religion full of magic, cosmic truth, and the fundamental ontological riddles of our time, but it's also a job.

 * [narrating] The world's made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness.

 * [narrating] "Full many a flower's born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air." - Thomas Gray...or William Cullen Bryant, I don't know. I get them mixed up.

 * [Closing narration] Walt Whitman once said, "I see great things in baseball. It's our game, the American game. It will repair our losses and be a blessing to us." You could look it up.

Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh

 * [Describing his first night with Annie] We didn't fuck. She just read poetry to me all night. It was more tiring than fucking.

 * "Limping jets of love"...Hey, Crash. Does that mean what I think it means, "limping jets of love"?

 * [Wearing Annie's garter belt under his uniform for the first time] This underwear feels kinda sexy...that don't make me queer, right? Right.

 * Why does he want me to throw the heat again, I just threw it. No, don't think, Meat, just give him the gas.

 * [Gives up a hit in a close game] Shit, piss, fuck!

 * A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.

Crash Davis

 * [To LaLoosh] Your shower shoes have fungus on them. You'll never make it to the bigs with fungus on your shower shoes. Think classy, you'll be classy. If you win 20 in the Show, you can let the fungus grow back on your shower shoes and the press'll think you're colorful. Until you win 20 in the Show, however, it means you're a slob.

 * [Turns on the sprinklers on a ball field] Oh my goodness, we've got ourselves a natural disaster!

 * [Adjusts Nuke's garter belt] The rose goes on the front, big guy.

 * [To the batter after Nuke ignores his signs] This sonofabitch's pitching a 2-hit shutout and he's shaking me off, you believe that shit? Charlie, here comes the deuce, and when you speak of me, speak well.

 * Never fuck with a winning streak.

 * [Complaining to an umpire] That was a cocksucking call!

 * You know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It's 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at-bats is fifty points, okay? There's six months in a season, that's about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week, just one; A gork, a groundball—you get a groundball with eyes—you get a dying quail...just one more dying quail a week, and you're in Yankee Stadium.

 * I've been known on occasion to howl at the moon.

 * [Repeated line] C'mon, Meat. Bring me that weak-ass shit.

Dialogue

 * [Skip catches LaLoosh and Millie together in the clubhouse]
 * Skip: Jesus, Ebby, this is your professional debut, tonight! A million guys would give their left nut to be in your shoes, and you're leaving your fastball in the locker room in some piece of ass!
 * Millie: Skip, it's me! I'm not some quote, "piece of ass", unquote.
 * Skip: Ah, Millie, sorry, didn't recognize you. And, don't take this personally, Millie, but if I catch you in here again, I'm banning you from the ballpark.
 * Millie: You can't ban me from the ballpark, 'cause my daddy donated that scoreboard, and if you ban me, he just might take that scoreboard away.
 * Skip: Well, what do we need a scoreboard for? We haven't scored any runs all year.

 * Annie: Millie, you've got to stay out of the clubhouse. It'll just get everybody in trouble.
 * Millie: I got lured.
 * Annie: You did not get "lured". Women never get lured. They're too strong and powerful for that. Now say it - "I didn't get lured and I will take responsibility for my actions".
 * Millie: I didn't get lured and I will take responsibility for my actions.
 * Annie: That's better.

 * [After LaLoosh throws a couple of wild pitches to start the game, Annie writes a note]
 * Millie: What's it say?
 * Annie: It says he's not bending his back enough on his follow-through. Donny? Baby, take this to Ebby Calvin. [Donny takes the note] Right, honey, let's get down to it. How was Ebby Calvin LaLoosh?
 * Millie: Well, he fucks like he pitches: Sorta all over the place.

 * [Crash walks into Skip's office]
 * Larry: Who are you? [To Skip] Who's he?
 * Crash: I'm the player to be named later.
 * Skip: Crash Davis? I'm Joe Riggins. [Shakes Crash's hand]
 * Crash: And you, Larry Hockett, should recognize me, cause five years ago in the Texas League, you were pitching for El Paso, I was batting clean-up for Shreveport. You hung a curveball on a 0-2 pitch in a 3-2 game in the bottom of the 8th, and I tattooed it over the Michelin Tire sign and beat you 4-3.
 * Larry: [grins] Yeah, I remember, I should've thrown a slider. Damn, Crash, how you doing?
 * Crash: I'm too old for this shit. Why the hell am I back in A–Ball?
 * Skip: 'Cause of Ebby Calvin LaLoosh. Big club's got a hundred grand in him.
 * Larry: He's got a million dollar arm, and a five cent head.
 * Skip: Had a gun on him tonight. The last five pitches he threw were faster that the first five, He has the best young arm I've seen in 30 years. You've been around. You're smart, professional. We want you to mature the kid. We want you to room with him on the road, stay on his case all year. He could go all the way.
 * Crash: Where can I go?
 * Skip: You can keep going to the ballpark, and keep getting paid to do it. Beats the hell out of working at Sears.
 * Larry: Sears sucks, Crash. I worked there once, sold an old lady Kenmores. Nasty. Nasty business.
 * Skip: And even if it is the Carolina League, it's a chance to play every day.
 * Crash: You don't want a ballplayer; you want a stable pony.
 * Skip: Nah.
 * Crash: Well, my Triple-A contract gets bought out so I can hold some flavor-of-the-month's dick in the bus leagues, is that it? Well, fuck this fucking game! [pause] I quit, all right? I fucking quit.
 * [Crash exits the office and stands in the clubhouse for a minute before sticking his head back through the door]
 * Crash: Who we play tomorrow?
 * Skip: Winston-Salem. Batting practice at 11:30.

 * Nuke: [After he has challenged Crash to a fight] I don't hit no man first.
 * Crash: All right, then, [throws him a baseball] hit me in the chest with that.
 * Nuke: I'd kill you!
 * Crash: Yeah?! From what I hear, you couldn't hit water if you fell out of a fucking boat! [the crowd that has gathered laughs] Come on; right here, right in the chest!
 * Nuke: No way!
 * Crash: C'mon, Meat! Throw it! You know you're not gonna hit me, cause you've already started to think about it, eh?! Thinkin' about how embarrassing it would be to miss in front of all these people, how somebody might laugh?! Come on, Meat, show us that million-dollar arm, 'Cause I got a good idea about that five-cent head of yours!
 * [Nuke throws the ball and misses Crash by several feet, breaking a window]
 * Crash: Ball four.
 * Nuke: Who the fuck are you, man?!
 * [Nuke charges at Crash, who drops him with one punch to the face]
 * Nuke: Good punch...
 * Crash: I'm Crash Davis; I'm your new catcher, and you just got lesson number one: Don't think. You can only hurt the ball club.

 * Annie: These are the ground rules. I hook up with one guy a season. Usually takes me a couple weeks to pick the guy - kinda my own spring training. And, well, you two are the most promising prospects of the season so far, so I just thought we should kinda get to know each other.
 * Crash: Time out. Why do you get to choose?
 * Annie: What?
 * Crash: Why do you get to choose? I mean, why don't I get to choose, why doesn't he get to choose?
 * Annie: Well, actually, nobody on this planet ever really chooses each other. I mean, it's all a question of quantum physics, molecular attraction, and timing. Why, there are laws we don't understand that bring us together and tear us apart. Uh, it's like pheromones. You get three ants together, they can't do dick. You get 300 million of them, they can build a cathedral.
 * [Crash laughs]
 * Nuke: So is somebody going to go to bed with somebody or what?
 * Annie: Honey, you are a regular nuclear meltdown. You better cool off. Ha ha, ha ha!
 * [Crash gets up to leave]
 * Annie: Oh, where are you going?
 * Crash: After 12 years in the minor leagues, I don't try out. Besides, uh, I don't believe in quantum physics when it comes to matters of the heart.
 * Annie: What do you believe in, then?
 * Crash: Well, I believe in the soul. The cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing AstroTurf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. [pause] Goodnight.
 * Annie: Oh my. Crash...
 * Nuke: Hey, Annie, what's all this molecule stuff?

 * Crash: Relax, all right? Don't try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they're fascist. Throw some ground balls - it's more democratic.
 * Nuke: [to himself] What's this guy know about pitching? If he's so good how come he's been in the minors for the last ten years? If he's so good how come Annie wants me instead of him?
 * Crash: [turns back] Oh, hey, and another thing, Meat. You don't know shit, all right? If you wanna make it to the bigs, you'll listen to me. Annie only wants you so she can boss you around, got it? So relax! Let's have some fun out here! This game's fun, OK? Fun goddamnit. And don't hold the ball so hard, OK? It's an egg. Hold it like an egg.
 * Nuke: [to himself again] What's he know about fun? I'm young. I know about fun. An old man. He don't know nothin' about fun.
 * Crash: [behind the plate again] All right. Nobody's goin' out there. [Crash calls for a curve ball]
 * Nuke: [to himself] Why's he calling for a curve ball? I want to bring heat. Shake him off. Throw what you want.
 * [Crash gives Nuke the sign for the pitch, Nuke shakes his head again.]
 * Crash: Timeout. [Walks to the mound] Hey! Why are you shaking me off? Huh?
 * Nuke: I want to bring the heater. Announce my presence with authority.
 * Crash: To announce your what!?
 * Nuke: Announce my presence with authority!
 * Crash: To announce your fucking presence with authority?! This guy's a first-ball, fastball hitter, he's looking for the heat.
 * Nuke: So what? He ain't seen my heat.
 * Crash: All right, Meat. Give him your heat. [He walks back to his place behind the plate.]
 * Nuke: Why's he always calling me Meat? I'm the guy driving a Porsche.
 * Crash: [to the batter at the plate] Fastball.
 * [Nuke throws it and the batter hits a home run. The batter stands there, watching.]
 * Crash: What are you doin'? Huh? What are you doing standing here? I gave you a gift. You stand here showing up my pitcher? Run, dummy! [to the umpire] Gimme a ball. [the umpire tosses a new baseball to Crash and he walks over to Nuke with it on the pitching mound] Well, he really hit the shit outta that one, didn't he? [laughs]
 * Nuke: [softly, infuriated] I held it like an egg.
 * Crash: Yeah, and he scrambled the son of a bitch. Look at that, he hit the fucking bull! Guy gets a free steak! [laughs] You having fun yet?
 * Nuke: Oh, yeah. Havin' a blast.
 * Crash: Good.
 * Nuke: God, that sucker teed off on that like he knew I was gonna throw a fastball!
 * Crash: He did know.
 * Nuke: How?
 * Crash: I told him.

 * Reporter: So, how does it feel to get your first professional win?
 * Nuke: It feels "out there", I mean it's a major rush. [Grabs the reporter's recorder and continues talking into it] I mean, it doesn't just feel "out there", I mean it feels out there, you know? Um, kind of radical in a kind of tubular way, you know? But, most of all, it's out there...
 * Crash: [Watching nearby] This is hopeless. This is utterly fucking hopeless.

 * Skip: You guys...you lollygag the ball around the infield! You lollygag your way down to first! You lollygag in and out of the dugout! Do you know what that makes you? Larry?!
 * Larry: Lollygaggers!
 * Skip: Lollygaggers! What's our record, Larry?
 * Larry: 8-16.
 * Skip: 8-16...How did we ever win eight?
 * Larry: It's a miracle.
 * Skip: It's a miracle. This is a simple game: You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball. You got it?!

 * Nuke: How come you don't like me?
 * Crash: Because you don't respect yourself, which is your problem. But you don't respect the game, and that's my problem. You got a gift.
 * Nuke: I got a what?
 * Crash: You got a gift. When you were a baby, the Gods reached down and turned your right arm into a thunderbolt. You got a Hall-of-Fame arm, but you're pissing it away.
 * Nuke: I ain't pissing nothing away. I got a Porsche already; a 911 with a quadrophonic Blaupunkt.
 * Crash: Christ, you don't need a quadrophonic Blaupunkt, what you need is a curveball! In the Show, everyone can hit a fastball.
 * Nuke: Well, how would you know? YOU been in the majors? Pft!
 * Crash: ...Yeah, I've been in the majors. [Players mutter in surprise]
 * Player: You were in the Show, man?
 * Crash: Yeah, I was in the Show. I was in the Show for 21 days once. The twenty-one greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the Show? Somebody else carries your bags, it's great. You hit white balls for batting practice. Ballparks are like cathedrals. The hotels all have room service. The women all have long legs and brains.
 * Player: They're really hot, huh?
 * Crash: And so are the pitchers. They throw ungodly breaking stuff in the Show. Exploding sliders. [To LaLoosh] You could be one of those guys. Nuke could be one of those guys, but you don't give a fuck, Meat.
 * Nuke: Listen I am sick and fucking tired of you calling me "Meat". Do you wanna step outside?
 * Crash: Yeah, I'll step outside!
 * [Nuke and Crash start fighting, Larry runs to the back of the bus to break it up]
 * Larry: Hey, hey, hey, hey! Crash! What's up?
 * Nuke: I was- I was just gonna ask Crash to show me how to throw a breaking ball
 * Larry: Good idea. Good idea. Here, here, here, anybody got a ball? Who's got a ball?

 * [After Nuke finally pitches a scoreless inning, he and Crash sit next to each other in the dugout]
 * Nuke: That was great, huh?
 * Crash: Your fastball's up, your curveball's hanging; in the Show, they would've ripped you.
 * Nuke: Can't you even let me enjoy the moment?
 * Crash: The moment's over.

 * Nuke: I love winning, I fucking love winning! You know what I'm saying? It's, like, better than losing? Teach me something new, man, I need to learn. Teach me something.
 * Crash: Well, you got something to write with? Good, it's time to work on your interviews.
 * Nuke: My interviews? What do I gotta do?
 * Crash: You're gonna have to learn your cliches. You're gonna have to study them, you're gonna have to learn them, you're gonna have to know them. They're your friends. Write this down: "We gotta play 'em one day at a time."
 * Nuke: [writing] "Got to play..." Pretty boring.
 * Crash: Of course it's boring, that's the point. Write it down.
 * Nuke: "One...day...at a time."
 * Crash: Alright, "I'm just happy to be here, hope I can help the ball club." [Nuke looks at him] I know, WRITE IT DOWN. "I just want to give it my best shot and--the Good Lord willing--things will work out."
 * Nuke: [writing] “Good... Lord... willing...”
 * Nuke and Crash: “Things will work out”
 * Crash: How’s Annie?
 * Nuke: She’s getting pretty steamed, actually, because I’m still re-channeling my sexual energy. Think I’m just gonna cave-in and sleep with her, you know? Calm her down.
 * Crash: Are you out of your mind?
 * Nuke: What-
 * Crash: Are you out of your mind!?
 * Nuke: I’m not gonna-
 * Crash: You give in now you might start losing. Huh? Never fuck with a winning streak.

 * Nuke: You're playing with my mind.
 * Annie: I'm trying to play with your body.
 * Nuke: I knew it, you're trying to seduce me!
 * Annie: Well of course I'm trying to seduce you, for God's sake, and I'm doing a damn poor job of it... Aren't I pretty?
 * Nuke: God, I think you're real cute.
 * Annie: Cute? Baby ducks are cute, I HATE cute! I want to be exotic, and mysterious!
 * Nuke: You are, you're exotic, and mysterious, and... cute... and... That's why I'd better leave.

 * Crash: I never told him to stay out of your bed.
 * Annie: You most certainly did.
 * Crash: I never told him to stay out of your bed.
 * Annie: Yes you did.
 * Crash: I told him that a player on a streak has to respect the streak.
 * Annie: Oh fine.
 * Crash: You know why? Because they don't–they don't happen very often.
 * Annie: Right.
 * Crash: If you believe you're playing well because you're getting laid, or because you're not getting laid, or because you wear women's underwear, then you are! And you should know that!
 * [long pause]
 * Crash: Come on, Annie, think of something clever to say, huh? Something full of magic, religion, bullshit. Come on, dazzle me.
 * Annie: I want you.

 * [Larry jogs out to the mound to break up a players' conference]
 * Larry: Excuse me, but what the hell's going on out here?
 * Crash: Well, Nuke's scared because his eyelids are jammed and his old man's here. We need a live... is it a live rooster?
 * [Jose nods]
 * Crash: We need a live rooster to take the curse off Jose's glove and nobody seems to know what to get Millie or Jimmy for their wedding present. [to the players] Is that about right?
 * [the players nod]
 * Crash: We're dealing with a lot of shit.
 * Larry: Okay, well, uh... candlesticks always make a nice gift, and uh, maybe you could find out where she's registered and maybe a place-setting or maybe a silverware pattern. Okay, let's get two! Go get 'em.

 * Radio announcer: I've never seen Crash so angry, and frankly, sports fans, he used a certain word that's a no-no with umpires.
 * [Annie turns off the radio]
 * Millie: Crash must've called the guy a "cocksucker".
 * Annie: God, he's so romantic.

 * Annie: I think probably with my love of four-legged creatures and hooves and everything, that in another lifetime I was probably Catherine the Great, or Francis of Assisi. I'm not sure which one. What do you think?
 * Crash: How come in former lifetimes, everybody is someone famous?
 * [Annie and Crash pause, then both laugh]
 * Crash: [still laughing] I mean, how come nobody ever says they were Joe Schmo?
 * Annie: Because it doesn't work that way, you fool!

Taglines

 * A Major League love story in a Minor League town.
 * It's all about sex and sport. What else is there?
 * Romance is a lot like baseball. It's not whether you win or lose. It's how you play the game.
 * A movie about America's other favorite pastime.

Cast

 * Kevin Costner - Crash Davis
 * Susan Sarandon - Annie Savoy
 * Tim Robbins - Ebby Calvin 'Nuke' LaLoosh
 * Trey Wilson - Joe 'Skip' Riggins
 * Robert Wuhl - Larry Hockett
 * William O'Leary - Jimmy
 * Jenny Robertson - Millie
 * Danny Gans - Deke
 * Max Patkin - Himself

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Bull Durham


text:
User talk:67.186.107.189

~ MosheZadka (Talk) 18:32, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:67.186.107.189


text:
Peter de Noronha

Peter de Noronha (19 April 1897 – 24 July 1970) was a prominent citizen of Kanpur, India. He was knighted by Pope Paul VI in 1965.

The Pageant of Life (1964)
A major collection of his thoughts was published in his book

On Planning for a Better World

 * (Pages 11-13)

 * Planning is undoubtedly necessary to ensure progress. If Nations and Peoples are finding it difficult to fulfil their own Plans, then who is going to be so presumptuous as to plan for the whole world? In these times of Cold Wars and Bamboo and Iron Curtains do we suppose one Nation will sit idly by and let another take the initiative in this respect? Even suppose the impossible does occur do you think the other Nations will accept the Plan of another with whom they are outwardly in peaceful contact?

 * This subject of Planning in the economic sphere is discussed in a separate paper. We will here deal only with the spiritual angle.

 * Man is a free agent, not in many things but in all things, subject, of course, to the requirements of the Natural and the Moral Law. In fact, Man is so free that he can even defy and disobey his Creator. Man's freedom is however conditioned by rules of safety, morality etc., which counsel him that he may not do certain things. This is not however, a negation of Freedom.

 * People state that the World is marching towards a prescribed goal laid down by the Creator, which means that no matter how brilliant the achievements of man may be, he can exert no influence whatever  on the final result. No doubt man is a puny and insignificant creature in contrast with God, but If I were just to play a passive part like the animals, there would be no justification in endowing him with a free will and creating him to the image and likeness of His Creator. He could have been a Superior Animal only.

 * Look up and below and all round and see the wonderful creations of God, not only our earth but the whole host of celestial worlds, planets, constellations etc. – many still unknown to us. See with what minute precision and order they move and are regulated. Only God could have created them. Ev all the accumulated genius of Mankind from the time of Creation through eons and eons of time and even to the end of existence, were all pooled together, yet it would not be able to evolve even a fraction of this order. God only could do so, and without him it would be utter chaos.

 * So again, if the goal is already prescribed, none of the Plans proposed by man could be of any avail. Then why Plan? This is a cul-de-sac, but fortunately there is a way out. Man has to Plan but his Planning must be in conformity with God's Will.

On Suffering

 * (Pages 32 - 33 & 33- 34)

 * Some one has said, 'Through struggle and suffering man can pass from the freedom to choose j or evil to the higher freedom that abides in the steadfastly chosen good." And again the "Gita" in ( II Ver. 27 states that our existence is brief and death is certain and that our human dignity requin to accept pain and suffering for the sake of the right.

 * Suffering is an excellent teacher, and Aeschylus says, "We learn by sufferings. "We are easily] up; sufferings keep us humble. We easily turn to worldly things. Sufferings make us turn to ( love ourselves; sufferings teach us to love God."

 * On grounds of sheer character formation, the patient endurance of pain brings out in a man ( that enhance and ennoble his character. There is no finer man than a man who 'can take ft'J self-sacrificing care of invalids, of the sick, of the aged, is one of the most refining factors in the\ realm of human experience. Thoroughbreds don't cry and pain can be a blessed thing

The drooping bud does not rejoice the onlooker but the smiling Rose, though encased in thorns. The bud evokes our pity but it is the fragrant Rose that is a joy to behold. Are you a drooping bud or a smiling Rose when suffering or pain comes your way?
 * Remember that sufferings like medals have also a reverse side and ponder over the words of blind Helen Keller" Although the world is full of sufferings, it is full of the overcoming of it."

On Promiscuity & Continence

 * (Pages 37-38)

 * The state of affairs in other Countries, which claim to be more highly advanced and progressive, is much worse. There it is stated that no man or woman approaches Marriage as a virgin. This is the direct result of provocative publicity. The case of the male is perhaps worse, for he boasts he cannot even recollect the number or wild oats he has sown and which is considered as a Passport to manhood (sic). Others again have disgraced their humanity in disgusting unnatural offences, which they are now trying to make their Governments legalise, and finally others again are subject to the Oedipus complex.

 * This naturally leads us to the subject to Continence. Our soi-disant manly man with a false sneer of bravado and utter lack of stability considers that Continence is not possible, and like the ostrich tries to hide from the truth. For not only is Continence possible but it is practiced with brilliant success, voluntarily, by hundreds and hundreds of men and women in all walks of life and by all castes and creeds. (Please note the stress on the word voluntarily.) But its attainment needs courage and determination of the highest degree and which is naturally out of the reach of our flabby indolent moderns, who succumb to the slightest temptation and want to drag everyone down to their own low moral levels.

On Income Tax

 * (Pages 42-43)

 * Let us delve a little deeper into the matter of Income Tax. The long-suffering Public are blamed and where discovered heavily penalised for submitting wrong returns. No doubt there are many black sheep, as in all other walks of life, who deliberately do so, but, however, it is true that most of those who adopt this unsavory practice have been forced to do so. Let us consider what happens.

 * The party first makes a correct return to the best of his ability but is considered to be a simpleton and fool. His word or explanations are not accepted or are looked upon with suspicion by the Assessing Authority, who may be his inferior perhaps in status. Arbitrary and unwarranted deductions are made and the poor party is unfairly over-assessed without hope of getting any proper relief. If he appeals the Superior Officer supports his subordinate and it may take years, expense and the ruling of a High Court to see that Justice is done. So what can be the result in such a case? At the next encounter you may be sure the party will be ready to match his skill against his instigator and to throw as many red herrings as he can on the trail. It will now require all the subtlety, knowledge and acumen of the authorities to arrive at the proper conclusion, and failure is generally the result. Lakhs of rupees of Income Tax dues remain outstanding and years of litigation follow and eventually the Tax is time-barred and non recoverable.

On Anger

 * (Pages 44 -45,45- 46)

 * Mr. Nixon, the [late] Vice-President of the U.S.A., has said that the time to lose one's temper is when it is deliberate, whilst another wiseacre has stated, "Speak when you are angry and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret."

 * Taking an example from Nature – One of the strangest facts about bees is that as soon as they sting anyone, they are doomed to die after a little while. The sting is attached to their intestines so that when they leave it in any other body, life become impossible for the bee that has stung. This is precisely what happens when one is angry.

 * Many advocate aids to check Anger; the commonest being to count ten before you start; but if not constant, you tend to turn into the man who used to count ten before he lost his temper, but later counted in two's to get there quicker.

 * Of Anger the Dhamnapada says, "He who holds back rising anger like a rolling chariot, him I call, a real driver, other people are but holding the reins."

On The Gita

 * (Pages 63 - 64)

 * A first reading of the "Bhagwat Gita" reveals that it preaches a gospel of complete detachment. A more intensified reading confirms this opinion but reveals some really beautiful verses which require careful understanding and implementation.

 * The substance of the teaching of the "Gita" is contained in Chapter XI Ver. 55, which translated reads: " He who does work for me, he who looks upon Me as his goal, he who worships me, free from attachment, he who is free from enmity to all creatures, he goes to me."

 * Human perfection is a sort of marriage between high thought and just action. This must form man's aim according to the "Gita".

 * A Sanskrit Scholar, J.W. Hauer, speaking of the central message of the "Gita" says, "We are not called to solve the meaning of life, but to find out the deed demanded by us and to work, and so by action to master the riddle of life." Whilst Sanskara says that the essential purpose of the "Gita" is to teach us a way out of bondage and not merely enjoin action.

On Problem Solving

 * (Page 98)

 * The safest refuge when dealing with urgent, ticklish problems is sought in shirking responsibility, in gaining time by the formation of Committees, with the requisite Sub-Committees to tackle the problem. It is the well-known practice of Promise, Pause, Prepare, Postpone and end by letting things alone. But this cannot last for ever. Now the secret of these Committees is that they consist of a group of men, who individually can do nothing, but collectively can meet and decide that nothing can be done, whilst they know that the best Sub-Committees consist of three persons, two of whom are always absent!

 * Further it is mentioned that if you want to kill an idea in the world today, get a Committee working on it. Adds J.B. Hughes, "If Moses had been a Committee, the Israelites would still be in Egypt."

On Politicians

 * (Pages 110, 111)

 * The Politician uses the language of diplomacy of which he is a master, and it consists in telling some of the truth without necessarily exhausting it. This is a most subtle and potent weapon in his well-stocked armory. For when a woman says, "no", she means "perhaps", when she says, "perhaps", she means "yes", if she says, "yes", she is no lady; but it is different with a Politician; when he says, "yes", he means "perhaps", if he says, "perhaps," he means "no", but if he says, "no", he is no politician.

 * The polls are the place where Politicians claim the lime-light. They fulminate with garnished oratory, display inherent and affected charm and poise and ingenuity in tackling hecklers and evading responses to tricky questions and acquire the knack of telling an untruth with utmost conviction.

 * Polls are after all places where you stand in line for a chance to decide who will spend your money, and where the Candidate stands for what people will fall for.

On Lawyers

 * (Pages 118-119)

 * Honest and peace-loving people shun the Courts and are prepared to suffer loss rather than fall into a Lawyer's clutches. However, the vagaries and inconsistencies of human nature are such that people are unwillingly dragged in and the experiences they undergo leave an indelible and nauseating impression. One of these is the flagrant and plausible manner in which clients are fleeced, and snowed under a series of documents and forms which not only puzzle them, but which are always accompanied with demands for payment. There is, of course, the Lawyer's fee, but this is accompanied with the fees of his clerk (real or imaginary), then typing charges, copying charges and numerous other innumerable heads and sub-heads. In this context it is refreshing to recall that eminent legal luminary, the late Pt. Motilal Nehru was paid Rs. 5/- as his first fee and the remuneration of Dr. John Mathai was a bunch of bananas. These latter have increased immeasurably in value and are good foreign exchange getters and it is not so easy now to slip on a banana peel!

Businessmen

 * ( 138-139)

 * In former days this maxim was displayed in Business Offices, "Call upon a Businessman, at business hours, on business only. Go about your business and thus enable him to finish his own business. This is purely a business matter." There are two reasons why some people don't mind their own business; one is that they haven't any mind and the other that they haven't any business. However, now the Businessman is plagued at all hours by a spate of visitors with no business in view, who just drop in for free information or hospitality and more often than not for contributions to all sorts of charities, often of doubtful flavour or unauthorised.
 * Peter de Noronha, The Pageant of Life (1964), Pages 134-135,
 * Visson has said, "Today's profits are yesterday's good will ripened," and though friendship is no basis for Business yet Business is an excellent basis for lasting friendship. To cement this friendship the Businessman recalls the fact that the memory of quality remains long after the price is forgotten, and keeps Buskin's dictum in mind that there is nothing in this world that cannot be made a little worse and sold a little cheaper. While it is equally true that men will make a beaten path to your door to acquire a better quality article even if it be a mouse trap. Nevertheless, a man is known by the Company he floats, or the Secretaries he employs, though the latter fluctuate more than the market, especially if of the gentler sex!

On Teachers & Education

 * (Pages 144 -145, 149 - 150)

 * There are some silly canards that die hard and some that should have been buried long ago such as 'Those that can, do; those as cannot, teach," or the definition of a Professor as a man whose job is to tell students how to solve the problem of life, which he himself has tried to avoid by becoming a Professor; or the more hurtful one that a Professor is a text book wired for sound.

 * This vocation is sometimes termed a harried one and it is said that the abuse of School-masters was scribbled on the Pyramids long before the Monument was complete and that the general hatred and contempt for the pedagogue dates back to the very beginning of recorded things. These and other similar foolish accusations are the additional burden this class of people have to bear. Consider the gibe of that arch-cynic G.B.S., "When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else, who has no aptitude for it and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman."

 * It has also been said that your Education has been a failure no matter how much it has done for you, if it has failed to open your heart. Dr. Zakir Hussain, when Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh University, said, that the aim of Education was that students should become responsible citizens and not merely bundles of styles and sophistication like articles in a furniture shop – the product now being churned out lacks even that saving grace..... The old system may have produced 'snobs' what is being spewed out now are 'slobs'. The young student in Indian Schools is being smothered under a dead weight of books and notes dealing with a host of subjects imaginable and unimaginable. Busy cramming from morning till night and repeating parrot-like that he does not understand, he is fast becoming a literate moron. Initiative, leadership and education in the real sense of the term are encouraged only in a few public Schools.

On Doctors

 * (Pages 164, 166, 168)

 * This reminds one of the story of two eminent surgeons who were leaving the operation room, and one turned to the other and said, 'That was a close one, one inch either way and I would have been out of my speciality."

 * This brings to mind the story of the Doctor speaking tactfully, "I do not like to bring it up but the cheque you gave me has come back." Replied the patient, "I do not like to mention it either, but so did the complaint."

 * There are types and types of Specialists, and one Doctor when asked why he specialised in skin diseases, naively answered, 'There are three perfectly good reasons – my patients never get me out of bed at night, they never die and they never get well."

On Priests & Bishops

 * (Pages 185 -186)

 * The greatest sacrifices are called for in this Profession and therefore it not only merits but demands our respect and admiration.

 * To get an idea of the sacrifices entailed, listen to the words of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, "If aiding the lepers is so dear to the Missionaries, particularly the Catholic Missionaries, it is because there is no other service, which requires a greater spirit of sacrifice. Working in a leper asylum demands the highest ideals and the most perfect abnegation. The world of politics and journalism can point to few heroes who compare with Father Damien of Molokai. The Catholic Church on the other hand, counts by the thousand, those who after the example of Father Damien have vowed themselves to the service of the lepers. It is worth inquiring into such heroism!"

 * "It is an illusion," says Ernest Raymond," that Bishops should be chosen for their scholarship, their administrative ability, their force of will, their social gifts or other more worldly abilities, instead of the one thing needful – their sanctiity."

On Writers

 * (Page 197)

 * Now turning to Writers in general. The urge to write is analysed as 50% Ambition, 45% Vanity and 5% something to say. This is rather drastic and later revised by a famous Author as 80% earning a living, 10% Vanity and 10% something to say. Though both may not be acceptable to all, yet using them as norms, one can classify to some extent the written effusions one reads. William Faulkner says he writes what people will believe and for that they will pay, as even a Writer has to make money.

 * One writer quite cutely remarks that his best work of fiction was his Income Tax Return.

 * However, there are all kinds of Writers. Some who know only one field themselves. Next those who know two or three fields in depth, and nothing more, and thirdly the majority who know a little about many things. Lin Yutang says, "It seems to me that simplicity is almost the most difficult thing to achieve in scholarship or writing," presumably because simplicity pre-supposes digestion and also maturity.

On Soldiers

 * (Page 209)

 * Again there is a trite saying that good Soldiers never think. Though this may not be true, yet it explains the cautionary advice that War is too serious a matter to be left to Soldiers and that a very good Soldier should not be in charge of the War Office. His place should be on the battle field where he is unsurpassable. Actually, "Young men don't make War, they fight them. Old men make Wars and survive them. They are immensely brave about other people's sons," says Nicholas Montsarrat. They are the ones that jest at scars, who never felt a wound.

 * Old Soldiers never die, they only fade away, which has now been commuted to, they never die but only get slightly out of focus. However, the focus must be pretty sharp, for we find our retired Soldiers are in great demand and they secure ready employment in large organisations in the public and private sectors.

title: Peter de Noronha


text:
Talk:Team Rocket

Someone else pick up the slack...
OK I don't know jack about Pokemon. So if anyone else feels like finishing this go fer it! Sveden 20:43, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
 * That sucked big time. Never again will I touch Pokemon junk. Still a lot of links to do.

title: Talk:Team Rocket


text:
User talk:65.26.93.100

Deliberate vandalism can result in IP numbers being blocked from editing. ~ Kalki 22:13, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:65.26.93.100


text:
User talk:Freddie~enwikiquote

—Jeremy Hanson 23:06, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called Freddie. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name Freddie~enwikiquote that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

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Renamed
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Metaphysics

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter.

Quotes

 * ''Je dirais volontiers des métaphysiciens ce que Scaliger disait des Basques: “on dit qu’ils s’entendent; mais je n’en crois rien.”
 * I am quite prepared to say of metaphysicians what Scaliger used to say of the Basques: “People declare that they understand one another, but I don’t believe a word of it.”
 * Nicolas Chamfort, Maximes et Pensées, cap. vii. (vol. 2, p. 84)
 * Reported in: Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 1175

 * I was thrown out of N.Y.U. my freshman year for cheating on my metaphysics final, you know. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
 * Woody Allen, Annie Hall (1977)

 * If only these metaphysicians would give their attention to the lengthy discursive processes which lead science to build new intuitions.
 * Gaston Bachelard, "The Philosophic Dialectic of the Concepts of Relativity" (1949) in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist ed., Tr. Forrest W. Williams.

 * There are metaphysical problems, which cannot be disposed of by declaring them meaningless. For, as I have repeatedly said, they are "beyond physics" indeed and demand an act of faith. We have to accept this fact to be honest. There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the incredible and those who believe that "belief" must be discarded and replaced by "the scientific method."
 * Max Born, in Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance (1964), p. 209

 * The only way to avoid becoming a metaphysician is to say nothing.
 * Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925), p. 224
 * Often misquoted or paraphrased as "The only way to avoid metaphysics is to say nothing." Cf. on p. 225, "you cannot avoid metaphysics".

 * [E]ven the attempt to escape metaphysics is no sooner put in the form of a proposition than it is seen to involve highly metaphysical postulates. For this reason there is an exceedingly subtle and insidious danger in positivism. If you cannot avoid metaphysics, what kind of metaphysics are you likely to cherish when you sturdily suppose yourself to be free from the abomination? Of course it goes without saying that in this case your metaphysics will be held uncritically because it is unconscious; moreover it will be passed on to others far more readily than your other notions inasmuch as it will be propagated by insinuation rather than by direct argument.
 * Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925), p. 225

 * The objective world of science has nothing in common with the world of things-in-themselves of the metaphysician. The metaphysical world, assuming that it has any meaning at all, is irrelevant to science.
 * A. D'Abro, The Evolution of Scientific Thought from Newton to Einstein (1927) footnote, p. 152

 * Kant's attitude toward Newton's absolute space is somewhat confused. At times he defends the absoluteness... At other times he presents his own arguments in favor of the relativity of space and motion. ...At any rate the problem of the absoluteness of space and time in classical science refers not to the essence of space and time (a problem which would degenerate into one of metaphysics, hence would be meaningless to the scientists), but solely to a discussion of those conceptions which are demanded of the world of experience. Hence we may realise that a man ignorant of mechanics is in no position to pass an opinion one way or the other. And Kant's knowledge of Newtonian mechanics was extremely poor, to say the least.
 * A. D'Abro, The Evolution of Scientific Thought from Newton to Einstein (1927) footnote, p. 417-418

 * Now these two questions — Does there exist a material reality distinct from sensible appearances? and What is the nature of reality? — do not have their source in experimental method, which is acquainted only with sensible appearances and can discover nothing beyond them. The resolution of these questions transcends the methods used by physics; it is the object of metaphysics. Therefore, if the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics.
 * Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906), tr. Philip P. Wiener, 1991, Princeton University Press, p. 10, ISBN 069102524X

 * There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children, but it gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion, there would be neither mathematics nor natural science. Time and again the passion for understanding has led to the illusion that man is able to comprehend the objective world rationally, by pure thought, without any empirical foundations—in short, by metaphysics. I believe that every true theorist is a kind of tamed metaphysicist, no matter how pure a "positivist" he may fancy himself. The metaphysicist believes that the logically simple is also the real. The tamed metaphysicist believes that not all that is logically simple is embodied in experienced reality, but that the totality of all sensory experience can be "comprehended" on the basis of a conceptual system built on premises of great simplicity. The skeptic will say that this is a "miracle creed." Admittedly so, but it is a miracle creed which has been borne out to an amazing extent by the development of science.
 * Albert Einstein, On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation (April, 1950) Scientific American Vol. 182, No. 4. Also quoted in Ideas and Opinions, 1954, Part V, Contributions to Science.

 * Metaphysics, because it opens out a limitless vista of possibilities, must take care never to lose sight of the inexpressible, which indeed constitutes its very essence.
 * René Guénon, Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines (1921)

 * the search for necessary truths, truths that are not only true, but they couldn't have been false.
 * Charles Hartshorne, philosopher, in the Veery journal interview (1996) in response to Veery editor Steven Vita's question of "What is the most rewarding aspect of philosophy?" Hartshorne's answer of metaphysics with this quoted definition of metaphysics in Veery is then reprinted in 1997 in the Austin American-Statesman and then quoted from in The New York Times obituary by Douglas Martin, October, 13, 2000, entitled “Charles Hartshorne, Theologian, Is Dead; Proponent of an Activist God Was 103.”

 * The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.
 * Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, E. Jephcott, trans., p. 17

 * In an ideal university the student would not proceed from the most recent observations back to the first principles, but from the first principles to whatever recent observations we claim significant in understanding them. ...The natural sciences derive their principles from the philosophy of nature which, in turn, depends on metaphysics. ...Metaphysics, the study of the first principles, pervades the whole. Dependent on it and subordinate to it are the social and natural sciences.
 * Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America (1936)

 * To all appearance, the phenomena exhibited by the pendulum are not to be accounted for by impact: in fact, it is usually assumed that corresponding phenomena would take place if the earth and the pendulum were situated in an absolute vacuum, and at any conceivable distance from one another. If this be so, it follows that there must be two totally different kinds of causes of motion: the one impact—a vera causa [true cause], of which, to all appearance, we have constant experience; the other, attractive or repulsive 'force'—a metaphysical entity which is physically inconceivable.
 * Thomas Henry Huxley, The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century (1889)

 * Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. ... Whenever the Westerner hears the word “psychological,” it always sounds to him like “only psychological.”
 * Carl Jung, Psyche and Symbol (1958), p. 285

 * The only way to avoid metaphysics is to avoid thinking.
 * Robert C. Koons and Timothy H. Pickavance, Metaphysics: The Fundamentals (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), p. 9

 * The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers. Each of us emerges from the preconsciousness of babyhood and simply finds himself here, in it, in the world. That experience alone astonishes some people. What is all this — what is the world? And what are we? From the beginning of humanity some have been under a compulsion to ask these questions, and have felt a craving for the answers. This is what is really meant by any such phrase as "mankind's need for metaphysics."
 * Bryan Magee, in Confessions of a Philosopher : A Journey Through Western Philosophy (1997), p. 232

 * It has been asserted that metaphysical speculation is a thing of the past and that physical science has extirpated it. The discussion of the categories of existence, however, does not appear to be in danger of coming to an end in our time, and the exercise of speculation continues as fascinating to every fresh mind as it was in the days of Thales.
 * James Clerk Maxwell, The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell (1890) Vol.2, XLIV Introductory Lecture on Experimental Physics

 * All metaphysical theories are inconclusively vulnerable to positivist attack.
 * Iris Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953), Ch. 9. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989, p. 127

 * "Will to truth" does not mean "I do not want to let myself be deceived" but—there is no alternative—"I will not deceive, not even myself"; and with that we stand on moral ground. ... You will have gathered what I am getting at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we knowers of today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by the thousand-year-old faith, the Christian faith which was also Plato's faith, that God is truth; that truth is divine.
 * Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882), B. Williams, ed. (2001), § 344

 * Find a scientific man who proposes to get along without any metaphysics […] and you have found one whose doctrines are thoroughly vitiated by the crude and uncriticized metaphysics with which they are packed. We must philosophize, said the great naturalist Aristotle — if only to avoid philosophizing.
 * Charles Sanders Peirce, The Collected Papers, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), Vol. 1, p. 129

 * There is a school of Philosophy still in existence of which modern culture has lost sight. Glimpses of it are discernible in the ancient philosophies with which all educated men are familiar, but these are hardly more intelligible than fragments of forgotten sculpture,-less so, for we comprehend the human form, and can give imaginary limbs to a torso; but we can give no imaginary meaning to the truth coming down to us from Plato or Pythagoras, pointing, for those who hold the clue to their significance, to the secret knowledge of the ancient world. Side lights, nevertheless, may enable us to decipher such language, and a very rich intellectual reward offers itself to persons who are willing to attempt the investigation. For, strange as the statement will appear at first sight, modern metaphysics, and to a large extent modern physical science, have been groping for centuries blindly after knowledge which occult philosophy has enjoyed in full measure all the while. Owing to a train of fortunate circumstances, I have come to know that this is the case; I have come into some contact with persons who are heirs of a greater knowledge concerning the mysteries of Nature and humanity than modern culture has yet evolved...
 * A. P. Sinnett, The Occult World, (1881)

 * Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.
 * William Thomson, as quoted by Silvanus Phillips Thompson, The Life of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs (1910) Vol. 2, p. 1124

title: Metaphysics


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Template:Wiktionarypar

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title: Template:Wiktionarypar


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Dutch Schultz

Dutch Schultz, whose given name was Arthur Flegenheimer (August 6, 1901 – October 24, 1935), was a New York City-area Jewish gangster of the 1920s and '30s. Born in the Bronx, he made his fortune in bootlegging illegal alcohol and the numbers racket in Harlem. Shot while urinating in the bathroom of a bar in New Jersey in 1935, he lived for 24 hours after the bullet tore through his abdominal wall, lung, gall bladder, and liver, before exiting at the small of his back; during the hours before his death, a delirious Schultz gave a several thousand word long "confession" which has become the object of much speculation in the years since his death, as nearly seven million dollars of his fortune was never accounted for, and many (including his rivals) believed that the location of the money was hidden in his dying words.

From police transcripts of incoherent deathbed confession

 * Oh, mamma, mamma, please don't tear; don't rip...

 * Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.

 * Who shot me? No one.

 * I will be checked and double-checked and please pull for me.

 * The sidewalk was in trouble and the bears were in trouble and I broke it up.

 * I can't come; express office was closed.

 * Please crack down on the Chinaman's friends and Hitler's commander.

 * These native children make this and sell you the joint.

 * You can play jacks, and girls do that with a soft ball and do tricks with it.

 * A mother's boy has never wept, nor dashed a thousand kim.

 * Oh, oh, dog biscuit, and when he is happy he doesn't get snappy

 * Hey, Jimmie! The Chimney Sweeps. Talk to the Sword. Shut up, you got a big mouth! Please come help me up, Henny. Max come over here. French Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone.

title: Dutch Schultz


text:
User talk:67.167.249.189

Deliberate vandalism can result in IP numbers being blocked from editing. ~ Kalki 02:18, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:67.167.249.189


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User talk:AEdwards~enwikiquote

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called AEdwards. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name AEdwards~enwikiquote that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

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Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:16, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
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User talk:218.80.68.136

This IP has been blocked for a period of one month, because all edits by it have thus far been "spam", further spamming could result in a permanent block. ~ Kalki 06:33, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:218.80.68.136


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Irving Fiske

Irving Fiske (5 March 1908 – 25 April 1990), born Irving Fishman in Brooklyn, New York, was a playwright, inventor, freelance writer, speaker, and the co-founder of Quarry Hill Creative Center. He was the author of Hamlet in Modern English and Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake.

Quotes

 * We're free and easy. We're not very authoritative. We have no doctrine, no dogma. It is a community of mostly people who are interested in the arts, literature, photography, music.
 * 1984 interview, quoted in The Burlington Free Press (6 May 1990), p. 5

 * Adults must remember that they look like insane giants to children.
 * Attributed without citation in Isabella Fiske McFarlin, et al., "Free The Kids! and Quarry Hill Community", Journal of Psychohistory, Vol. 21 No. 1 (Summer 1993), p. 21

"'Hitting a child is worse than MURDER!"

Irving Fiske said this every time he gave a talk on childhood and children. He was a children's rights activist ahead of his time. I'll try to find you a published source, but it was one of his most frequently spoken expressions. Often said to people who were hitting their kids. -- Isabella Fiske McFarlin

title: Irving Fiske