Carolina Quotes

The 1990s

120 quotations.

Human life will no longer be regarded with the kind of superstitious awe which it is accorded in traditional thought, and the lives of non-humans will no longer be a matter of indifference. This means that human life will, in a sense, be devalued, while the value granted to non-human life will be increased. A revised view of such matters as suicide and euthanasia, as well as a revised view of how we should treat animals, will result.
James RachelsCreated from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (1990), p. 5
The doctrine of human dignity says that humans merit a level of moral concern wholly different from that accorded to mere animals; for this to be true, there would have to be some big, morally significant difference between them. Therefore, any adequate defense of human dignity would require some conception of human beings as radically different from other animals. But that is precisely what evolutionary theory calls into question. It makes us suspicious of any doctrine that sees large gaps of any sort between humans and all other creatures. This being so, a Darwinian may conclude that a successful defense of human dignity is most unlikely.
We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.
John CageQuote of John Cage: the last lines of his 'Autobiographical Statement', April, 1990
Nonviolence begins with the insights that all life is sacred, that all human beings are children of the God of peace, and that as God’s children, we are under certain obligations. Of course, we should never hurt or kill another human being, wage war, build nuclear weapons, or sit idly by while millions of human beings starve to death each year. Nonviolence invites us, also, to reevaluate the way we treat animals in our society. While we resist violence, injustice, and war, and while we practice nonviolence, seek peace, and struggle for justice for the poor, we are also invited to break down the species barrier, extending our belief in Christian compassion to the animal kingdom by, among other things, adopting a vegetarian diet.
The subject matter of today's youth novels has no boundaries. The only taboo seems to be sex discrimination... I can only guess about where we're going, but I think we have come about as far as we can in the direction of 'let-it-all-hang-out' realism. My reader-mail indicates that kids are beginning to feel bogged down with so much depressing slice-of-life. My own most successful books have been those that were high in entertainment value, especially those touching on the supernatural.
Lois DuncanOn literary realism, quoted in The 100 Most Popular Young Adult Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies (1997), p. 113
A movie loosely based upon my novel, I Know What You Did Last Summer, opened in theaters around the country. I was ecstatic until I settled into a theater seat with my box of popcorn and discovered that Hollywood had turned my teenage suspense story into a slasher film. The setting had been changed from the mountains of New Mexico to a fishing village on the East Coast, so an insane fisherman, who wasn't in my book, could decapitate my characters with an ice hook. The first thing I did after leaving the theater was phone our daughter Kerry and warn her not to let the grandchildren see it.
Lois DuncanOn the adaptation of her novel I Know What You Did Last Summer in 1997, quoted in MoviePilot piece
When Jewish people remember the Holocaust, and want the world to remember the Holocaust… Why do you want the world to remember? Because if the world does not remember, it is likely to repeat itself. And Jewish persons who suffered from the Holocaust want the world to remember this, because the world turned its back while Jews were put in ovens. I, as a Black person, want my people to remember what we have suffered and what we continue to suffer so that we will say, like the Jews: Never again.
Well, first I think the council did a commendable thing because I believe that Dr. Alim {Abdul Muhammad} and the brothers and sisters who work with him in the Washington area have done a most commendable thing with drugs and the scourge of this city and this nation. It should be interesting to note that Minister Alim went into Mayfair Mansions and Paradise Manor, comprised of nearly 8 or 9 thousand people which you know were crime-ridden and drug-infested, and not with money, and not with guns but with a moral authority has literally almost completely ridden that community of drugs and it is almost completely crime-free.
Now to speak to the charge of antisemitism. To say that Louis Farrakhan is an antisemitic is an improper and unjust characterization of me. To say that I have been critical of Jews and critical of the state of Israel is true. But I have been critical of blacks, critical of our leaders, critical of Arabs, critical of whites, and yet my own people don't call me anti-black and Arabs don't call me antisemitic and they are also semitic people. The term is wrong. And is wrongfully applied. My criticism of Jews should be taken in that light. And criticism, sir, with all due respect, is not necessarily born out of dislike of the person, but dislike of the condition that maybe these persons are involved with...
I have no reference whatsoever to the religion that Jews practice. Listen to me carefully, please. I said this morning that I was referring to the actions of the state of Israel using God and religion as a cover for what I said was lying, stealing, murder, using God's name as a shield for your dirty religion, meaning you're preaching one thing, but you are practicing another. And when I said I have no reference to Moses and what Moses revealed, there is nothing in any way, shape or form in any of my speeches that you have ever heard me say that I condemn Moses and what Moses taught to the Jews, or condemned Jesus and what Jesus taught to the Jews, or condemned Muhammad and what Muhammad taught to the Arabs. But I do condemn our actions in direct contravention to what we profess we believe as taught by the prophets. And I said in that paper that Jews, some of them practice dirty religion; some Muslims practice dirty religion; some Christians practice dirty religion, and that's why we're in America in the condition that we're in under religious people who went in direct contravention to the teaching of their prophet. That's my statement. I never ever mention Judaism in that context, nor will I ever.
I feel that there is a certain sensitivity -- that Jewish rabbis and I have sat down and talked about -- that Jews have, and that we have as a persecuted and an oppressed people. And maybe in that sensitivity there has been a reaction to statements made by Louis Farrakhan as we react to anything that opens a sore with us like the {CBS-TV commentator Andy} Rooney thing recently and the other fellow on CBS, Jimmy the Greek. We're very sensitive and Jews are very sensitive. And in that sensitivity, I think care has to be taken by us. And sometimes when you say something and people say, "Ouch!" and you learn that you have offended, then you're conscious of being careful.
For those who are students of history, we are very suspicious to be very honest with you, because we know the history. We know that in this country to decimate the population of the Indians, blankets were sent to the Indians containing smallpox. We know that in this country {there was} the Tuskegee experiment, where a hundred black men were given the most virulent form of syphilis and a program was set up that they would never be treated for syphilis and these men cohabited with many, many women, spreading syphilis among our people. This is documented. We do know that in New Zealand, in Australia, in the Congo -- wherever whites have wanted that particular area -- there has been a genocidal plot against the lives of those native people, and it goes on to this day. And we respectfully submit that we are deeply concerned because we have a population of between 30-40 million people much of whom are useless to this society. And we watch how this society treats the elderly who have served this country well, and we watch how this society treats those who have outlived their usefulness.
And we are afraid when we see a population ever growing, millions of unemployed, millions of unemployable and angry youth. And we see drugs flooding into our community and you know we don't produce the drugs, we don't bring them in. You know, sir, that because of the deep economic condition in the black community, you can't offer young blacks a job at Wendy's or McDonald's as an alternative to selling crack. And if Mr. Bush can see the wisdom in providing some economic solutions to the growers of the cocoa leaf in Peru and Bolivia, then surely Mr. Bush should see there has to be an economic solution to drugs in America and particularly in the black community. So I am saying we are dying. Blacks are dying in America at an inordinate rate. Is there a plan? We believe there is.
America, since the 1954 Supreme Court decision and since the civil rights acts of 1964 and '65, has created a larger black middle class sort of as a buffer between the white community and the black community. And this middle class that has been created as a result of the struggle of the poor, the youth that were out on the marches with Dr. King, the youth that were rioting, the youth that were throwing the Molotov cocktails, the youth that got shot down in the streets -- it was their effort that caused you {black journalists} to be here. You weren't here before then, I don't think. It's the suffering, the poor black people that opened the door for us sitting around the table.
We built your country and this civilization has turned us so backward mentally that you let us go under the Emancipation Proclamation, passed the 13th Amendment against involuntary slavery knowing that {because of} the mental condition that our people were in, we would become your volunteer servants. And so we have served America, fought in all her wars, bled and died on every field of battle. We helped you beat Germany, and now Germany is reunited and we can't get together. The walls are tumbling down between Eastern Europeans, but no walls are tumbling down with us because there are those who don't want to see us reconcile our differences.
Since the prisons are full and you really don't rehabilitate prisoners, you loved Malcolm X, so you say. Well, look at Malcolm. He was a thief, a hustler, a pimp, a user of drugs, a seller of drugs, a bank robber. Would you love him in that condition? Would you accept a picture of him on your wall in that condition? But who reclaimed him? We did. And the brilliance of that man is the same brilliance that's hiding in prisons all over America. Malcolm was not the exception. Malcolm is the rule. There are many brilliant black people. All they need is a chance.
And I'll close by saying, you know Mr. Bush, the president, I think a week before he was elected, was standing before the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles and he pledged his support to Israel. And then he turned around and said that he pledged continued support, funding the Justice Department in their vigorous investigation and prosecution of antisemites whether they wear brown shirts, white shirts and bow ties, whether they live in Skokie, Chicago or Brooklyn, the villain is the same. I don't think they were talking about Sen. {Paul} Simon {D-Ill.}, who wears white shirts and bow ties. That to me says that this president has in his heart for me what Reagan had in his heart for {Libyan leader Moammar} Gadhafi. And I'm saying that's a mistake. Through The Washington Post, I'd like to say to Mr. Bush, that would be unwise. And it is unwise because you, Mr. Bush, are in the position of a modern pharaoh and Pharaoh lost his army, his government and his power over his rejection of an honorable and just solution to the problem posed by the unwanted presence of the Israelite slaves. And so it is today.
I believe that there is {a} continuing investigation and I believe that Mr. Bush and those who fear the rise of black people see me as much today a threat as they saw my brother, Martin Luther King, when he made that speech, a really innocuous speech in Washington in 1963 where he hoped that black and white and Jew and gentile, Protestant and Catholic would get together. The next day, J. Edgar Hoover received from his staff people a memo saying that Martin Luther King Jr. was the most dangerous Negro in America and then this government through the Justice Department investigated Dr. King vigorously, and I doubt that the government can escape culpability in that man's assassination or in the assassination of Malcolm X. And I firmly believe that they have something similar in store for me.
Years ago I read a man named Machado de Assis who wrote a book called Dom Casmurro. Machado de Assis is a South American writer — black father, Portuguese mother — writing in 1865, say. I thought the book was very nice. Then I went back and read the book and said, Hmm. I didn’t realize all that was in that book. Then I read it again, and again, and I came to the conclusion that what Machado de Assis had done for me was almost a trick: he had beckoned me onto the beach to watch a sunset. And I had watched the sunset with pleasure. When I turned around to come back in I found that the tide had come in over my head. That’s when I decided to write.
All fundamentalists - whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or otherwise - are partners in the attempt to breed division, strife, racism and sexism; they help international imperialism to maintain its control and to overcome popular resistance to policies that lead to war and increased exploitation. It is known that the Mafia of today in Italy and the USA and Canada has close connections with some international fundamentalist groups, some of which are Islamic. The economic resources of such groups are, like those of the Mafia, drawn from the sale of arms, trafficking in drugs, and speculation in foreign exchange; these activities
Nawal El Saadawi"Islamic Fundamentalism and Women" (1990), included in The Nawal El Saadawi Reader
My whole area of art activity has always been addressed to working with other people.. .You see, I personally like the sensual contact of collaborating. Ideas are not real estate. In collaboration one can accept the fact that someone else can be so sympathetic and in tune with what you’re doing, that through this they move into depths that might not be obvious if that person had been working alone in a studio with the door shut.
Robert RauschenbergQuote from Breaking Bounderies.., Robert S. Mattison, exhibition catalogue Whitney Museum, 1994, p. 3
Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based, on an understanding of the Civil War. I believe that firmly. It defined us. The Revolution did what it did. Our involvement in European wars, beginning with the First World War, did what it did. But the Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things. And it is very necessary, if you are going to understand the American character in the twentieth century, to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the mid-nineteenth century. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.
Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self — to the mediating intellect — as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode, although the gloom, “the blues” which people go through occasionally and associate with the general hassle of everyday existence are of such prevalence that they do give many individuals a hint of the illness in its catastrophic form.
One of the century’s most famous intellectual pronouncements comes at the beginning of The Myth of Sisyphus: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” Reading this for the first time I was puzzled and continued to be throughout much of the essay, since despite the work’s persuasive logic and eloquence there was a lot that eluded me, and I always came back to grapple vainly with the initial hypothesis, unable to deal with the premise that anyone should come close to wishing to kill himself in the first place. A later short novel, The Fall, I admired with reservations; the guilt and self-condemnation of the lawyer-narrator, gloomily spinning out his monologue in an Amsterdam bar, seemed a touch clamorous and excessive, but at the time of my reading I was unable to perceive that the lawyer was behaving very much like a man in the throes of clinical depression. Such was my innocence of the very existence of this disease.
For in virtually any other serious sickness, a patient who felt similar devastation would be lying flat in bed, possibly sedated and hooked up to the tubes and wires of life-support systems, but at the very least in a posture of repose and in an isolated setting. His invalidism would be necessary, unquestioned and honorably attained. However, the sufferer from depression has no such option and therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable social and family situations. There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile.
In many of Albrecht Dürer’s engravings there are harrowing depictions of his own melancholia; the manic wheeling stars of Van Gogh are the precursors of the artist’s plunge into dementia and the extinction of self. It is a suffering that often tinges the music of Beethoven, of Schumann and Mahler, and permeates the darker cantatas of Bach. The vast metaphor which most faithfully represents this fathomless ordeal, however, is that of Dante, and his all-too-familiar lines still arrest the imagination with their augury of the unknowable, the black struggle to come:
For those who have dwelt in depression’s dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony, their return from the abyss is not unlike the ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward out of hell’s black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as “the shining world.” There, whoever has been restored to health has almost always been restored to the capacity for serenity and joy, and this may be indemnity enough for having endured the despair beyond despair.
In my travels, I have found that those who keep heaven in view remain serene and cheerful in the darkest day. If the glories of Heaven were more real to us, if we lived less for material things and more for things eternal and spiritual, we would be less easily disturbed by this present life. A friend told me about stopping on a street corner in London and listening to a man play the bagpipes. He was playing "Amazing Grace" and smiling from ear to ear. My friend asked him if he was from Scotland, and he answered, “No sir, my home is in Heaven. I'm just traveling through this world.”
Billy GrahamHope for the Troubled Heart: Finding God in the Midst of Pain (1991); the last statement of this anecdote has often become quoted as if it originated with Graham: "My home is in Heaven. I'm just traveling through this world."
I remember Kelly most for the times we spent playing cards. You name the card game, and we played it. We were both avid card players, and even though our card games were strictly for fun, we were both highly competitive and hated to lose. The winner always took great delight in the loser's whining, excuses, and accusations of cheating. Good-natured miniscuffles broke out on occasion. My most vivid memories were of the times we played cards by moonlight. The moon appeared so much larger by the equator, and the absence of air pollution out in the bush allowed the moonlight to bathe us unfiltered. There we sat, playing game after game inside the platoon's perimeter when we weren't pulling guard or on patrol. At night we played without the usual theatrics, whispering only to name the game or utter a put-down. The stillness of the jungle and the glossy blackness of the night sky combined with the moon's frozen brilliance to create an eerie, haunting setting. The worn, creased cards that Kelly always carried were never idle for long under those conditions. Now they'd be idle forever. Death was now close to home.
Mail is such a critical thing to soldiers in the field because of their Spartan way of living. Mail can make or break any situation. When you get a letter, man, your morale shoots sky-high. Especially when it smells just like your girlfriend. That perfume smell, you know? There you are, sitting in the middle of nowhere, and the next thing you know someone comes along, says, "Here you go, man," and flips you a leter. A letter that he's probably sniffed most of he perfume out of before it gets to you.
They don't have mail call out in the field like you'd think. If we all gathered round he sarge to receive your mail we'd probably be attacked. It would be an ideal time to do so, with all of us clustered together in one big, easy target. So one or more guys distributed the goodies. Just as receiving mail will boost your spirits, absence of mail will, over a long period of time, dramatically lower your morale. This is particularly true if you're expecting something. You start getting jealous of guys who get mail, especially if they are receiving it on a constant basis. I've seen two guys exchange heated words because one was extremely happy about hearing from his girl, while the other hadn't heard from home in weeks. Enough said.
And then there was the freedom. We were our own masters, the captains of our own ships. We received general guidance regarding a mission and executed the basic plan any way we saw fit. The bottom line was nobody fucked with us when we were on a mission (except maybe the enemy every once in a while), and nobody fucked with us when the day was done. Nobody fucked with us period. We were left to do as we damn well pleased. Last question: How often do you get fucked with back in the World? Answer: All the time.
The most warlike tribe was the Sedang. They were the tallest, meanest, and most aggressive. This may or may not be true, but I was told that up until the middle sixties they still had human sacrifices. I wouldn't doubt that after being around these people. They were so tough and hard it was scary. These people truly lived by the law of nature. Only the strong survive. If a baby has a defect, it dies at birth, or it's not going to live very long. Consequently, most of them were in excellent physical shape, very muscular, and built for endurance. Their knowledge of the woods was unrivaled by any American soldier. Face it, when you're born and raised in the jungle you become intimate with its essence. You learn about the sounds of the animals, how to track prey, what to eat, what to avoid. A Bahnar youngster can construct the little booby-traps you set up for people, because they are the same ones he uses to catch animals. By the time a Sedang child is eight years old he knows all the things they teach you in Ranger school about the woods and tracking. All he'd need to do would be learn how to jump from a plane, and he'd be an airborne ranger.
But I'll tell you what. I'd rather have one of them in an asskick than an American, any day. That's not meant as a derogatory comment on American fighting men, but simply a compliment regarding the tremendous fighting abilities of the Yards. They are natural hunters, people born to the hunt. Many times we'd be in a fight and I'd look downhill or across from me and the Yards would be on the move. I very rarely had to tell them anything. I'd see them fix their eyes on the enemy and move like they were stalking game. Once they learned your personality and technique no words were necessary. Eye contact said it all.
Six fellow soldiers also received the Medal of Honor with me on that warm, clear day in June, 1971. However, only one man stood beside me. Tragically, the other five were awarded posthumously. Such sorrow reflects the magnitude of the actions of those individuals who are considered for the CMH. A female lieutenant colonel once asked me if I knew why they gave me the medal. She asked the question in such a way that I took it as meaning she knew the reason- did I? Her question pissed me off. I thought, what the hell do you know? How could you, who have never seen combat, possibly know? I was preparing to give it to her with both barrels at the conclusion of her comment. However, she said something profound that hit the nail right square on the head. She said, "They gave you the medal because they realize that something has happened to you that they can't understand." You were absolutely right, ma'am. My apologies.
It seemed like the entire world knew I'd come out of Womack's Nut Ward, and as a result I was accused of everything from shoplifting to armed robbery to murder. Nobody took my word for anything. Any derogatory stories that could be old about me were given maximum dissemination. When you have the Medal of Honor, all actions- good, bad, true, or false- are magnified, and an undue amount of significance is attached to each. My every move- real or imagined- became front-page news. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but not much.
Once, a student asked me what the secret was to being a good combat leader, a man who commands the loyalty and respect of his subordinates. That was a question I'd been formulating the answer to for many years, almost from Day One when I set foot on Vietnamese soil. My answer to him and the class was a simple one which I would repeat many times throughout the years. "If you want a soldier's respect and loyalty, you must demonstrate two things. First, you must show that you know more than the soldier you are leading. Your subordinate must be aware that you have knowledge he does not possess, and that you are trying to teach him. "The second thing you must demonstrate is a genuine concern for his safety and well-being. The concern must be real, because a young soldier can spot a faker a mile away. If your concern for him is genuine- and he knows it- then you can rest assured that he will follow you into the jaws of death."
Cobra: Commonly referred to as a gunship. It was the U.S. Army's primary attack helicopter (AH). The AH-1G Cobra was equipped with a variety of formidable armaments, including rockets, 40mm grenades, and 7.62mm miniguns (Gatling-style machine guns). Cobras were very effective against ground troops, and more than once came to the aid of U.S. soldiers in tight spots. Their presence was greatly appreciated by us and especially devastating to the morale of enemy troops.
M-16: The standard personal firearm (rifle) of American troops. In my opinion, the M-16 is superior to the AK-47 as a killing instrument. Although the M-16 fires a smaller caliber round than the AK-47 (5.56mm vs. 7.62mm), its muzzle velocity is far greater (3,280 feet per second vs. 2,330 feet per second). The increased muzzle velocity creates a tumbling effect on the smaller round; the round will tumble and ricochet off bone once it penetrates flesh, causing enormous damage as it rips crazily through the body. I've seen an M-16 round create an entrance hole no bigger than a dime, yet leave a hole the size of a softball upon exit. I've seen it blow off limbs at the joints. I've used both the AK-47 and M-16, and I far prefer the latter. On the Medal of Honor day, I was shot through the chest with an AK-47 round. Had it been the M-16 round, I can almost guarantee you that I'd have been killed instantly.
Postmodernism theory is one of those attempts: the effort to take the temperature of the age without instruments and in a situation in which we are not even sure there is so coherent a thing as an "age,"or zeitgeist or "system" or "current situation"any longer. Postmodernism theory is then dialectical at least insofar as it has the wit to seize on that very uncertainty as its first clue and to hold to its Ariadne's thread on its way through what may not turn out to be a labyrinth at all, but a gulag or perhaps a shopping mall.
This matter of periodization is not , however, altogether alien to the signals given off by the expression "late capitalism," which is by now clearly identified as a kind of leftist logo which is ideologically and politically booby-trapped, so that the very act of using it constitutes tacit agreement about a whole range of essentially Marxian social and economic propositions the other side may be far from wanting to endorse. Capitalist was itself always a funny word in this sense: just using the word - otherwise a neutral enough designation for an economic social system on whose properties all sides agree - seemed to position you in a vaguely critical suspicious, if not outright socialist stance: only committed right wing ideologues and full-throated apologists also use it with the same relish.
Utopia is a spatial matter that might be thought to know potential change in fortunes in so spatialized a culture as the postmodern; but if this last is a dehistoricized and dehistorizing as I some times claim here, the synaptic chain that might lead the Utopian impulse to expression becomes harder to localize. Utopian representations knew an extraordinarily revival in the 1960's; if postmodernism is the substitute for the sixties and the compensation for their political failure, the question of Utopia would seem to be a crucial test of what is left of our capacity to imagine change at all.
If the ideas of a ruling class were once the dominant (or hegemonic) ideology of bourgeois society, the advanced capitalist countries today are now a field of stylistic and discursive heterogeneity without norm. Faceless masters continue to inflect the economic strategies which constrain our existence, but they no longer need to impose their speech (or are henceforth unable to); and the postliteracy of the late capitalist world reflects not only the absence of any great collective project but also the unavailability of the older national language itself.
Theories of the postmodern - whether celebratory or couched in the language of moral revulsion and denunciation - bear a strong family resemblance to all those more ambitious sociological generalizations which, at much the same time, bring us the news of the arrival and inauguration of a whole new type of society, most famously baptized "postindustrial society"(Daniel Bell) but often also designated consumer society, media society, information society, electronic society, or high tech and the like. Such theories have the obvious ideological mission of demonstrating, to their own relief, that the new social formation in question no longer obeys the laws of classical capitalism, namely, the primacy of industrial production and the omnipresence of class struggle.
It would seem essential to distinguish the emergent forms of a new commercial culture - beginning with advertisements and spreading on to formal packaging of all kinds, from products to buildings, and not excluding artistic commodities such as television shows (the "logo") and best-sellers and films - from the older kinds of folk and genuinely "popular" culture which flourished when the older social classes of a peasantry and an urban artisanat still existed and which, from the mid-nineteenth century on, has gradually been colonized and extinguished by commodification and the market system.
When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic — here on Sixth Avenue, for instance — I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound.. .I don't need sound to talk to me.
John CageQuote of Cage, in an interview with Miroslav Sebestik, 1991; in Listen, documentary by Miroslav Sebestik. ARTE France Développement, 2003; as quoted on Wikipedia, note 54
There are passages in the Gospels that portray Jesus of Nazareth as narrow-minded, vindictive, and even hypocritical. Jesus exhorted people to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors (Matt. 5:44) and never to call others by demeaning or hurtful names (Matt. 5:22), yet he called his enemies a "brood of snakes" (Matt. 12:34), "sons of vipers" (Matt. 23:33), "blind fools" (Matt. 23:17). ... How divine is the message that says for your finite failings you will be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 25:30)?

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