“
Magnus rolled onto his back and put his feet up on the arm of the sofa. “What do you care if Alec’s miserable?”
“What do I care?” Jace said, so loudly that Chairman Meow rolled off the couch and landed on the floor. “Of course I care about Alec; he’s my best friend, my parabatai. And he’s unhappy. And so are you, by the look of things. Takeout containers everywhere, you haven’t done anything to fix up the place, your cat looks dead —“
“He’s not dead.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
“
What have you done to my cat?" Magnus demanded... "You drank his blood, didn't you? You said you weren't hungry!"
Simon was indignant. "I did not drink his blood. He's fine!" He poked the Chairman in the stomach. The cat yawned. "Second, you asked me if I was hungry when you were ordering pizza, so I said no, because I can't eat pizza. I was being polite."
"That doesn't get you the right to eat my cat."
"Your cat is fine!" Simon reached to pick up the tabby, who jumped indignantly to his feet and stalked off the table. "See?"
"Whatever.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5))
“
Hey, pretty thing," he said. "What's in the bag?"
"Holy water," said Jace, reappearing beside her as if he'd been conjured up like a genie. A sarcastic blond genie with a bad attitude.
"Oooh, a Shadowhunter," said the vampire. "Scary." With a wink he melted back into the crowd.
"Vampires are such prima donnas," Magnus sighed from the doorway. "Honestly, I don't know why I have these parties."
"Because of your cat," Clary reminded him.
Magnus perked up. "That's true. Chairman Meow deserves my every effort.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
“
Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard."
(Interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole, Humanities, July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)
”
”
David McCullough
“
Wear that scarf," he said, pointing to a blue cashmere scarf hanging on a peg. "It matches your eyes."
Alec looked at it. Suddenly he was filled with hate - for the scarf, for Magnus, and most of all for himself. "Don't tell me," he said. "The scarf's a hundred years old, and it was given to you by Queen Victoria right before she died, for special services to the Crown or something."
Magnus sat up. "What's gotten into you?"
Alec stared at him. "Am I the newest thing in this apartment?"
"I think that honor goes to Chairman Meow. He's only two."
"I said newest, not youngest," Alec snapped.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5))
“
Honestly I don't know why i have these parties"
"Because of your cat"
"That's true. Chairman Meow deserves my every effort
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
“
Green-eyed monsters,” said Magnus, and grinned. He deposited Chairman Meow on the ground, and the cat moved over to Alec, and rubbed against his leg. “The Chairman likes you.”
“Is that good?”
“I never date anyone my cat doesn’t like,” Magnus said easily, and stood up. “So let’s say Friday night?”
A great wave of relief came over Alec. “Really? You want to go out with me?”
Magnus shook his head. “You have to stop playing hard to get, Alexander. It makes things difficult.” He grinned.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
“
From this experience, I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there. What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me. And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.
”
”
Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)
“
The Chairman likes you.”
“Is that good?”
“I never date anyone my cat doesn’t like,” Magnus said easily, and stood up.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
“
You, your grandmother, the chairman----YOU'RE ALL ABUNCH OF FRIGGIN' IDIOTS!!!"
~Haruhi
”
”
Bisco Hatori (Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 16 (Ouran High School Host Club, #16))
“
An army of the people is invincible!
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung)
“
Magnus rolled onto his back and put his feet up on the arm of the sofa. “What do you care if Alec’s miserable?”
“What do I care?” Jace said, so loudly that Chairman Meow rolled off the couch and landed on the floor. “Of course I care about Alec; he’s my best friend, my parabatai. And he’s unhappy. And so are you, by the look of things. Takeout containers everywhere, you haven’t done anything to fix up the place, your cat looks dead—“
“He’s not dead.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
“
Hello, Jake, I’m so glad you could come,” Sunny (as Madame Hoo was now called) said, shaking the hand of the chairman of the State Gambling Commission.
”
”
Ellen Raskin (The Westing Game)
“
Hello, Jake, I'm glad you could come," Sunny (as Madame Hoo was now called) said, shaking the hand of the chairman of the State Gambling Commission.
"Boom!" Jake Wexler replied.
”
”
Ellen Raskin (The Westing Game)
“
I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no dis-advantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given the speaker generally exceeds the time-limit, asks for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.
”
”
Mahatma Gandhi
“
Father is close, Mother is close, but neither is as close as Chairman Mao.
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
The great man, Genghis Khan, only knew how to shoot eagles with an arrow. The past is past. To see real heroes, look around you.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong)
“
I don’t know what you’re referencing, madam,” the chairman says, his voice raised over mine.
“I’m talking about menstruation, sir!” I shout in return.
It’s like I set the hall on fire, manifested a venomous snake from thin air, also set that snake on fire, and then threw it at the board. The men all erupt into protestations and a fair number of horrified gasps. I swear one of them actually swoons at the mention of womanly bleeding.
”
”
Mackenzi Lee (The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings, #2))
“
Among them is a renegade king, he who sired five royal heirs without ever unzipping his pants. A man to whom time has imparted great wisdom and an even greater waistline, whose thoughtless courage is rivalled only by his unquenchable thirst.
At his shoulder walks a sorcerer, a cosmic conversationalist. Enemy of the incurable rot, absent chairman of combustive sciences at the university in Oddsford, and the only living soul above the age of eight to believe in owlbears.
Look here at a warrior born, a scion of power and poverty whose purpose is manifold: to shatter shackles, to murder monarchs, and to demonstrate that even the forces of good must sometimes enlist the service of big, bad motherfuckers. His is an ancient soul destined to die young.
And now comes the quiet one, the gentle giant, he who fights his battles with a shield. Stout as the tree that counts its age in aeons, constant as the star that marks true north and shines most brightly on the darkest nights.
A step ahead of these four: our hero. He is the candle burnt down to the stump, the cutting blade grown dull with overuse. But see now the spark in his stride. Behold the glint of steel in his gaze. Who dares to stand between a man such as this and that which he holds dear? He will kill, if he must, to protect it. He will die, if that is what it takes.
“Go get the boss,” says one guardsman to another. “This bunch looks like trouble.”
And they do. They do look like trouble, at least until the wizard trips on the hem of his robe. He stumbles, cursing, and fouls the steps of the others as he falls face-first onto the mud-slick hillside.
”
”
Nicholas Eames (Kings of the Wyld (The Band, #1))
“
They should let my son be Federal Reserve chairman. At least he'll play with his toys and not ruin the economy.
”
”
Peter D. Schiff
“
Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao
”
”
Dai Sijie (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress)
“
Very fine law,” said Stuart. “When I am Chairman, anybody who is mean to anybody else is going to catch it.
”
”
E.B. White (Stuart Little)
“
There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
”
”
Sam Walton
“
I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream that falls over rocky cliffs before it can reach the ocean. Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories.
”
”
Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)
“
If the U.S. monopoly capitalist groups persist in pushing their policies of aggression and war, the day is bound to come when they will be hanged by the people of the whole world. The same fate awaits the accomplices of the United States.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung)
“
Max himself was sitting on the rug, wearing a sailor suit with elaborate navy ribbons to match his hair, tightly embracing Chairman Meow.
“You are my meow friend,” he told the Chairman solemnly, squeezing him.
“Meow,” Chairman Meow protested. He’d lived a life of torment since Max learned to walk.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Land I Lost (Ghosts of the Shadow Market, #7))
“
There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
”
”
J.C. Penney
“
There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else. —SAM WALTON, FOUNDER OF WALMART A
”
”
Josh Kaufman (The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business)
“
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman: Many pictures)
“
Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman: Many pictures)
“
Chairman: "Sometimes", he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.
”
”
Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)
“
Many friends have asked me why, after all I went through, I did not hate Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution in those years. The answer is simple: We were all brainwashed.
”
”
Ji-li Jiang (Red Scarf Girl)
“
He wiped his face with his handkerchief, for he was quite warm from the exertion of being Chairman of the World. It had taken more running and leaping and sliding than he had imagined.
”
”
E.B. White (Stuart Little)
“
But not all Jews were victims- look at Chairman Rumkowski, who sat safe with his new wife in his cushy home making lists, with the blood of my family on his hands. And not all Germans were murderers. Look at Herr Fassbinder, who had saved so many children on the night that children were taken away.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (The Storyteller)
“
If something is wrong for you or me, it is also wrong for the cop, the soldier, the mayor, the governor, the general, the Fed chairman, the president. Theft does not become acceptable when they call it taxation, counterfeiting when they call it monetary policy, kidnapping when they call it the draft, mass murder when they call it foreign policy. We understand that it is never acceptable to wield violence nor the threat of violence against the innocent, whether by the mugger or the politician.
”
”
Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
“
Published in this month's Harper's, from a conversation held in Beijing in February 1973:
Chairman Mao Zedong: Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million.
U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger: The chairman is improving his offer.
Mao: We can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests. In our country we have too many women, and they have a way of doing things. They give birth to children, and our children are too many.
”
”
Mao Zedong
“
Watson, Sr., was running IBM, he decided they would never have more than four layers from the chairman of the board to the lowest level in the company. That may have been one of the greatest single reasons why IBM was successful.
”
”
Sam Walton (Sam Walton: Made In America)
“
The chairman of the state board of medical examiners was a retired physician who thought that President Teddy Roosevelt was the only other man in the world besides himself who had not been made from a banana.
”
”
John Irving (The Cider House Rules)
“
And Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, said in 1943, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
”
”
Michio Kaku (Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100)
“
Under Chairman Mao, every Chinese family was obliged to kill a sparrow a week to stop them eating all the rice. The project was ineffective because sparrows don’t eat rice.
”
”
John Lloyd (1,227 Quite Interesting Facts to Blow Your Socks Off)
“
Dean Harstad had unbounded patience, the very patience that drove Chairman X bananas, patience as a weapon.
”
”
Jane Smiley (Moo)
“
*The best way to describe Mr. Windling would be like this: You are at a meeting. You'd like to be away early. So would everyone else. There really isn't very much to discuss, anyway. And just as everyone can see Any Other Business coming over the horizon and is putting their papers neatly together, a voice says "If I can raise a minor matter, Mr. Chairman..." and with a horrible wooden feeling in your stomach you know, now, that the evening will go on for twice as long with much referring back to the minutes of earlier meetings. The man who has just said that, and is now sitting there with a smug smile of dedication to the committee process, is as near Mr. Windling as makes no difference. And something that distinguishes the Mr. Windlings of the universe is the term "in my humble opinion," which they think adds weight to their statements rather than indicating, in reality, "these are the mean little views of someone with the social grace of duckweed".
”
”
Terry Pratchett (The Truth: Stage Adaptation)
“
War, this monster of mutual slaughter among men, will be finally eliminated by the progress of human society, and in the not too distant future too.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung)
“
I don’t need to do more smart things. I just need to do fewer dumb things. I need to avoid making emotional decisions and swinging at bad pitches. I need to think!
”
”
Keith J. Cunningham (The Road Less Stupid: Advice from the Chairman of the Board)
“
I sat, head down, quivering furiously at their inferences of female sell-by dates and life as game of musical chairs where girls without a chair/man when the music stops/they pass thirty are 'out.'
Huh. As if.
”
”
Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1))
“
Now, paper and pencils," said Miss Marcy, clapping her hands.
Writing paper is scarce in this house, and I had no intention of tearing sheets out of this exercise book, which is a superb sixpenny one the Vicar gave me. In the end, Miss Marcy took the middle pages out of her library record, which gave us a pleasant feeling that we were stealing from the government, and then we sat round the table and elected her chairman.
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
Under the white population of the United States of America only the reactionary classes oppress the black population. Under no circumstance can they represent the workers, farmers and revolutionary intellectuals and other enlighted people who form the majority of the white population.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung)
“
The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman: Many pictures)
“
Don’t be deceived; who they say you are, is not who you become. You become who you think you are. You take the chair in your own programmings!
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Watchwords)
“
We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun. Ibid.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung)
“
Today 5:14 p.m.
"Mrrrrrowl. Mrrrrrowl."
"Ow! Ow, stupid cat! Ahem. You told me, 'stop calling, Isabelle,' but I'm not the one calling you. Church is calling you. Mine are merely the fingers that work the phone.
"See, here's something you may not have known before you committed your recent rash acts. Our cat, Church, and your cat, Chairman Meow? They're in love. I've never seen such love before. I never knew such love could exist in the heart of a... cat. Some people say that love between two dude cats is wrong, but I think it's beautiful. Love makes Church happier than I've ever seen him. Nothing makes him happy like Chairman Meow. Not tuna. Not shredding centuries-old tapestries. Nothing. Please don't keep these cats apart. Please don't take the joy of love away from Church.
"Look, this is really just a warning for your own good. If you keep Church and Chairman Meow apart, Church will start to get angry.
"You wouldn't like Church when he's angry."
Beep
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Bane Chronicles)
“
This is why many liberals have fallen into the trap of seeing integration in merely aesthetic terms, where a token number of Negroes adds color to a white-dominated power structure. They say, “Our union is integrated from top to bottom, we even have one Negro on the executive board”; or “Our neighborhood is making great progress in integrated housing, we now have two Negro families”; or “Our university has no problem with integration, we have one Negro faculty member and even one Negro chairman of a department.
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr. (Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (King Legacy Book 2))
“
In the American oligarchy, the President is a temporary chairman of the board who is there to take responsibility for actions decided in private sessions. He is there to sell policy more than to make it.
”
”
Diana Johnstone (Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton)
“
The moment I formulated this thought, everything aroud me seemed to droop heavily toward the earth. Outside in the garden, the eaves of the roof dripped rain like beads of weighted glass. Even the mats themselves seemed to press down upon the floor. I remember thinking that I was dacing to express not the pain of a young woman who has lost her supernatural lover, but the pain I myself would feel when my life was finally robbed of the one thing I cared most deeply about. I found myself thinking,too,of satsu; I danced the bitterness of our eternal separation.By the end I felt almost overcome with grief; but I certainly wasn't prepared for what I saw when I turned to look at the Chairman.He was sitting at the near corner of the table so that, as it happened, no one but me could see him. I thought he wore an expression of astonishment at first, because his eyes were so wide. But just as his mouth sometimes twitched when he tried not to smile, now I could see it twitching under the strain of a different emotion. I couldn't be sure, but I had to impression his eyes were heavy with tears. He looked toward the door, pretending to scratch the side of his nose so he cold wipe a finger in the corner of his eye; and he smoothed his eyebrows as if the were the source of his trouble. I was so shocked to see the Chairman in pain I felt almost disoriented for a moment.
”
”
Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)
“
If your ego is in good shape you will pretend you're surprised if a National Chairman calls you to tell you his party wants to nominate you for President of the United States, but you're not really surprised.
”
”
Rex Stout (Champagne for One (Nero Wolfe, #31))
“
Whenever I see someone carrying a cup of coffee from a Starbucks competitor, whether it’s an independent coffee shop or a fast-food chain, I take their decision not to come to Starbucks personally. I wonder what I, as Starbucks’ chairman and ceo, might have done to keep them away and what I might do to encourage them to come back or to try us for the first time.
”
”
Howard Schultz (Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul)
“
We visited Mao's old house, which had been turned into a museum-cum-shrine. It was rather grand––quite different from my idea of a lodging for exploited peasants, as I had expected it to be. A caption underneath an enormous photograph of Mao's mother said that she had been a very kind person and, because her family was relatively well off, had often given food to the poor. So our Great Leader's parents had been rich peasants! But rich peasants were class enemies! Why were Chairman Mao's parents heroes when other class enemies were objects of hate? The question frightened me so much that I immediately suppressed it.
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
Afterwards Smiley always thought of that interview as a fan dance; a calculated progression of disclosures, each revealing different parts of a mysterious entity. Finally Steed-Asprey, who seemed to be Chairman, removed the last veil, and the truth stood before him in all its dazzling nakedness. He was being offered a post in what, for want of a better name, Steed-Asprey blushingly described as the Secret Service.
”
”
John Le Carré (Call for the Dead (George Smiley, #1))
“
When our government was in the process of being formed, Benjamin Franklin addressed the chairman of the Constitutional Convention, meeting at Philadelphia in 1787, saying, “I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, it is probable that an empire cannot rise without His aid.
”
”
Billy Graham (Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional)
“
People are trying to be smart—all I am trying to do is not to be idiotic, but it’s harder than most people think.
”
”
David Clark (Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth With Commentary by David Clark)
“
We shouldn’t have tried to create new symbols,” he said. We should’ve realized we weren’t supposed to introduce uncertainties into accepted belief, that we weren’t supposed to stir up curiosity about God. We are daily confronted by the terrifying instability of all things human, yet we permit our religions to grow more rigid and controlled, more conforming and oppressive. What is this shadow across the highway of Divine Command? It is a warning that institutions endure, that symbols endure when their meaning is lost, that there is no summa of all attainable knowledge.
"Admission" of C.E.T. Chairman Toure Bomoko, in "Appendix II: The Religion of Dune
”
”
Frank Herbert (Dune (Dune, #1))
“
On January 18, 1897, Indiana state representative Taylor I. Record argued in favor of changing the value of pi. Pi, which can be rounded to 3.14159, is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Tyler believed that the number was inconveniently long; in House Bill 246, he asked that it be rounded up to 3.2. The bill passed the House but was defeated in the Senate when the chairman of Purdue University’s math department successfully pleaded that it would make Indiana a national laughingstock. The value of pi in Indiana remains the same as in every other state.
”
”
Paul A. Offit (Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine (Vitamins, Supplements, and All Things Natural: A Look Behind the Curtain))
“
So let me get this straight – this is a long sentence. We are going to be gifted with a health care plan that we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don’t, which reportedly covers 10 million more people without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman doesn’t understand it, passed by Congress, that didn’t read it, but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that is broke. So what the blank could possibly go wrong?
”
”
Barbara Bellar
“
Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage...
As chairman emeritus of the extreme right-wing National Organization for Marriage
”
”
Orson Scott Card
“
that droplet of moisture that had slipped from me like a tear seemed almost to tell the story of my life. It fell through empty space, with no control whatsoever over its destiny; rolled along a path of silk; and somehow came to rest there on the teeth of that dragon. I thought of the petals I’d thrown into the Kamo River shallows outside Mr. Arashino’s workshop, imagining they might find their way to the Chairman. It seemed to me that, somehow, perhaps they had.
”
”
Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)
“
By this time she had reached the Blenheim estate on the outskirts of River Heights. The broad tree-shadowed lawn was filled with women setting up displays for the annual charity flower show. Nancy had been assigned a spot in the greenhouse behind the mansion. As she set her larkspur arrangement in place, the chairman came up to her. “My, Nancy, your delphinium are gorgeous,” Mrs. Winsor said. “Thank you,” Nancy replied. “I just adore larkspur,” the woman said. “Such a lovely old-fashioned flower. My grandmother had them in her garden. She always had hollyhocks and bluebells, too.
”
”
Carolyn Keene (Password to Larkspur Lane (Nancy Drew, #10))
“
In response to suspected leaks to the press about Vietnam, Kissinger had ordered FBI wiretaps in 1969 on the telephones of 17 journalists and White House aides, without court approval. Many news stories based on the purported leaks questioned progress in the American war effort, further fueling the antiwar movement. In a tape from the Oval Office on February 22, 1971, Nixon said, “In the short run, it would be so much easier, wouldn’t it, to run this war in a dictatorial way, kill all the reporters and carry on the war.” “The press is your enemy,” Nixon explained five days later in a meeting with Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to another tape. “Enemies. Understand that? . . . Now, never act that way . . . give them a drink, you know, treat them nice, you just love it, you’re trying to be helpful. But don’t help the bastards. Ever. Because they’re trying to stick the knife right in our groin.
”
”
Carl Bernstein (All the President's Men)
“
This army is powerful because all its members have a conscious discipline; they have come together and they fight not for the private interests of a few individuals or a narrow clique, but for the interests of the broad masses and of the whole nation. The sole purpose of this army is to stand firmly with the Chinese people and to serve them whole-heartedly.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman: Many pictures)
“
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them --work, family, health, friends and spirit and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls -- family, health friends and spirit are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life." Brian Dyson, former vice chairman and COO of Coca-Cola.
”
”
Brian Dyson
“
There’s no greater ecstasy than to know who you are
”
”
Osho
“
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung)
“
I have only a very brief opening statement.
I welcome these hearings because of the opportunity that they provide to the American people to better understand why the tragedy of 9/11 happened and what we must do to prevent a reoccurance.
I also welcome the hearings because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11.
To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed.
And for that failure, I would ask -- once all the facts are out -- for your understanding and for your forgiveness.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I'll be glad to take your questions.
”
”
Richard A. Clarke
“
Surveyor, in your thoughts you may be reproaching Sordini for not having been prompted by my claim to make inquiries about the matter in other departments. But that would have been wrong, and I want this man cleared of all blame in your thoughts. One of the operating principles of authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account. This principle is justified by the excellence of the entire organization and is also necessary if matters are to be discharged with the utmost rapidity. So Sordini couldn’t inquire in other departments, besides those departments wouldn’t have answered, since they would have noticed right away that he was investigating the possibility of an error.”
“Chairman, allow me to interrupt you with a question,” said K., “didn’t you mention a control agency? As you describe it, the organization is such that the very thought that the control agency might fail to materialize is enough to make one ill.”
“You’re very severe,” said the chairman, “but multiply your severity by a thousand and it will still be as nothing compared with the severity that the authorities show toward themselves. Only a total stranger could ask such a question. Are there control agencies? There are only control agencies. Of course they aren’t meant to find errors, in the vulgar sense of that term, since no errors occur, and even if an error does occur, as in your case, who can finally say that it is an error.
”
”
Franz Kafka (The Castle)
“
All I cared about then was catching a glimpse of Chairman Mao. I turned my eyes quickly away from Liu to the front of the motorcade. I spotted Mao's stalwart back, his right arm steadily waving. In an instant, he had disappeared. My heart sank. Was that all I would see of Chairman Mao? Only a fleeting glimpse of his back? The sun seemed suddenly to have turned gray. All around me the Red Guards were making a huge din. The girl standing next to me had just pierced the index finger of her right hand and was squeezing blood out of it to write something on a neatly folded handkerchief. I knew exactly the words she was going to use. It had been done many times by other Red Guards and had been publicized ad nauseam: "I am the happiest person in the world today. I have seen our Great Leader Chairman Mao!" Watching her, my despair grew. Life seemed pointless. A thought flickered into my mind: perhaps I should commit suicide?
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
I watched him walk away with sickness in my heart—though it was a pleasing kind of sickness, if such a thing exists. I mean to say that if you have experienced an evening more exciting than any in your life, you’re sad to see it end; and yet you still feel grateful that it happened. In that brief encounter with the Chairman, I had changed from a lost girl facing a lifetime of emptiness to a girl with purpose in her life. Perhaps it seems odd that a casual meeting on the street could have brought about such change. But sometimes life is like that, isn’t it? And I really do think if you’d been there to see what I saw, and feel what I felt, the same might have happened to you.
”
”
Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)
“
Our textbooks were ridiculous propaganda. The first English sentence we learned was "Long live Chairman Mao!" But no one dared to explain the sentence grammatically. In Chinese the term for the optative mood, expressing a wish or desire, means 'something unreal." In 1966 a lecturer at Sichuan University had been beaten up for 'having the audacity to suggest that "Long live Chairman Mao!" was unreal!" One chapter was about a model youth hero who had drowned after jumping into a flood to save an electricity pole because the pole would be used to carry the word of Mao.
With great difficulty, I managed to borrow some English language textbooks published before the Cultural Revolution from lecturers in my department and from Jin-ming, who sent me books from his university by post. These contained extracts from writers like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde, and stories from European and American history. They were a joy to read, but much of my energy went toward finding them and then trying to keep them.
Whenever someone approached, I would quickly cover the books with a newspaper. This was only partly because of their 'bourgeois' content. It was also important not to appear to be studying too conscientiously, and not to arouse my fellow students' jealousy by reading something far beyond them. Although we were studying English, and were paid par fly for our propaganda value by the government to do this, we must not be seen to be too devoted to our subject: that was considered being 'white and expert." In the mad logic of the day, being good at one's profession ('expert') was automatically equated with being politically unreliable ('white').
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
That such lowly beginnings would soon become one of the world’s strongest dictatorships is beyond fantastic. Lenin was essentially a pamphleteer. In 1918 he was identified as “Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and journalist,” and earned more money from publication honoraria (15,000 rubles) than from his salary (10,000 rubles).17 Trotsky was a writer as well, and a grandiloquent orator, but similarly without experience or training in statecraft. Sverdlov was something of an amateur forger, thanks to his father’s engraving craft, and a crack political organizer but hardly an experienced policy maker. Stalin was also an organizer, a rabble-rouser, and, briefly, a bandit, but primarily a periodicals editor—commissar of nationalities was effectively his first regular employment since his brief stint as a teenage Tiflis weatherman. Now,
”
”
Stephen Kotkin (Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928)
“
Extraordinary—that Willowdale Academy and Calvin Coolidge High School should both be institutions of learning! The contrast is stunning. I had a leisurely tea with the Chairman of the English Department. I saw several faculty members sitting around in offices and lounges, sipping tea, reading, smoking. Through the large casement windows bare trees rubbed cozy branches. (One of my students had written wistfully of a dream-school that would have "windows with trees in them"!) Old leather chairs, book-lined walls, air of cultivated casualness, sound of well-bred laughter.
”
”
Bel Kaufman (Up the Down Staircase)
“
Mao has never accepted the failure of the "Great Leap". As one of the texts reproduced below demonstrates, he would have preferred to see China perish from famine rather than readjust his own vision or recognize his mistakes.
”
”
Simon Leys (The Chairman's New Clothes: Mao and the Cultural Revolution)
“
I have called this mental defect the Lucretius problem, after the Latin poetic philosopher who wrote that the fool believes that the tallest mountain in the world will be equal to the tallest one he has observed. We consider the biggest object of any kind that we have seen in our lives or hear about as the largest item that can possibly exist. And we have been doing this for millenia. In Pharaonic Egypt, which happens to be the first complete top-down nation-state managed by bureaucrats, scribes tracked the high-water mark of the Nile and used it as an estimate for a future worst-case scenario.
The same can be seen in the Fukushima nuclear reactor, which experienced a catastrophic failure in 2011 when a tsunami struck. It had been built to withstand the worst past historical earthquake, with the builders not imagining much worse--and not thinking that the worst past event had to be a surprise, as it had no precedent. Likewise, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Fragilista Doctor Alan Greenspan, in his apology to Congress offered the classic "It never happened before." Well, nature, unlike Fragilista Greenspan, prepares for what has not happened before, assuming worse harm is possible.
”
”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder)
“
Lacking an analytical approach, many of our comrades do not want to go deeply into complex matters, to analyse and study them over and over again, but like to draw simple conclusions which are either absolutely affirmative or absolutely negative. . . . From now on we should remedy this state of affairs.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman: Many pictures)
“
It may seem somewhat ironic that the Catholic Church finds itself advocating the same position against abortion as its severest Christian critics, the Protestant fundamentalists. In fact, it is no more surprising than finding the so-called pro-life movement keeping company with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao, all of whom at one time or another banned abortions. What they have in common is their belief, rooted in misogyny, that the woman's right to choose - a fundamental aspect of her autonomy - must be crushed in order to achieve what they have deemed a 'higher' religious, moral or social goal.
”
”
Jack Holland (Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice)
“
In Summation
A poem by Taylor Swift
At this hearing
I stand before my fellow members of the Tortured Poets Department
With a summary of my findings
A debrief, a detailed rewinding
For the purpose of warning
For the sake of reminding
As you might all unfortunately recall
I had been struck with a case of a restricted humanity
Which explains my plea here today of temporary i n s a n i t y
You see, the pendulum swings
Oh, the chaos it brings
Leads the caged beast to do the most curious things
Lovers spend years denying what’s ill fated
Resentment rotting away
galaxies we created
Stars placed and glued
meticulously by hand
next to the ceiling fan
Tried wishing on comets.
Tried dimming the shine.
Tried to orbit his planet.
Some stars never align.
And in one conversation, I tore down the whole sky
Spring sprung forth with dazzling freedom hues
Then a crash from the skylight bursting through
Something old, someone hallowed, who told me he could be brand new
And so I was out of the oven
and into the microwave
Out of the slammer and into a tidal wave
How gallant to save the empress from her gilded tower
Swinging a sword he could barely lift
But loneliness struck at that fateful hour
Low hanging fruit on his wine stained lips
He never even scratched the surface of me.
None of them did.
“In summation, it was not a love affair!”
I screamed while bringing my fists to my coffee ringed desk
It was a mutual manic phase.
It was self harm.
It was house and then cardiac arrest.
A smirk creeps onto this poet’s face
Because it’s the worst men that I write best.
And so I enter into evidence
My tarnished coat of arms
My muses, acquired like bruises
My talismans and charms
The tick, tick, tick of love bombs
My veins of pitch black ink
All’s fair in love and poetry
Sincerely,
The Chairman
of The Tortured Poets Department
”
”
Taylor Swift
“
Indeed, these are the great lingering questions of the Lusitania affair: Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty’s past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40’s intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of the HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania’s path; given Cunard chairman Booth’s panicked Friday morning visit to the navy’s Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy—the question remains, why was the ship left on its own, with a proven killer of men and ships dead ahead in its path?
”
”
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
“
Almost every Fed chairman in the past 60 years has manipulated
interest rates to brighten the economic outlook for incumbent presidents
or newly elected presidents who won by large margins. The
purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has fallen 94 percent in the past
100 years. The only way you can create inflation is by creating more
money that is backed by the same reserve assets; the Fed is the only
entity that can create more money. Ben Bernanke’s quantitative easing
(QE) programs have pumped billions of unfunded dollars into the
economy, thereby setting us up for massive inflation in the very near
future. If this isn’t a form of financial terrorism, it is incompetence of the highest order.
”
”
Ziad K. Abdelnour
“
What have you done to my cat?” Magnus demanded, returning to the living room carrying a pot of coffee, with a circle of mugs floating around his head like a model of the planets rotating around the sun. “You drank his blood, didn’t you? You said you weren’t hungry!” Simon was indignant. “I did not drink his blood. He’s fine!” He poked the Chairman in the stomach. The cat yawned. “Second, you asked me if I was hungry when you were ordering pizza, so I said no, because I can’t eat pizza. I was being polite.” “That doesn’t give you the right to eat my cat.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5))
“
Imperialism will not last long because it always does evil things. It persists in grooming and supporting reactionaries in all countries who are against the people, it has forcibly seized many colonies and semi-colonies and many military bases, and it threatens the peace with atomic war. Thus, forced by imperialism to do so, more than 90 per cent of the people of the world are rising or will rise in struggle against it. Yet, imperialism is still alive, still running amuck in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the West imperialism is still oppressing the people at home. This situation must change. It is the task of the people of the whole world to put an end to the aggression and oppression perpetrated by imperialism, and chiefly by U.S. imperialism.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung 毛主席语录: The Little Red Book)
“
The situation was not easy for her, they knew. Once, at the start of last semester, she had skipped into her lecture hall singing "Getting to Know You" - both verses. At the request of the dean the chairman had called her into his office, but did not ask her for an explanation, not really. He asked her how she was and then smiled in an avuncular way. She said, "Fine," and he studied the way she said it, her front teeth catching on the inside of her lower lip. She was almost pretty, but her face showed the strain and ambition of always having been close but not quite.
”
”
Lorrie Moore (Like Life)
“
Ask your subordinates about matters you do not understand or do not know, and do not lightly express your approval or disapproval. . . . We should never pretend to know what we do not know, we should “not feel ashamed to ask and learn from people below” and we should listen carefully to the views of the cadres at the lower levels. Be a pupil before you become a teacher; learn from the cadres at the lower levels before you issue orders. . . . What the cadres at the lower levels say may or may not be correct, after hearing it, we must analyse it. We must heed the correct views and act upon them. . . . Listen also to the mistaken views from below, it is wrong not to listen to them at all. Such views, however, are not to be acted upon but to be criticized.
”
”
Mao Zedong (Quotations from Chairman: Many pictures)
“
Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty’s past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40’s intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of the HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania’s path; given Cunard chairman Booth’s panicked Friday morning visit to the navy’s Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy—the question remains,
”
”
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
“
Inevitably came the time when he angrily repudiated his former paladin Yasser Arafat. In fact, he described him to me as 'the Palestinian blend of Marshal Petaín and Papa Doc.' But the main problem, alas, remained the same. In Edward's moral universe, Arafat could at last be named as a thug and a practitioner of corruption and extortion. But he could only be identified as such to the extent that he was now and at last aligned with an American design. Thus the only truly unpardonable thing about 'The Chairman' was his readiness to appear on the White House lawn with Yitzhak Rabin and Bill Clinton in 1993. I have real knowledge and memory of this, because George Stephanopoulos—whose father's Orthodox church in Ohio and New York had kept him in touch with what was still a predominantly Christian Arab-American opinion—called me more than once from the White House to help beseech Edward to show up at the event. 'The feedback we get from Arab-American voters is this: If it's such a great idea, why isn't Said signing off on it?' When I called him, Edward was grudging and crabby. 'The old man [Arafat] has no right to sign away land.' Really? Then what had the Algiers deal been all about? How could two states come into being without mutual concessions on territory?
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
«Dashenka, sister, Dasha?»
«Yes?» She sounded so sad.
Tatiana swallowed. «Want to hear a funny story?»
«Oh, yes, please: I need a funny story to cheer me up. Tell me, darling».
«Stalin as Chairman of the Presidium went in front of the House of Parliament to make a short speech that lasted maybe five minutes. After the speech there was applause. The plenum stood on its feet and applauded. For a minute. Then another minute. They stood and applauded. But – Another minute. Still applauded. They were standing up, and still applauding, as Stalin stood in front of the lectern and listened with a humble smile on his face, the epitome of humility. Another minute. And still applauded. No one knew what to do. They waited for a signal from the Chairman to cease, but no such signal came from the humble and diminutive man. Another minute went by. And still they stood and applauded. It had now been eleven minutes. And no one knew what to do. Someone had to stop applauding. But who? Twelve minutes of applause. Thirteen minutes of applause. And still he stood there. And still they stood there. Fourteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. Finally, at the fifteen-minute mark, the man in the front, the Secretary of Transportation, stopped. As soon as he stopped, the entire auditorium fell mute. The following week the Secretary of Transportation was shot for treason».
«Tania!» exclaimed a startled Dasha. «That was supposed to be funny?»
«Yes», said Tatiana. «Funny, as in, cheer up, things could be worse. You could be the Secretary of Transportation».
”
”
Paullina Simons (The Summer Garden (The Bronze Horseman, #3))
“
The only statistic I care about is return on equity. After many sessions with some of our business school graduates (yes, we do have some), I think they have helped me understand the secret to improving our R.O.E. It seems that if we increase revenues and cut expenses, return on equity goes up and that is what makes me happy. Please make me happy! I can be very unpleasant when I’m not.
”
”
Alan C. Greenberg (Memos from the Chairman)
“
It was only in South Africa that I got over this shyness, though I never completely overcame it. It was impossible for me to speak impromptu. I hesitated whenever I had to face strange audiences and avoided making a speech whenever I could. Even today I do not think I could or would even be inclined to keep a meeting of friends engaged in idle talk.
I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no disadvantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given the speaker generally exceeds the time-limit, asks for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.
”
”
Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi: An Autobiography)
“
I had heard an amazing story that supported what the Archbishop was saying. When I met James Doty, he was the founder and director of the Center of Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford and the chairman of the Dalai Lama Foundation. Jim also worked as a full-time neurosurgeon. Years earlier, he had made a fortune as a medical technology entrepreneur and had pledged stock worth $30 million to charity. At the time his net worth was over $75 million. However, when the stock market crashed, he lost everything and discovered that he was bankrupt. All he had left was the stock that he had pledged to charity. His lawyers told him that he could get out of his charitable contributions and that everyone would understand that his circumstances had changed. “One of the persistent myths in our society,” Jim explained, “is that money will make you happy. Growing up poor, I thought that money would give me everything I did not have: control, power, love. When I finally had all the money I had ever dreamed of, I discovered that it had not made me happy. And when I lost it all, all of my false friends disappeared.” Jim decided to go through with his contribution. “At that moment I realized that the only way that money can bring happiness is to give it away.” •
”
”
Dalai Lama XIV (The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World)
“
On our way down, we passed a two-story villa, hidden in a thicket of Chinese parasol trees, magnolia, and pines. It looked almost like a random pile of stones against the background of the rocks. It struck me as an unusually lovely place, and I snapped my last shot. Suddenly a man materialized out of nowhere and asked me in a low but commanding voice to hand over my camera. He wore civilian clothes, but I noticed he had a pistol. He opened the camera and exposed my entire roll of film. Then he disappeared, as if into the earth. Some tourists standing next to me whispered that this was one of Mao's summer villas. I felt another pang of revulsion toward Mao, not so much for his privilege, but for the hypocrisy of allowing himself luxury while telling his people that even comfort was bad for them. After we were safely out of earshot of the invisible guard, and I was bemoaning the loss of my thirty-six pictures, Jin-ming gave me a grin: "See where goggling at holy places gets you!"
We left Lushan by bus. Like every bus in China, it was packed, and we had to crane our necks desperately trying to breathe. Virtually no new buses had been built since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, during which time the urban population had increased by several tens of millions. After a few minutes, we suddenly stopped. The front door was forced open, and an authoritative-looking man in plainclothes squeezed in.
"Get down! Get down!" he barked.
"Some American guests are coming this way. It is harmful to the prestige of our motherland for them to see all these messy heads!" We tried to crouch down, but the bus was too crowded. The man shouted, "It is the duty of everyone to safeguard the honor of our motherland! We must present an orderly and dignified appearance! Get down! Bend your knees!"
Suddenly I heard Jin-ming's booming voice: "Doesn'T Chairman Mao instruct us never to bend our knees to American imperialists?" This was asking for trouble.
Humor was not appreciated. The man shot a stern glance in our direction, but said nothing. He gave the bus another quick scan, and hurried off. He did not want the "American guests' to witness a scene. Any sign of discord had to be hidden from foreigners.
Wherever we went as we traveled down the Yangtze we saw the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution: temples smashed, statues toppled, and old towns wrecked. Litfie evidence remained of China's ancient civilization. But the loss went even deeper than this. Not only had China destroyed most of its beautiful things, it had lost its appreciation of them, and was unable to make new ones. Except for the much-scarred but still stunning landscape, China had become an ugly country.
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
Are you saying people aren’t interested in the truth?” “Listen, what’s true to a lot of people is that they need the money for the rent by the end of the week. Look at Mr. Ron and his friends. What’s the truth mean to them? They live under a bridge!” She held up a piece of lined paper, crammed edge to edge with the careful looped handwriting of someone for whom holding a pen was not a familiar activity. “This is a report of the annual meeting of the Ankh-Morpork Caged Birds Society,” she said. “They’re just ordinary people who breed canaries and things as a hobby. Their chairman lives next door to me, which is why he gave me this. This stuff is important to him! My goodness, but it’s dull. It’s all about Best of Breed and some changes in the rules about parrots which they argued about for two hours. But the people who were arguing were people who mostly spend their day mincing meat or sawing wood and basically leading little lives that are controlled by other people, do you see? They’ve got no say in who runs the city but they can damn well see to it that cockatoos aren’t lumped in with parrots. It’s not their fault. It’s just how things are. Why are you sitting there with your mouth open like that?
”
”
Terry Pratchett (The Truth)
“
Let us consider some of the most important Anarchist acts within the last two decades. Strange as it may seem, one of the most significant deeds of political violence occurred here in America, in connection with the Homestead strike of 1892. During that memorable time the Carnegie Steel Company organized a conspiracy to crush the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Henry Clay Frick, then Chairman of the Company, was intrusted with that democratic task. He lost no time in carrying out the policy of breaking the Union, the policy which he had so successfully practiced during his reign of terror in the coke regions. Secretly, and while peace negotiations were being purposely prolonged, Frick supervised the military preparations, the fortification of the Homestead Steel Works, the erection of a high board fence, capped with barbed wire and provided with loopholes for sharpshooters. And then, in the dead of night, he attempted to smuggle his army of hired Pinkerton thugs into Homestead, which act precipitated the terrible carnage of the steel workers. Not content with the death of eleven victims, killed in the Pinkerton skirmish, Henry Clay Frick, good Christian and free American, straightway began the hounding down of the helpless wives and orphans, by ordering them out of the wretched Company houses.
”
”
Emma Goldman (Anarchism and Other Essays)
“
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARYAN INVASION THEORY Before the 1857 uprising it was recognized that British rule in India could not be sustained without a large number of supporters and collaborators from within the Indian population. Recognizing this, it was influential men like Thomas Babbington Macaulay, who, as Chairman of the Education Board, sought to set up an educational system modeled after the British system, which, in the case of India, would serve to undermine the Hindu tradition. While not a missionary himself, Macaulay came from a deeply religious family steeped in the Protestant Christian faith. His father was a Presbyterian minister and his mother a Quaker. He believed that the conversion of Hindus to Christianity held the answer to the problems of administering India. His idea was to create a class of English educated elite that would repudiate its tradition and become British collaborators. In 1836, while serving as chairman of the Education Board in India, he enthusiastically wrote his father about his idea and how it was proceeding: “Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious... It is my belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytise, without the smallest interference with religious liberty, by natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project.
”
”
Stephen Knapp (The Aryan Invasion Theory: The Final Nail in its Coffin)
“
It is often said that what most immediately sets English apart from other languages is the richness of its vocabulary. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary lists 450,000 words, and the revised Oxford English Dictionary has 615,000, but that is only part of the total. Technical and scientific terms would add millions more. Altogether, about 200,000 English words are in common use, more than in German (184,000) and far more than in French (a mere 100,000). The richness of the English vocabulary, and the wealth of available synonyms, means that English speakers can often draw shades of distinction unavailable to non-English speakers. The French, for instance, cannot distinguish between house and home, between mind and brain, between man and gentleman, between “I wrote” and “I have written.” The Spanish cannot differentiate a chairman from a president, and the Italians have no equivalent of wishful thinking. In Russia there are no native words for efficiency, challenge, engagement ring, have fun, or take care [all cited in The New York Times, June 18, 1989]. English, as Charlton Laird has noted, is the only language that has, or needs, books of synonyms like Roget’s Thesaurus. “Most speakers of other languages are not aware that such books exist” [The Miracle of Language, page 54]. On the other hand, other languages have facilities we lack. Both French and German can distinguish between knowledge that results from recognition (respectively connaître and kennen) and knowledge that results from understanding (savoir and wissen). Portuguese has words that differentiate between an interior angle and an exterior one. All the Romance languages can distinguish between something that leaks into and something that leaks out of. The Italians even have a word for the mark left on a table by a moist glass (culacino) while the Gaelic speakers of Scotland, not to be outdone, have a word for the itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whiskey. (Wouldn’t they just?) It’s sgriob. And we have nothing in English to match the Danish hygge (meaning “instantly satisfying and cozy”), the French sang-froid, the Russian glasnost, or the Spanish macho, so we must borrow the term from them or do without the sentiment. At the same time, some languages have words that we may be pleased to do without. The existence in German of a word like schadenfreude (taking delight in the misfortune of others) perhaps tells us as much about Teutonic sensitivity as it does about their neologistic versatility. Much the same could be said about the curious and monumentally unpronounceable Highland Scottish word sgiomlaireachd, which means “the habit of dropping in at mealtimes.” That surely conveys a world of information about the hazards of Highland life—not to mention the hazards of Highland orthography. Of
”
”
Bill Bryson (The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way)