Official Relationship Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Official Relationship. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Can officially confirm that the way to a man's heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him.
Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones’s Diary (Bridget Jones, #1))
they were inventing their own type of relationship, one that wasn’t officially recognized by history or immortalized in poetry or song, but which felt truer and less constraining.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
Simon hid the fact that he was inordinately pleased by this. “Are we officially boyfriend and girlfriend? Is there a Shadowhunter ritual? Should I change my Facebook status from ‘it’s complicated’ to ‘in a relationship’?” Isabelle screwed up her nose adorably. “You have a book that’s also a face?
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
I wish I could print up a sign and tape it on my forehead. I OFFICIALLY DO NOT WANT TO KISS ETHAN WATE. NOW PLEASE LET ME BE FRIENDS WITH HIM.
Kami Garcia (Beautiful Chaos (Caster Chronicles, #3))
I mean, how sad is it that I needed a freaking Facebook profile to tell me my boyfriend was no longer my boyfriend? As if Facebook is the official record keeper of relationships and you have to confirm all breakups and hookups with this sacred online registrar before you can consider them certified and approved.
Jessica Brody (The Karma Club)
The ‘Three Tumors’ is the nickname given to the three heavenly officials who don’t have a good rep but have a good relationship with each other, and they are Ming Guan, Ling Wen, and my brother. ‘I can’t believe it’s not Xie Lian, Xie Lian, and Xie Lian.’ Xie Lian thought.
墨香铜臭 (天官赐福 [Tiān Guān Cì Fú])
The same thing that makes friendship so valuable is what makes it so tenuous: it is purely voluntary. You enter into it freely, without the imperatives of biology or the agenda of desire. Officially, you owe each other nothing.
Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing)
It’s us, Trav. Nothing makes sense unless we’re together. Have you noticed that?” “Noticed? I’ve been telling you that all year!” he teased. “It’s official. Bimbos, fights, leaving, Parker, Vegas…even fires…our relationship can withstand anything.
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
... I didn't officially live with him and wasn't officially committed to him. If we were in a proper relationship and I did live with him and was officially committed to him, the first thing I would have to do would be to leave.
Anna Burns (Milkman)
People stand in front of an officiant and say 'I do' but that shouldn't mean 'I'm done' when comes to putting time and effort to grow their relationship.
Beth Ehemann (Room for More (Cranberry Inn, #2))
Then there was Asshole Research Transport. ART’s official designation was deep space research vessel. At various points in our relationship, ART had threatened to kill me, watched my favorite shows with me, given me a body configuration change, provided excellent tactical support, talked me into pretending to be an augmented human security consultant, saved my clients’ lives, and had cleaned up after me when I had to murder some humans. (They were bad humans.)
Martha Wells (Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3))
We ate, we slept, we formed our kaleidoscopic relationships and marched ever forward. We licked chocolate from our fingers. We arranged flowers in vases. We inspected our backsides when we tried on new clothes. We gave ourselves over to art. We elected officials and complained. We stood up for home runs. We marked life passages in ceremonies we attended with impatience and pride. We reached out for new love when what we had died, confessing our unworthiness, confessing our great need. We felt at times that perhaps we really were visitors from another planet. We occasionally wondered if it was true that each of us was making everything up. But this was a wobbly saucer; this was thinking we could not endure; we went back to our elegant denial of unbreachable isolation, to refusing the lesson of being born alone and dying that way, too. We went back to loving, to eating, to sleeping, to marching and marching and marching along.
Elizabeth Berg (The Year of Pleasures)
If we were in a proper relationship and I did live with him and was officially committed to him, first thing I would have to do would be to leave.
Anna Burns (Milkman)
As terrifying the disease was, the press made it more so. They terrified by making little of it, for what officials and the press said bore no relationship to what people saw and touched and smelled and endured. People could not trust what they read. Uncertainty follows distrust, fear follow uncertainty, and, under conditions such as these, terror follows fear.
John M. Barry (The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History)
First, women in general will not approach men. They will not plan dates, they will not call first, and they simply will not make anything interesting actually happen until you have had sex with them and have officially formed a relationship that is socially recognized.
W. Anton (The Manual: What Women Want and How to Give It to Them)
To keep myself from harming or calling N and to stave off the rage and despair, I focus on my extraordinary son, drink midrange Chardonnay every night after he is asleep, and make a barrage of late-night mail-order retail purchases placed from the couch. The couch has officially become my second battle station. I am angry and I have credit And I´m all blackened inside; I should wear a pointy witch hat around Larkspur as I go to the bank and drop A off at day care. It would be more honest.
Suzanne Finnamore (Split: A Memoir of Divorce)
No one, except Ronny, had any idea of what passed in her mind, and he only dimly, for where there is officialism every human relationship suffers.
E.M. Forster (A Passage to India)
But now they were inventing their own type of relationship, one that wasn’t officially recognized by history or immortalized in poetry or song, but which felt truer and less constraining.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
We formed an impromptu circle just so we could look at each other and memorize faces. We hardly noticed the waiting officials. We hardly noticed anything but our little family whose ties weren’t loosening at all. In fact, this impending separation only seemed to be binding us together with a double overhand knot, hard to untie and unfailing.
Laura Anderson Kurk (Perfect Glass)
Obviously, the problem of the shadow plays a great role in all political conflicts. If the man who had this dream had not been sensible about his shadow problem, he could easily have identified the desperate Frenchman with the "dangerous Communists" of outer life, or the official plus the prosperous man with the "grasping capitalists." In this way he would have avoided seeing that he had within him such warring elements. If people observe their own unconscious tendencies in other people, this is called a "projection." Political agitation in all countries is full of such projections, just as much as the backyard gossip of little groups and individuals. Projections of all kinds obscure our view of our fellow men, spoiling its objectivity, and thus spoiling all possibility of genuine human relationships.
C.G. Jung (Man and His Symbols)
Was Apollo giving me relationship advice? This was officially the weirdest moment of my life,
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Deity (Covenant, #3))
Structural factors are those such as ownership and control, dependence on other major funding sources (notably, advertisers), and mutual interests and relationships between the media and those who make the news and have the power to define it and explain what it means. The propaganda model also incorporates other closely related factors such as the ability to complain about the media’s treatment of news (that is, produce “flak”), to provide “experts” to confirm the official slant on the news, and to fix the basic principles and ideologies that are taken for granted by media personnel and the elite, but are often resisted by the general population.1 In our view, the same underlying power sources that own the media and fund them as advertisers, that serve as primary definers of the news, and that produce flak and proper-thinking experts, also play a key role in fixing basic principles and the dominant ideologies. We believe that what journalists do, what they see as newsworthy, and what they take for granted as premises of their work are frequently well explained by the incentives, pressures, and constraints incorporated into such a structural analysis. These structural factors that dominate media operations are not allcontrolling and do not always produce simple and homogeneous results.
Noam Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media)
The 46-year-old recipient of the Jarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart was actively window shopping in Cambridge, Massachusetts’ fashionable Har­vard Square when a transvestite purse snatcher, a drug addict with a crimi­nal record all too well known to public officials, bizarrely outfitted in a strapless cocktail dress, spike heels, tattered feather boa, and auburn wig, brutally tore the life sustaining purse from the woman’s unwitting grasp. The active, alert woman gave chase to the purse snatching ‘woman’ for as long as she could, plaintively shouting to passers by the words ‘Stop her! She stole my heart!’ on the fashionable sidewalk crowded with shop­pers, reportedly shouting repeatedly, ‘She stole my heart, stop her!’ In response to her plaintive calls, tragically, misunderstanding shoppers and passers by merely shook their heads at one another, smiling knowingly at what they ignorantly presumed to be yet another alternative lifestyle’s re­lationship gone sour. A duo of Cambridge, Massachusetts, patrolmen, whose names are being withheld from Moment’s dogged queries, were publicly heard to passively quip, ‘Happens all the time,’ as the victimized woman staggered frantically past in the wake of the fleet transvestite, shouting for help for her stolen heart.
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
There is a relation between persons and role. But the relationship answers to the interactive system—to the frame—in which the role is performed and the self of the performer is glimpsed. Self, then, is not an entity half-concealed behind events, but a changeable formula for managing oneself during them. Just as the current situation prescribes the official guise behind which we will conceal ourselves, so it provides where and how we will show through, the culture itself prescribing what sort of entity we must believe ourselves to be in order to have something to show through in this manner.
Erving Goffman
The discovery of her life was that she herself didn't actually need money, apart from a little cash for those relationships with taxi drivers and officials of the Great Western Railway which can only be expressed financially.
Elizabeth Ironside (Death in the Garden)
I honestly never once heard them fight. They yelled at us kids all the time, but never at each other. My siblings and I joke to this day about how the reason we have trouble in relationships is because we never learned how to fight from our parents.
Kathy Griffin (Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin)
My parents were never really married, by which I mean they never bothered making their relationship official with any church. I’m not embarrassed by the fact. They considered themselves married and didn’t see much point in announcing it to any government or God. I respect that. In truth, they seemed more content and faithful than many officially married couples I have seen since.
Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
Proximity to and even intimacy with BIPOC does not erase white privilege, unconscious bias, or complicity in the system of white supremacy. Being in a relationship with a BIPOC or having a biracial or multiracial child does not absolve a person with white privilege from the practice of antiracism.
Layla F. Saad (Me and White Supremacy: A Guided Journal: The Official Companion to the New York Times Bestselling Book Me and White Supremacy)
Now we were officially strangers on this earth. I would run into him at work from time to time, but we would never have a real conversation. We would always be aware of one another, but distant at the same time. Like a shooting star, our relationship was brilliant and beautiful, but it happened so fast that it didn’t seem to last very long.
Victoria Quinn (Black Forever (Obsidian, #4))
We’re not even officially in any kind of relationship and I’m ready to cut a bitch. It’s too much.” “Whatever
Meredith Wild (On My Knees (Bridge, #1))
Putin convinced Trump that U.S. intelligence officials were trying to damage the U.S.-Russia relationship with phony claims of meddling.
Philip Rucker (A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America)
We all make our own deals. [...] No one knows what happens in a relationship except the two people who are in it.
Kathy Griffin (Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin)
The masses live their lives as defined by terms given by society. For example: this is what it means to be married, this is what it means to be in a relationship, this is what it means to be dating, this is what it means to have a mutual understanding, sighs, this is what it means to be serious, this is what it means to be casual, this is what it means to be complicated, this is what it means to be Facebook official. These are all terms given by society. These are all invisible (and not so invisible) lines, drawn by society. These are are not God-lines. These are not borders created by highly enlightened individuals. These are not terms defined by you during moments of highly elevated consciousness. No. These are only shits. A pure soul, completely whole and void of constriction, will look out into the world with untainted eyes and say: "Where is the one whom my soul recognizes?" And you look for the one whom your soul is sired to, whom your soul recognizes, whom your soul loves. There are no laws, there are no lines, there are no borders. There is no shit. You are committed to the call of your soul, to the power that calls you beyond all the cloaks and the traps and the smallness created by small hands.
C. JoyBell C.
The feminism I desired called for a remapping of all of my relationships, the disruption of all officially charted maps. It called into question the possibility of love and lit the match of my lesbian body.
Antonia Crane (Spent)
Society doesn't officially recognize friendship as an institution in the way it recognizes sexual relationships, so there's no real protocol for ending one. If you've been going out, dating, or just sleeping with someone for even a month or two an you want to stop seeing him, you're expected to have a conversation with him letting him know it and giving him some bogus explanation. This conversation is seldom pleasant, and it ranges in tone from brittle adult adult discussions in coffee shops to armed standoffs in day care centers, but once it's over, you at least know your status. Because there's no formal etiquette for ending a friendship, most people do it in the laziest, most passive and painless way possible, by unilaterally dropping any effort to sustain it and letting the other person figure it out for themselves.
Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing)
I didn't officially live with him and wasn't officially committed to him. If we were in a proper relationship and I did live with him and was officially committed to him, first thing I would have to do would be to leave.
Anna Burns (Milkman)
He didn’t want to try to make Jude, or himself, do something neither of them wanted to because they were supposed to. Their relationship was, he felt, singular but workable: he didn’t want to be taught otherwise. He sometimes wondered if it was simple lack of creativity — his and Jude’s — that had made them both think that their relationship had to include sex at all. But it had seemed, then, the only way to express a deeper level of feeling. The word “friend” was so vague, so undescriptive and unsatisfying — how could he use the same term to describe what Jude was to him that he used for India or the Henry Youngs? And so they had chosen another, more familiar form of relationship, one that hadn’t worked. But now they were inventing their own type of relationship, one that wasn’t officially recognized by history or immortalized in poetry or song, but which felt truer and less constraining.
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
This would be the worst birthday of his life. Vladimir's best friend Baobab was down in Florida covering his rent, doing unspeakable things with unmentionable people. Mother, roused by the meager achievements of Vladimir's first quarter-century, was officially on the warpath. And, in possibly the worst development yet, 1993 was the Year of the Girlfriend. A downcast, heavyset American girlfriend whose bright orange hair was strewn across his Alphabet City hovel as if cadre of Angora rabbits had visited. A girlfriend whose sickly-sweet incense and musky perfume coated Vladimir's unwashed skin, perhaps to remind him of what he could expect on this, the night of his birthday: Sex. Every week, once a week, they had to have sex, as both he and this large pale woman, this Challah, perceived that without weekly sex their relationship would fold up according to some unspecified law of relationships.
Gary Shteyngart (The Russian Debutante's Handbook)
Putin convinced Trump that U.S. intelligence officials were trying to damage the U.S.-Russia relationship with phony claims of meddling. The Russians emerged with the distinct impression that Trump would not hold them accountable.
Philip Rucker (A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America)
So considering how the current official religion of China seems to be something like “Stand still while we bulldoze your house to build this dam” it’s hard to put a finger on the relationship between ancient Chinese tales and any specific religion.
Cory O'Brien (Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes: A No-Bullshit Guide to World Mythology)
​ME: Ok! ​Those were the only two letters I sent him, but I figured he knew what I meant. It only took a few seconds before he replied. ​JACKSON: Dinner at my house tomorrow. Bring a change of clothes. ​ And just like that, I was officially in a relationship.
Tiya Rayne (Where Love is Found)
Relationships should depend on chance and whether we’re on the same wavelength, not on identity. If I like you, you can be a beggar and I’ll still like you. If I dislike you, you can be the emperor and I’ll still dislike you. Shouldn’t it be like that? It’s simple logic.
Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù (Heaven Official's Blessing)
There is one type of scientific illustration in which this effect of scale on impression is acknowledged officially, as it were. Geographers who draw sections of mountain ranges will exaggerate the relation of height to width according to a stated proportion. They have found that a true rendering of vertical relationship looks false. Our mind refuses to accept the fact that the distance of 28,000 feet to which Mount Everest soars from sea level is no more than the distance of just over 5 miles which a car traverses in a matter of minutes.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
I was aware that I was on the moon, but the immense distance separating me from the earth was a pure abstraction for me. I felt as though the people I spoke with on the phone were somewhere close by—not because I could hear their voices clearly in the receiver, but because I couldn’t imagine how the entirely immaterial official relationships and personal feelings that linked us together could be stretched so far. But the strangest thing was that the memories connecting me with childhood could extend over such an incomprehensible distance too.
Victor Pelevin (Omon Ra)
Relationships should depend on chance and whether we're on the same wavelength, not on social status. If I like you, you can be a beggar and I'll still like you. If I dislike you, you can be the emperor and I'll still dislike you. Shouldn't it be like that? It's simple logic.
Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù (Heaven: Official's Blessing Tian Guan Ci Fu (Novel))
As all this suggests our relationship with evidence is seldom purely a cognitive one. Vilifying menstruating women bolstering anti-Muslim stereotypes murdering innocent citizens of Salem plainly evidence is almost always invariably a political social and moral issue as well. To take a particularly stark example consider the case of Albert Speer minister of armaments and war production during the Third Reich close friend to Adolf Hitler and highest-ranking Nazi official to ever express remorse for his actions. In his memoir Inside the Third Reich Speer candidly addressed his failure to look for evidence of what was happening around him. "I did not query a friend who told him not to visit Auschwitz I did not query Himmler I did not query Hitler " he wrote. "I did not speak with personal friends. I did not investigate for I did not want to know what was happening there... for fear of discovering something which might have made me turn away from my course. I had closed my eyes." Judge William Stoughton of Salem Massachusetts became complicit in injustice and murder by accepting evidence that he should have ignored. Albert Speer became complicit by ignoring evidence he should have accepted. Together they show us some of the gravest possible consequences of mismanaging the data around us and the vital importance of learning to manage it better. It is possible to do this: like in the U.S. legal system we as individuals can develop a fairer and more consistent relationship to evidence over time. By indirection Speer himself shows us how to begin. I did not query he wrote. I did not speak. I did not investigate. I closed my eyes. This are sins of omission sins of passivity and they suggest correctly that if we want to improve our relationship with evidence we must take a more active role in how we think must in a sense take the reins of our own minds. To do this we must query and speak and investigate and open our eyes. Specifically and crucially we must learn to actively combat our inductive biases: to deliberately seek out evidence that challenges our beliefs and to take seriously such evidence when we come across it.
Kathryn Schulz (Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error)
Yet surely she was as culpable as he was; recalling her casual speculation about when Jasper's wife's grandmother might die and thereby free Jasper and Susan to divorce, Liz wondered if a stronger sign of a relationship's essential corruptness could exist than for its official realization to hinge on the demise of another human being.
Curtis Sittenfeld (Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice)
After taking his oath, Washington would give his first inaugural address. What would he say? What message would he need his countrymen to understand? Considering the eight-year war we have just finished analyzing we would assume he would fall back on the national covenant. He would not forget who or what had brought him to this point. 'It would be peculiarly improper,' the new president declared, 'to omit in this first official Act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States.' He then got to the core of his message, invoking the covenant relationship with God in no uncertain terms: 'We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.' (Quoted from "Washington's Inaugural Address of 1780.")
Timothy Ballard (The Washington Hypothesis)
If you are the partner of a man with Asperger’s you may be the one who first noticed his anomalies; he may or may not be officially diagnosed. You might be perpetually frustrated at your inability to connect with him on a deep and consistent level. One day you feel as if your relationship is finally on solid ground, and the next day that ground has dropped out from under you.
Rudy Simone (22 Things a Woman Must Know If She Loves a Man with Asperger's Syndrome)
My parents were never really married, by which I mean they never bothered making their relationship official with any church. I’m not embarrassed by the fact. They considered themselves married and didn’t see much point in announcing it to any government or God. I respect that. In truth, they seemed more content and faithful than many officially married couples I have seen since. Our
Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1))
Simon said, “So have we DTRed now?” Isabelle shrugged. “I have no idea what that means.” Simon hid the fact that he was inordinately pleased by this. “Are we officially boyfriend and girlfriend? Is there a Shadowhunter ritual? Should I change my Facebook status from ‘it’s complicated’ to ‘in a relationship’?” Isabelle screwed up her nose adorably. “You have a book that’s also a face?” Simon
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
When someone says to me, "I have been talking with this girl for a while. We're trying to figure out when to make it official, like, Facebook official. What's your advice?" I always ask in response, "Are you, as an individual, in an emotional, spiritual, and financial situation where you feel you could reasonable get married in the next six months?" Normally the guy answers, "No." I respond, "Then you do not need to be in a rush to try to lay some claim on this girl. You do not need to expedite attempting to name your relationship. Because what you are trying to do is get the security and comfort of locking her down, saying to the world, 'She is MY girlfriend.' But what does that mean? It means other guys can't have her. It means you have laid a certain claim on her. But under God, you have no rights over her! She can do whatever she wants!
Ben Stuart (Single, Dating, Engaged, Married: Navigating Life and Love in the Modern Age)
The question turns Aria’s face bright red and, based on the heat I feel in my cheeks, probably mine too. Until now, we haven’t publicly defined our relationship. It didn’t seem necessary. “We haven’t gone on an official date,” Aria says. “Do you want to?” Paris asks. “Sure,” Aria answers, somewhat dismissively. Paris looks at me expectantly. “Sure,” I say, trying to end the inquisition. “Then you should go on a date,” Paris says.
J.W. Lynne (The Haven (The Unknown, #2))
If a child or a brother or a sister or a loved one of yours strays from the church in terms of faith practice and morality, as long as you continue to love that person, and hold him or her in union and forgiveness, he or she is touching the hem of the garment, is held to the Body of Christ, and is forgiven by God, irrespective of his or her official external relationship to the church and Christian morality. Your touch is Christ’s touch. When you love someone, unless that someone actively rejects your love and forgiveness, she or he is sustained in salvation. And this is true even beyond death. If someone close to you dies in a state which, externally at least, has her or him at odds ecclesially and morally with the visible church, your love and forgiveness will continue to bind that person to the Body of Christ and continue to forgive that individual, even after death. One
Ronald Rolheiser (The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality)
One way of understanding what followed is to recall that Jews were the people who said no. Offered a new form of relationship with God, they said they preferred the one they had, and this rejection set off several hundred years of rivalry and mutual recrimination, as the two groups competed for followers until the fourth century of the common era, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and thus seemed to win the battle.
Peter Hayes (Why?: Explaining the Holocaust)
The Soviets, at least some of them, believed in what they were doing. After all, they did it themselves and recorded what they did, in clear language, in official documents, filed in orderly archives. They could associate themselves with their deeds, because true responsibility rested with the communist party. The Nazis used grand phrases of racial superiority, and Himmler spoke of the moral sublimity involved in killing others for the sake of the race. But when the time came, Germans acted without plans and without precision, and with no sense of responsibility. In the Nazi worldview, what happened was simply what happened, the stronger should win; but nothing was certain, and certainly not the relationship between past, present and future. The Soviets believed that History was on their side and acted accordingly. The Nazis were afraid of everything except the disorder they themselves created. The systems and the mentalities were different, profoundly and interestingly so.
Timothy Snyder (Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning)
Head of any government department should not be allowed to hold the post for prolonged time, as it may give him chance to establish friendly relationship with the subordinates to coverup his wrongdoings. It may give him time to spread the corruption in lower cadres as well as other functions. People of the society too gets afraid of the fact that official staying longer time in one post, may harm their individual interest directly or indirectly, and they can not complaint against such officials under a threat.   || 2-9-33,34,35
Dev Dantreliya (Chanakya Niti on Corruption: Glimples of how Chanakya tackled menace of corruption 300 BCE in India?)
The impotence of liberal humanism is a symptom of its essentially contradictory relationship to modern capitalism. For although it forms part of the ‘official’ ideology of such society, and the ‘humanities’ exist to reproduce it, the social order within which it exists has in one sense very little time for it at all. Who is concerned with the uniqueness of the individual, the imperishable truths of the human condition or the sensuous textures of lived experience in the Foreign Office or the boardroom of Standard Oil? Capitalism’s reverential hat-tipping to the arts is obvious hypocrisy, except when it can hang them on its walls as a sound investment. Yet capitalist states have continued to direct funds into higher education humanities departments, and though such departments are usually the first in line for savage cutting when capitalism enters on one of its periodic crises, it is doubtful that it is only hypocrisy, a fear of appearing in its true philistine colours, which compels this grudging support. The truth is that liberal humanism is at once largely ineffectual, and the best ideology of the ‘human’ that present bourgeois society can muster. The ‘unique individual’ is indeed important when it comes to defending the business entrepreneur’s right to make profit while throwing men and women out of work; the individual must at all costs have the ‘right to choose’, provided this means the right to buy one’s child an expensive private education while other children are deprived of their school meals, rather than the rights of women to decide whether to have children in the first place.
Terry Eagleton (Literary Theory: An Introduction)
October 29th CHARACTER IS FATE “Each person acquires their own character, but their official roles are designated by chance. You should invite some to your table because they are deserving, others because they may come to deserve it.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 47.15b In the hiring process, most employers look at where someone went to school, what jobs they’ve held in the past. This is because past success can be an indicator of future successes. But is it always? There are plenty of people who were successful because of luck. Maybe they got into Oxford or Harvard because of their parents. And what about a young person who hasn’t had time to build a track record? Are they worthless? Of course not. This is why character is a far better measure of a man or woman. Not just for jobs, but for friendships, relationships, for everything. Heraclitus put it as a maxim: “Character is fate.” When you seek to advance your own position in life, character is the best lever—perhaps not in the short term, but certainly over the long term. And the same goes for the people you invite into your life.
Ryan Holiday (The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living)
But is formalizing a bond really such a significant shift, such an emotional event? This may strike many as a silly question, given that so many couples today live together before marriage. About 41 percent of U.S. couples now cohabit before they wed, compared with only 16 percent in 1980. So how much of a change can there be after an official ceremony? A lot, researchers have found. Living together may fully acquaint you with someone’s everyday habits and likes and dislikes—he drops his dirty laundry on the floor or in the hamper; she wants the right or left side of the bed—but it often stops short of complete emotional linkage. It’s like bouncing on the diving board but not plunging in. Moreover, cohabitation seems to have a hangover effect. Data show that couples that have lived together are more likely to be dissatisfied with marriage and to divorce. Why this is so is unclear, but it may be that couples who live together have more general reservations about marriage, more ambivalence about long-term commitment, and are less religious. Religiosity seems to encourage partners to wed and, when problems occur, to struggle to stay married.
Sue Johnson (Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships (The Dr. Sue Johnson Collection Book 2))
That was a version of history reliant on a narrow range of official summaries and gubernatorial archives created and archived by the most dubious sources—southern whites who engineered and most directly profited from the system. It overlooked many of the most significant dimensions of the new forced labor, including the centrality of its role in the web of restrictions put in place to suppress black citizenship, its concomitant relationship to debt peonage and the worst forms of sharecropping, and an exponentially larger number of African Americans compelled into servitude through the most informal—and tainted—local courts.
Douglas A. Blackmon (Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II)
Extraordinarily often the clever wife knows how to conceal her dictatorship from the eyes of the world, and certainly from those of her husband. For the more patriarchal and tyrannical her husband's persona is, the more he is ruled from within by his anima. In the patriarchate, whenever a woman other than the wife carries the anima projection that rules the man — and if this woman cannot be included within the fundamentally polygamous both officially and unofficially — dissolution of the stable patriarchal marriage ensues, along with a transition into a later, more complicated, and conscious stage of the man-woman relationship.
Erich Neumann (The Fear of the Feminine and Other Essays on Feminine Psychology)
Several Obama administration officials sympathetic to Holbrooke said they felt that antipathy toward him and his campaign for diplomacy may have squandered the United States’ period of maximum potential in the region. When US troop deployments were high, both the Taliban and the Pakistanis had incentives to come to the table and respond to tough talk. Once we were leaving, there was little reason to cooperate. The lack of White House support for Holbrooke’s diplomatic overtures to Pakistan had, likewise, wasted openings to steel the relationship for the complete collapse that followed. Richard Olson, who took over as ambassador to Pakistan in 2012, called the year after Holbrooke’s death an “annus horribilis.” We lost the war, and this is when it happened.
Ronan Farrow (War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence)
Obviously, the problem of the shadow plays a great role in all political conflicts. If the man who had this dream had not been sensible about his shadow problem, he could easily have identified the desperate Frenchman with the “dangerous Communists” of outer life, or the official plus the prosperous man with the “grasping capitalists.” In this way he would have avoided seeing that he had within him such warring elements. If people observe their own unconscious tendencies in other people, this is called a “projection.” Political agitation in all countries is full of such projections, just as much as the backyard gossip of little groups and individuals. Projections of all kinds obscure our view of our fellow men, spoiling its objectivity, and thus spoiling all possibility of genuine human relationships.
C.G. Jung (Man and His Symbols)
From 1992 to 1997, TAT [Treating Abuse Today] under my editorship published several articles by a number of respected professionals who seriously questioned the false memory syndrome (FMS) hypothesis and the methodology, ethics, and assertions of those who were rapidly pushing the concept into the public consciousness. During that time, not one person from the FMS movement contacted me to refute the specific points made in the articles or to present any research that would prove even a single case of this allegedly “epidemic” syndrome. Instead of a reasoned response to the published articles, for nearly three years proponents of the so-called FMS hypothesis–including members, officials, and supporters of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, Inc. (FMSF)–have waged a campaign of harassment, defamation, and psychological terrorism against me, my clients, staff, family, and other innocent people connected with me. These clearly are intended to (a) intimidate me and anyone associated with me; (b) terrorize and deter access to my psychotherapy clients; (c) encumber my resources; and (d) destroy my reputation publicly, in the business community, among my professional colleagues, and within national and international professional organizations. Before describing this highly orchestrated campaign, let me emphasize that I have never treated any member of this group or their families, and do not have any relationships to any of my counseling clients. Neither have I consulted to their cases nor do I bear any relation to the disclosures of memories of sexual abuse in their families. I had no prior dealings with any of this group before they began showing up at my offices with offensive and defamatory signs early in 1995. Ethics and Behavior, 8(2) pp. 161-187
David L. Calof
Fears of interracial sex and marriage have deep roots in the United States. The confluence of race and sex was a powerful force in dismantling Reconstruction after the Civil War, sustaining Jim Crow laws for a century and fueling divisive racial politics throughout the twentieth century. In the aftermath of slavery, the creation of a system of racial hierarchy and segregation was largely designed to prevent intimate relationships like Walter and Karen’s—relationships that were, in fact, legally prohibited by “anti-miscegenation statutes” (the word miscegenation came into use in the 1860s, when supporters of slavery coined the term to promote the fear of interracial sex and marriage and the race mixing that would result if slavery were abolished). For over a century, law enforcement officials in many Southern communities absolutely saw it as part of their duty to investigate and punish black men who had been intimate with white women.
Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy)
George Romney’s private-sector experience typified the business world of his time. His executive career took place within a single company, American Motors Corporation, where his success rested on the dogged (and prescient) pursuit of more fuel-efficient cars.41 Rooted in a particular locale, the industrial Midwest, AMC was built on a philosophy of civic engagement. Romney dismissed the “rugged individualism” touted by conservatives as “nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.”42 Nor was this dismissal just cheap talk: He once returned a substantial bonus that he regarded as excessive.43 Prosperity was not an individual product, in Romney’s view; it was generated through bargaining and compromises among stakeholders (managers, workers, public officials, and the local community) as well as through individual initiative. When George Romney turned to politics, he carried this understanding with him. Romney exemplified the moderate perspective characteristic of many high-profile Republicans of his day. He stressed the importance of private initiative and decentralized governance, and worried about the power of unions. Yet he also believed that government had a vital role to play in securing prosperity for all. He once famously called UAW head Walter Reuther “the most dangerous man in Detroit,” but then, characteristically, developed a good working relationship with him.44 Elected governor in 1962 after working to update Michigan’s constitution, he broke with conservatives in his own party and worked across party lines to raise the minimum wage, enact an income tax, double state education expenditures during his first five years in office, and introduce more generous programs for the poor and unemployed.45 He signed into law a bill giving teachers collective bargaining rights.46 At a time when conservatives were turning to the antigovernment individualism of Barry Goldwater, Romney called on the GOP to make the insurance of equal opportunity a top priority. As
Jacob S. Hacker (American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper)
It is not patriotic to admire foreign dictators. It is not patriotic to cultivate a relationship with Muammar Gaddafi; or to say that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are superior leaders. It is not patriotic to call upon foreign leaders to intervene in American presidential elections. It is not patriotic to cite Russian propaganda at rallies. It is not patriotic to share an adviser with Russian oligarchs. It is not patriotic to appoint advisers with financial interests in Russian companies. It is not patriotic to appoint a National Security Advisor who likes to be called “General Misha,” nor to pardon him for his crimes. It is not patriotic when that pardoned official calls for martial law. It is not patriotic to refer to American soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.” It is not patriotic to take health care from families, nor to golf your way through a national epidemic in which half a million Americans die. It is not patriotic to try to sabotage an American election, nor to claim victory after defeat. It is not patriotic to try to end democracy.
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
Ottawa, Ontario July 1, 2017 The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement on Canada Day: Today, we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation. We come together as Canadians to celebrate the achievements of our great country, reflect on our past and present, and look boldly toward our future. Canada’s story stretches back long before Confederation, to the first people who worked, loved, and built their lives here, and to those who came here centuries later in search of a better life for their families. In 1867, the vision of Sir George-Étienne Cartier and Sir John A. Macdonald, among others, gave rise to Confederation – an early union, and one of the moments that have come to define Canada. In the 150 years since, we have continued to grow and define ourselves as a country. We fought valiantly in two world wars, built the infrastructure that would connect us, and enshrined our dearest values – equality, diversity, freedom of the individual, and two official languages – in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These moments, and many others, shaped Canada into the extraordinary country it is today – prosperous, generous, and proud. At the heart of Canada’s story are millions of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. They exemplify what it means to be Canadian: ambitious aspirations, leadership driven by compassion, and the courage to dream boldly. Whether we were born here or have chosen Canada as our home, this is who we are. Ours is a land of Indigenous Peoples, settlers, and newcomers, and our diversity has always been at the core of our success. Canada’s history is built on countless instances of people uniting across their differences to work and thrive together. We express ourselves in French, English, and hundreds of other languages, we practice many faiths, we experience life through different cultures, and yet we are one country. Today, as has been the case for centuries, we are strong not in spite of our differences, but because of them. As we mark Canada 150, we also recognize that for many, today is not an occasion for celebration. Indigenous Peoples in this country have faced oppression for centuries. As a society, we must acknowledge and apologize for past wrongs, and chart a path forward for the next 150 years – one in which we continue to build our nation-to-nation, Inuit-Crown, and government-to-government relationship with the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Nation. Our efforts toward reconciliation reflect a deep Canadian tradition – the belief that better is always possible. Our job now is to ensure every Canadian has a real and fair chance at success. We must create the right conditions so that the middle class, and those working hard to join it, can build a better life for themselves and their families. Great promise and responsibility await Canada. As we look ahead to the next 150 years, we will continue to rise to the most pressing challenges we face, climate change among the first ones. We will meet these challenges the way we always have – with hard work, determination, and hope. On the 150th anniversary of Confederation, we celebrate the millions of Canadians who have come together to make our country the strong, prosperous, and open place it is today. On behalf of the Government of Canada, I wish you and your loved ones a very happy Canada Day.
Justin Trudeau
The Swedish royal family’s legitimacy is even more tenuous. The current king of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, is descended neither from noble Viking blood nor even from one of their sixteenth-century warrior kings, but from some random French bloke. When Sweden lost Finland to Russia in 1809, the then king, Gustav IV Adolf—by all accounts as mad as a hamburger—left for exile. To fill his throne and, it is thought, as a sop to Napoleon whose help Sweden hoped to secure against Russia in reclaiming Finland, the finger of fate ended up pointing at a French marshal by the name of Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (who also happened to be the husband of Napoleon’s beloved Desirée). Upon his arrival in Stockholm, the fact that Bernadotte had actually once fought against the Swedes in Germany was quickly forgotten, as was his name, which was changed to Charles XIV John. This, though, is where the assimilation ended: the notoriously short-tempered Charles XIV John attempted to speak Swedish to his new subjects just the once, meeting with such deafening laughter that he never bothered again (there is an echo of this in the apparently endless delight afforded the Danes by the thickly accented attempts at their language by their current queen’s consort, the portly French aristocrat Henri de Monpezat). On the subject of his new country, the forefather of Sweden’s current royal family was withering: “The wine is terrible, the people without temperament, and even the sun radiates no warmth,” the arriviste king is alleged to have said. The current king is generally considered to be a bit bumbling, but he can at least speak Swedish, usually stands where he is told, and waves enthusiastically. At least, that was the perception until 2010, when the long-whispered rumors of his rampant philandering were finally exposed in a book, Den motvillige monarken (The Reluctant Monarch). Sweden’s tabloids salivated over gory details of the king’s relationships with numerous exotic women, his visits to strip clubs, and his fraternizing with members of the underworld. Hardly appropriate behavior for the chairman of the World Scout Foundation. (The exposé followed allegations that the father of the king’s German-Brazilian wife, Queen Silvia, was a member of the Nazi party. Awkward.) These days, whenever I see Carl Gustaf performing his official duties I can’t shake the feeling that he would much prefer to be trussed up in a dominatrix’s cellar. The
Michael Booth (The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia)
It is hard to conceive of any relationship between two adults in America being less equal than that of prisoner and prison guard. The formal relationship, enforced by the institution, is that one person’s word means everything and the other’s means almost nothing; one person can command the other to do just about anything, and refusal can result in total physical restraint. That fact is like a slap in the face. Even in relation to the people who are anointed with power in the outside world—cops, elected officials, soldiers—we have rights within our interactions. We have a right to speak to power, though we may not exercise it. But when you step behind the walls of a prison as an inmate, you lose that right. It evaporates, and it’s terrifying. And pretty unsurprising when the extreme inequality of the daily relationship between prisoners and their jailers leads very naturally into abuses of many flavors, from small humiliations to hideous crimes. Every year guards at Danbury and other women’s prisons around the country are caught sexually abusing prisoners. Several years after I came home, one of Danbury’s lieutenants, a seventeen-year corrections veteran, was one of them. He was prosecuted and spent one month in jail.
Piper Kerman (Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison)
While the above term may seem too gimmicky for a subheading in an official file, it’s truly the best word to describe the strange relationship dynamic between Tam and Keefe Sencen. The two boys are decidedly not friends—in fact, reports suggest they disliked each other almost immediately (and the nicknames they use for each other range from the clever and witty to downright mean-spirited). Some suspect it’s because Tam violated Keefe’s privacy and read Keefe’s shadowvapor without his permission when they first met, while others would argue it’s because Keefe refused to have his shadowvapor read as though he had something to hide. Others still might suggest it’s actually because the two have quite a bit in common—but prefer to think of themselves as uniquely alone in their challenges and principles. Whatever the cause, it’s doubtful that Tam and Keefe will ever truly be friends. But it’s important to note that they have never appeared to truly be enemies, either—a fact that became increasingly vital when Tam was taken by the Neverseen and Keefe’s mom (Lady Gisela) forced him to use his ability on her son. Had there been true ill will between the boys, Tam wouldn’t have attempted to warn Keefe about what his mom was planning—and Keefe would’ve tried to harm Tam in their final showdown.
Shannon Messenger (Unlocked (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #8.5))
Lynum had plenty of information to share. The FBI's files on Mario Savio, the brilliant philosophy student who was the spokesman for the Free Speech Movement, were especially detailed. Savio had a debilitating stutter when speaking to people in small groups, but when standing before a crowd and condemning his administration's latest injustice he spoke with divine fire. His words had inspired students to stage what was the largest campus protest in American history. Newspapers and magazines depicted him as the archetypal "angry young man," and it was true that he embodied a student movement fueled by anger at injustice, impatience for change, and a burning desire for personal freedom. Hoover ordered his agents to gather intelligence they could use to ruin his reputation or otherwise "neutralize" him, impatiently ordering them to expedite their efforts. Hoover's agents had also compiled a bulging dossier on the man Savio saw as his enemy: Clark Kerr. As campus dissent mounted, Hoover came to blame the university president more than anyone else for not putting an end to it. Kerr had led UC to new academic heights, and he had played a key role in establishing the system that guaranteed all Californians access to higher education, a model adopted nationally and internationally. But in Hoover's eyes, Kerr confused academic freedom with academic license, coddled Communist faculty members, and failed to crack down on "young punks" like Savio. Hoover directed his agents to undermine the esteemed educator in myriad ways. He wanted Kerr removed from his post as university president. As he bluntly put it in a memo to his top aides, Kerr was "no good." Reagan listened intently to Lynum's presentation, but he wanted more--much more. He asked for additional information on Kerr, for reports on liberal members of the Board of Regents who might oppose his policies, and for intelligence reports about any upcoming student protests. Just the week before, he had proposed charging tuition for the first time in the university's history, setting off a new wave of protests up and down the state. He told Lynum he feared subversives and liberals would attempt to misrepresent his efforts to establish fiscal responsibility, and that he hoped the FBI would share information about any upcoming demonstrations against him, whether on campus or at his press conferences. It was Reagan's fear, according to Lynum's subsequent report, "that some of his press conferences could be stacked with 'left wingers' who might make an attempt to embarrass him and the state government." Lynum said he understood his concerns, but following Hoover's instructions he made no promises. Then he and Harter wished the ailing governor a speedy recovery, departed the mansion, slipped into their dark four-door Ford, and drove back to the San Francisco field office, where Lynum sent an urgent report to the director. The bedside meeting was extraordinary, but so was the relationship between Reagan and Hoover. It had begun decades earlier, when the actor became an informer in the FBI's investigation of Hollywood Communists. When Reagan was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild, he secretly continued to help the FBI purge fellow actors from the union's rolls. Reagan's informing proved helpful to the House Un-American Activities Committee as well, since the bureau covertly passed along information that could help HUAC hold the hearings that wracked Hollywood and led to the blacklisting and ruin of many people in the film industry. Reagan took great satisfaction from his work with the FBI, which gave him a sense of security and mission during a period when his marriage to Jane Wyman was failing, his acting career faltering, and his faith in the Democratic Party of his father crumbling. In the following years, Reagan and FBI officials courted each other through a series of confidential contacts. (7-8)
Seth Rosenfeld (Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power)
Why would intelligent, capable British and French government officials continue to invest in what was clearly a losing proposition for so long? One reason is a very common psychological phenomenon called “sunk-cost bias.” Sunk-cost bias is the tendency to continue to invest time, money, or energy into something we know is a losing proposition simply because we have already incurred, or sunk, a cost that cannot be recouped. But of course this can easily become a vicious cycle: the more we invest, the more determined we become to see it through and see our investment pay off. The more we invest in something, the harder it is to let go. The sunk costs for developing and building the Concorde were around $1 billion. Yet the more money the British and French governments poured into it, the harder it was to walk away.3 Individuals are equally vulnerable to sunk-cost bias. It explains why we’ll continue to sit through a terrible movie because we’ve already paid the price of a ticket. It explains why we continue to pour money into a home renovation that never seems to near completion. It explains why we’ll continue to wait for a bus or a subway train that never comes instead of hailing a cab, and it explains why we invest in toxic relationships even when our efforts only make things worse. Examples
Greg McKeown (Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less)
Article II creates an office, President of the United States, that remains a kind of inkblot onto which generations of Americans have projected their hopes and fears. There is no Homeric catalogue of presidential powers; at the same time, there is no Levitical set of prohibitions. Article I names (and thus demands the existence of) officials from other branches—the vice president to preside, the chief justice to oversee presidential impeachment trials. Article I also dictates some officers and internal organization of the Houses of Congress—there will be a speaker for the House, a president pro tempore for the Senate. By contrast, Article II has nothing to say about the internal organization of the “executive branch”; it does not mention a Cabinet or any specific official below the president. Article I sets out a list of things that Congress may do and the states may not. Article II tells us nothing about the president’s relationship to the states; it is as if they are to be acquainted only through Congress. Article I tells us in detail what Congress may not do; Article II says almost nothing about what the president may not do. Article II tells us there will be a president, and it tells us (quite ineptly) how the president will be picked. But what exactly this president will do—and must not do—is left almost completely to the readers’ imagination.
Garrett Epps (American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution)
The more the State of Israel relied on force to manage the occupation, the more compelled it was to deploy hasbara. And the more Western media consumers encountered hasbara, the more likely they became to measure Israel’s grandiose talking points against the routine and petty violence, shocking acts of humiliation, and repression that defined its relationship with the Palestinians. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a professional explainer who spent the early years of his political career as a frequent guest on prime time American news programs perfecting the slickness of the Beltway pundit class, the Israeli government invested unprecedented resources into hasbara. Once the sole responsibility of the Israeli foreign ministry, the task of disseminating hasbara fell to a special Ministry of Public Diplomacy led by Yuli Edelstein, a rightist settler and government minister who called Arabs a “despicable nation.” Edelstein’s ministry boasted an advanced “situation room,” a paid media team, and coordination of a volunteer force that claimed to include thousands of volunteer bloggers, tweeters, and Facebook commenters fed with talking points and who flood social media with hasbara in five languages. The exploits of the propaganda soldiers conscripted into Israel’s online army have helped give rise to the phenomenon of the “hasbara troll,” an often faceless, shrill and relentless nuisance deployed on Twitter and Facebook to harass public figures who expressed skepticism of official Israeli policy or sympathy for the Palestinians.
Max Blumenthal (Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel)
I do not know the substance of the considerations and recommendations which Dr. Szilárd proposes to submit to you,” Einstein wrote. “The terms of secrecy under which Dr. Szilárd is working at present do not permit him to give me information about his work; however, I understand that he now is greatly concerned about the lack of adequate contact between scientists who are doing this work and those members of your Cabinet who are responsible for formulating policy.”34 Roosevelt never read the letter. It was found in his office after he died on April 12 and was passed on to Harry Truman, who in turn gave it to his designated secretary of state, James Byrnes. The result was a meeting between Szilárd and Byrnes in South Carolina, but Byrnes was neither moved nor impressed. The atom bomb was dropped, with little high-level debate, on August 6, 1945, on the city of Hiroshima. Einstein was at the cottage he rented that summer on Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, taking an afternoon nap. Helen Dukas informed him when he came down for tea. “Oh, my God,” is all he said.35 Three days later, the bomb was used again, this time on Nagasaki. The following day, officials in Washington released a long history, compiled by Princeton physics professor Henry DeWolf Smyth, of the secret endeavor to build the weapon. The Smyth report, much to Einstein’s lasting discomfort, assigned great historic weight for the launch of the project to the 1939 letter he had written to Roosevelt. Between the influence imputed to that letter and the underlying relationship between energy and mass that he had formulated forty years earlier, Einstein became associated in the popular imagination with the making of the atom bomb, even though his involvement was marginal. Time put him on its cover, with a portrait showing a mushroom cloud erupting behind him with E=mc2 emblazoned on it. In a story that was overseen by an editor named Whittaker Chambers, the magazine noted with its typical prose flair from the period: Through the incomparable blast and flame that will follow, there will be dimly discernible, to those who are interested in cause & effect in history, the features of a shy, almost saintly, childlike little man with the soft brown eyes, the drooping facial lines of a world-weary hound, and hair like an aurora borealis… Albert Einstein did not work directly on the atom bomb. But Einstein was the father of the bomb in two important ways: 1) it was his initiative which started U.S. bomb research; 2) it was his equation (E = mc2) which made the atomic bomb theoretically possible.36 It was a perception that plagued him. When Newsweek did a cover on him, with the headline “The Man Who Started It All,” Einstein offered a memorable lament. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb,” he said, “I never would have lifted a finger.”37 Of course, neither he nor Szilárd nor any of their friends involved with the bomb-building effort, many of them refugees from Hitler’s horrors, could know that the brilliant scientists they had left behind in Berlin, such as Heisenberg, would fail to unlock the secrets. “Perhaps I can be forgiven,” Einstein said a few months before his death in a conversation with Linus Pauling, “because we all felt that there was a high probability that the Germans were working on this problem and they might succeed and use the atomic bomb and become the master race.”38
Walter Isaacson (Einstein: His Life and Universe)
Missy I was sixteen and Jason (known on TV as Jase) was eighteen when we started dating. One of my friends--we’ll call her Christy--was actually interested in him, and the two of them had started seeing each other. Jase did not know Christy was already dating someone else and had been for quite some time. He found this out at her house one Sunday afternoon when she ran down the stairs telling him he had to leave immediately. About that time, he heard the screeching of tires from the front of her house. Her boyfriend had arrived. The boyfriend (we’ll call him Greg) was obviously not happy with the current arrangement and was there to set things straight with Jason. He told Jason eh wanted to talk inside his truck. Jase ended up getting into Greg’s vehicle, which he quickly regretted, and Greg proceeded to drive to an undisclosed location to fight it out. Quickly, Jase realized the situation and told Greg that if all of this was over Christy, he could have her. She was not worth it to him. Since Greg did not seem to respond to this direction in the conversation, Jase switched gears and started preaching to him. He proceeded to tell Greg that Jesus died for him and for all the rotten things he had done in his life. He told him God would forgive him if he would turn his life over to Jesus, be baptized for his sins, and start living a life that reflected Jesus’ love for him. Since Greg did not seem to respond to this dialogue either, Jase told him simply, “Just don’t hit me in the face.” Greg stopped the truck, dragged Jase out, roughed him up a bit, and left him at the end of a dead-end road. Jason never threw one punch. Obviously, the relationship between Jason and Christy was officially over.
Missy Robertson (The Women of Duck Commander: Surprising Insights from the Women Behind the Beards About What Makes This Family Work)
our government is still breaking our treaty obligations. If you coolly strip away the endless administrative rhetoric about budgets and governance, the endless studies and the endemic lack of broad policies coming from the Department of Indian Affairs, you begin to realize that we are still caught up in the racist assimilation policies of a century ago. Let me take a broader example. We all know that the treaties involved a massive loss of land for First Nations. What most of us pretend we don’t know is that this remarkable generosity was tied to permanent obligations taken on by colonial officials, then by the Government of Canada; that is, by the Crown; that is, by you and me. So we got the use of land – and therefore the possibility of creating Canada – in return for a relationship in which we have permanent obligations. We have kept the land. We have repeatedly used ruses to get more of their land. And we have not fulfilled our side of the agreement. We pretend that we do not have partnership obligations. It’s pretty straightforward. We criticize. We insult. We complain. We weasel. Surely, we say, these handouts have gone on long enough. But the most important handout was to us. Bob Rae put it this way at the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Treaty Conference in June 2014: “It’s ridiculous to think people would say: ‘I have all this land, millions and millions and millions of acres of land, I’m giving it to you for a piece of land that is five miles by five miles and a few dollars a year.’ To put it in terms of a real estate transaction, it’s preposterous. It doesn’t make any sense.” So the generosity was from First Nations to newcomers. And we are keeping that handout – the land – offered in good faith by friends and allies.
John Ralston Saul (The Comeback: How Aboriginals Are Reclaiming Power And Influence)
You were taught that even when the charism of celibacy and chastity is present and embraced, the attractions, the impulses, the desires will still be present. So the first thing you need to do is be aware that you are a human being, and no matter how saintly or holy you are, you will never remove yourself from those passions. But the idea was making prudent choices. You just walk away. Celibacy is a radical call, and you’ve made a decision not to act on your desire.” Today, seminaries say they screen applicants rigorously. In Boston, for example, a young man must begin conversations with the vocations director a year before applying for admissions, and then the application process takes at least four months. Most seminaries require that applicants be celibate for as long as five years before starting the program, just to test out the practice, and students are expected to remain celibate throughout seminary as they continue to discern whether they are cut out to lead the sexless life of an ordained priest. Some seminaries screen out applicants who say they are sexually attracted to other men, but most do not, arguing that there is no evidence linking sexual orientation to one’s ability to lead a celibate life. The seminaries attempt to weed out potential child abusers, running federal and local criminal background checks, but there is currently no psychological test that can accurately predict whether a man who has never sexually abused a child is likely to do so in the future. So seminary officials say that in the screening process, and throughout seminary training, they are alert to any sign that a man is not forming normal relationships with adults, or seems abnormally interested in children. Many potential applicants are turned away from seminaries, and every year some students are forced out. “Just because there’s a shortage doesn’t mean we should lessen our standards,” said Rev. Edward J. Burns,
The Boston Globe (Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church: The findings of the investigation that inspired the major motion picture Spotlight)
And if someone can lead me to him?” Malaki asks. “Report back to me first. I don’t want to chance losing him. Oh and by the way—” Des’s eyes inadvertently land on Temper, “be discreet.” “Why are you looking at me?” Temper’s voice is several octaves louder than everyone else’s. The Bargainer arches an eyebrow. “I’m as motherfucking discreet as they come,” she says. I’m trying really, really hard not to laugh, but the struggle is real. Malaki manages a sharp nod. “We will be discreet,” he assures Des. The sorceress huffs. “Y’all need to get your heads checked. I am not the problem.” She turns on Malaki. “And you don’t need to go making promises for me. I never even said I was coming along.” “And you don’t need to.” The Bargainer stands. “But if you imagined staying behind so that you could have fun with Callie, then you’ll be sorely disappointed. The future Night Queen has official business that will take her away from the palace.” It takes me a second to realize Des is referring to me. “Wait,” I say, “I haven’t agreed to be queen.” “Yeah,” Temper agrees, “my girl hasn’t agreed—what?” She turns on me. “Bitch, have you lost your mind? Take that crown and wear that shit like it’s your birthright.” Ignoring Temper, Des’s gaze falls on me, his features sharp. “I apologize, the Night King’s consort has official business that will take her away from the palace.” I narrow my eyes at my mate. I might not have jumped onboard with this whole queen business, but I sure as hell don’t want to be known simply as someone else’s consort. “Hoooo!” Temper whoops, falling back into her seat. “You better sleep with one eye open, Desmond. I’ve seen my girl make men pay for less.” He’s still staring intensely at me. “That’s odd. For as long as I’ve known Callie, she’s the one who’s paid for my services. I admit, it’ll be nice to not be the prostitute in our relationship for once.” Temper snickers, appraising Des all over again. “Fuck one eye. Sleep with both eyes open.” I shake my head at Des as I stand, my eyes slitted. “It’s time to go.” We give curt goodbyes to Temper and Malaki, then slip out of the library. “You do realize how close you were to getting glamoured, don’t you?” I say as we head down the hallway. Des’s eyes seem to be laughing at me. “You say that like I’d mind.
Laura Thalassa (Dark Harmony (The Bargainer, #3))
In the U.S. Articles of Confederation, the federal government gave itself the exclusive right to regulate “the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians.” This power was repeated in the 1790 Trade and Intercourse Act, which further refined “trade” and “affairs” to include the purchase and sale of Indian land. The intent of these two pieces of legislation was clear. Whatever powers states were to have, those powers did not extend to Native peoples. Beginning in 1823, there would be three U.S. Supreme Court decisions—Johnson v. McIntosh, Cherokee v. Georgia, Worcester v. Georgia—that would confirm the powers that the U.S. government had unilaterally taken upon itself and spell out the legal arrangement that tribes were to be allowed. 1823. Johnson v. McIntosh. The court decided that private citizens could not purchase land directly from Indians. Since all land in the boundaries of America belonged to the federal government by right of discovery, Native people could sell their land only to the U.S. government. Indians had the right of occupancy, but they did not hold legal title to their lands. 1831. Cherokee v. Georgia. The State of Georgia attempted to extend state laws to the Cherokee nation. The Cherokee argued that they were a foreign nation and therefore not subject to the laws of Georgia. The court held that Indian tribes were not sovereign, independent nations but domestic, dependent nations. 1832. Worcester v. Georgia. This case was a follow-up to Cherokee v. Georgia. Having determined that the Cherokee were a domestic, dependent nation, the court settled the matter of jurisdiction, ruling that the responsibility to regulate relations with Native nations was the exclusive prerogative of Congress and the federal government. These three cases unilaterally redefined relationships between Whites and Indians in America. Native nations were no longer sovereign nations. Indians were reduced to the status of children and declared wards of the state. And with these decisions, all Indian land within America now belonged to the federal government. While these rulings had legal standing only in the United States, Canada would formalize an identical relationship with Native people a little later in 1876 with the passage of the Indian Act. Now it was official. Indians in all of North America were property.
Thomas King (The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America)
Beauty Junkies is the title of a recent book by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski, “a self-confessed recovering addict of cosmetic surgery.” And, withour technological prowess, we succeed in creating fresh addictions. Some psychologists now describe a new clinical pathology — Internet sex addiction disorder. Physicians and psychologists may not be all that effective in treating addictions, but we’re expert at coming up with fresh names and categories. A recent study at Stanford University School of Medicine found that about 5.5 per cent of men and 6 per cent of women appear to be addicted shoppers. The lead researcher, Dr. Lorrin Koran, suggested that compulsive buying be recognized as a unique illness listed under its own heading in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official psychiatric catalogue. Sufferers of this “new” disorder are afflicted by “an irresistible, intrusive and senseless impulse” to purchase objects they do not need. I don’t scoff at the harm done by shopping addiction — I’m in no position to do that — and I agree that Dr. Koran accurately describes the potential consequences of compulsive buying: “serious psychological, financial and family problems, including depression, overwhelming debt and the breakup of relationships.” But it’s clearly not a distinct entity — only another manifestation of addiction tendencies that run through our culture, and of the fundamental addiction process that varies only in its targets, not its basic characteristics. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush identified another item of addiction. “Here we have a serious problem,” he said. “America is addicted to oil.” Coming from a man who throughout his financial and political career has had the closest possible ties to the oil industry. The long-term ill effects of our society’s addiction, if not to oil then to the amenities and luxuries that oil makes possible, are obvious. They range from environmental destruction, climate change and the toxic effects of pollution on human health to the many wars that the need for oil, or the attachment to oil wealth, has triggered. Consider how much greater a price has been exacted by this socially sanctioned addiction than by the drug addiction for which Ralph and his peers have been declared outcasts. And oil is only one example among many: consider soul-, body-or Nature-destroying addictions to consumer goods, fast food, sugar cereals, television programs and glossy publications devoted to celebrity gossip—only a few examples of what American writer Kevin Baker calls “the growth industries that have grown out of gambling and hedonism.
Gabor Maté (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction)
A fierce battle was taking place at Tobruk, and nothing thrilled him more than spirited warfare and the prospect of military glory. He stayed up until three-thirty, in high spirits, “laughing, chaffing and alternating business with conversation,” wrote Colville. One by one his official guests, including Anthony Eden, gave up and went to bed. Churchill, however, continued to hold forth, his audience reduced to only Colville and Mary’s potential suitor, Eric Duncannon. Mary by this point had retired to the Prison Room, aware that the next day held the potential to change her life forever. — IN BERLIN, MEANWHILE, HITLER and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels joked about a newly published English biography of Churchill that revealed many of his idiosyncrasies, including his penchant for wearing pink silk underwear, working in the bathtub, and drinking throughout the day. “He dictates messages in the bath or in his underpants; a startling image which the Führer finds hugely amusing,” Goebbels wrote in his diary on Saturday. “He sees the English Empire as slowly disintegrating. Not much will be salvageable.” — ON SUNDAY MORNING, a low-grade anxiety colored the Cromwellian reaches of Chequers. Today, it seemed, would be the day Eric Duncannon proposed to Mary, and no one other than Mary was happy about it. Even she, however, was not wholly at ease with the idea. She was eighteen years old and had never had a romantic relationship, let alone been seriously courted. The prospect of betrothal left her feeling emotionally roiled, though it did add a certain piquancy to the day. New guests arrived: Sarah Churchill, the Prof, and Churchill’s twenty-year-old niece, Clarissa Spencer-Churchill—“looking quite beautiful,” Colville noted. She was accompanied by Captain Alan Hillgarth, a raffishly handsome novelist and self-styled adventurer now serving as naval attaché in Madrid, where he ran intelligence operations; some of these were engineered with the help of a lieutenant on his staff, Ian Fleming, who later credited Captain Hillgarth as being one of the inspirations for James Bond. “It was obvious,” Colville wrote, “that Eric was expected to make advances to Mary and that the prospect was viewed with nervous pleasure by Mary, with approbation by Moyra, with dislike by Mrs. C. and with amusement by Clarissa.” Churchill expressed little interest. After lunch, Mary and the others walked into the rose garden, while Colville showed Churchill telegrams about the situation in Iraq. The day was sunny and warm, a nice change from the recent stretch of cold. Soon, to Colville’s mystification, Eric and Clarissa set off on a long walk over the grounds by themselves, leaving Mary behind. “His motives,” Colville wrote, “were either Clarissa’s attraction, which she did not attempt to keep in the background, or else the belief that it was good policy to arouse Mary’s jealousy.” After the walk, and after Clarissa and Captain Hillgarth had left, Eric took a nap, with the apparent intention (as Colville
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
FACT 4 – There is more to the creation of the Manson Family and their direction than has yet been exposed. There is more to the making of the movie Gimme Shelter than has been explained. This saga has interlocking links to all the beautiful people Robert Hall knew. The Manson Family and the Hell’s Angels were instruments to turn on enemy forces. They attacked and discredited politically active American youth who had dropped out of the establishment. The violence came down from neo-Nazis, adorned with Swastikas both in L.A. and in the Bay Area at Altamont. The blame was placed on persons not even associated with the violence. When it was all over, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the icing on this cake, famed musicians associated with a racist, neo-Nazi murder. By rearranging the facts, cutting here and there, distorting evidence, neighbors and family feared their own youth. Charles Manson made the cover of Life with those wide eyes, like Rasputin. Charles Watson didn’t make the cover. Why not? He participated in all the killings. Manson wasn’t inside the house. Manson played a guitar and made records. Watson didn’t. He was too busy taking care of matters at the lawyer’s office prior to the killings, or with officials of Young Republicans. Who were Watson’s sponsors in Texas, where he remained until his trial, separate from the Manson Family’s to psychologically distance him from the linking of Watson to the murders he actually committed. “Pigs” was scrawled in Sharon Tate’s house in blood. Was this to make blacks the suspects? Credit cards of the La Bianca family were dropped intentionally in the ghetto after the massacre. The purpose was to stir racial fears and hatred. Who wrote the article, “Did Hate Kill Tate?”—blaming Black Panthers for the murders? Lee Harvey Oswald was passed off as a Marxist. Another deception. A pair of glasses was left on the floor of Sharon Tate’s home the day of the murder. They were never identified. Who moved the bodies after the killers left, before the police arrived? The Spahn ranch wasn’t a hippie commune. It bordered the Krupp ranch, and has been incorporated into a German Bavarian beer garden. Howard Hughes knew George Spahn. He visited this ranch daily while filming The Outlaw. Howard Hughes bought the 516 acres of Krupp property in Nevada after he moved into that territory. What about Altamont? What distortions and untruths are displayed in that movie? Why did Mick Jagger insist, “the concert must go on?” There was a demand that filmmakers be allowed to catch this concert. It couldn’t have happened the same in any other state. The Hell’s Angels had a long working relationship with law enforcement, particularly in the Oakland area. They were considered heroes by the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers when they physically assaulted the dirty anti-war hippies protesting the shipment of arms to Vietnam. The laboratory for choice LSD, the kind sent to England for the Stones, came from the Bay Area and would be consumed readily by this crowd. Attendees of the concert said there was “a compulsiveness to the event.” It had to take place. Melvin Belli, Jack Ruby’s lawyer, made the legal arrangements. Ruby had complained that Belli prohibited him from telling the full story of Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder (another media event). There were many layers of cover-up, and many names have reappeared in subsequent scripts. Sen. Philip Hart, a member of the committee investigating illegal intelligence operations inside the US, confessed that his own children told him these things were happening. He had refused to believe them. On November 18, 1975, Sen. Hart realized matters were not only out of hand, but crimes of the past had to be exposed to prevent future outrages. How shall we ensure that it will never happen again? It will happen repeatedly unless we can bring ourselves to understand and accept that it did go on.
Mae Brussell (The Essential Mae Brussell: Investigations of Fascism in America)
One day during an event in which the Philistines were making sport of him, he stood between two temple pillars, prayed for one last infusion of supernatural strength, and literally brought the house down (see JUDGES 16). The collapsing structure killed him and more than 3000 spectators and government officials. This was the tragic end of a strong man who was weakened by a manipulative woman. Manipulation can destroy not only a relationship but also a person’s life.
Deborah Smith Pegues (30 Days to Taming Your Tongue: What You Say (and Don't Say) Will Improve Your Relationships)
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (Clark, Christopher) - Your Highlight on page 26 | location 732-759 | Added on Saturday, 3 May 2014 14:31:16 Garašanin articulated this imperative in 1848 during the uprising in the Vojvodina. ‘The Vojvodina Serbs,’ he wrote, ‘expect from all Serbdom a helping hand, so they can triumph over their traditional enemy. […] But because of political factors, we cannot aid them publicly. It only remains for us to aid them in secret.’55 This preference for covert operations can also be observed in Macedonia. Following an abortive Macedonian insurrection against the Turks in August 1903, the new Karadjordjević regime began to operate an active policy in the region. Committees were established to promote Serb guerrilla activity in Macedonia, and there were meetings in Belgrade to recruit and supply bands of fighters. Confronted by the Ottoman minister in Belgrade, the Serbian foreign minister Kaljević denied any involvement by the government and protested that the meetings were in any case not illegal, since they had been convened ‘not for the raising of bands, but merely for collecting funds and expressing sympathy for co-religionists beyond the border’.56 The regicides were deeply involved in this cross-border activity. The conspirator officers and their fellow travellers within the army convened an informal national committee in Belgrade, coordinated the campaign and commanded many of the volunteer units. These were not, strictly speaking, units of the Serbian army proper, but the fact that volunteer officers were immediately granted leave by the army suggested a generous measure of official backing.57 Militia activity steadily expanded in scope, and there were numerous violent skirmishes between Serb četniks (guerrillas) and bands of Bulgarian volunteers. In February 1907, the British government requested that Belgrade put a stop to this activity, which appeared likely to trigger a war between Serbia and Bulgaria. Once again, Belgrade disclaimed responsibility, denying that it was funding četnik activity and declaring that it ‘could not prevent [its people] from defending themselves against foreign bands’. But the plausibility of this posture was undermined by the government’s continuing support for the struggle – in November 1906, the Skupština had already voted 300,000 dinars for aid to Serbs suffering in Old Serbia and Macedonia, and this was followed by a ‘secret credit’ for ‘extraordinary expenses and the defence of national interests’.58 Irredentism of this kind was fraught with risk. It was easy to send guerrilla chiefs into the field, but difficult to control them once they were there. By the winter of 1907, it was clear that a number of the četnik bands were operating in Macedonia independently of any supervision; only with some difficulty did an emissary from Belgrade succeed in re-imposing control. The ‘Macedonian imbroglio’ thus delivered an equivocal lesson, with fateful implications for the events of 1914. On the one hand, the devolution of command functions to activist cells dominated by members of the conspirator network carried the danger that control over Serb national policy might pass from the political centre to irresponsible elements on the periphery. On the other hand, the diplomacy of 1906–7 demonstrated that the fuzzy, informal relationship between the Serbian government and the networks entrusted with delivering irredentist policy could be exploited to deflect political responsibility from Belgrade and maximize the government’s room for manoeuvre. The Belgrade political elite became accustomed to a kind of doublethink founded on the intermittent pretence that the foreign policy of official Serbia and the work of national liberation beyond the frontiers of the state were separate phenomena.
Anonymous
Do your interactions in daily life have rules, either specified or implied? Unwritten rules or conventions can be as important—even more important—than those that are specified. Make a list of unwritten rules in your interactions and identify their sources, whether from tradition or from power relationships. Compare these rules with what is officially stated and take note of the gap. Does this gap offer room to maneuver for advantage?
Anonymous
could not overcome their fear of bullets and arrows and the scalping knife. Protect us,they hollered to the president and the Supreme Executive Council. Send more money, cried battalion colonels. Despite amendments to the Militia Act, Pennsylvania's Revolutionary government failed to win the hearts of Northampton's militiamen. The farmers had grown weary of their role as soldiers. Moreover, a byzantine relationship between Northampton's county lieutenant, a civilian commander of the militia who had been appointed by the president, and battalion officers, who had been elected by their men, foiled the dictates of the law. Isolated by natural boundaries, hampered by poor communications, red tape, and intramural disputes, each Northampton battalion became a fiefdom whose leaders distanced themselves from the county lieutenant, county officials, the president, and the Council. Apprized of mutinous rumblings in Northampton, the president pleaded with the militia: "Let there be one dispute:who shall serve his country best?"" But pep talks and patriotic slogans had lost their sizzle in Northampton. Fearing for his life, the sheriff refused to collect fines from 300 delinquent militiamen. "They wont suffer no sheriff, constable, or any other fit person to serve any executions on them,"he reported." Later, when Indians and Tories threatened to clear settlers from the frontier, the president promised battalion commanders ammunition and money for scouting parties and scalps,but he warned them that the militia could not be useful if "they meet at taverns and spend their time in amusement and frolick."'$ In the months ahead, the mutiny escalated.
Francis Fox (Sweet Land of Liberty: The Ordeal of the American Revolution in Northampton County, Pennsylvania)
This is why it is so fundamental for us right now to grab hold of this idea of power and to democratize it. One of the things that is so profoundly exciting and challenging about this moment is that as a result of this power illiteracy that is so pervasive, there is a concentration of knowledge, of understanding, of clout. I mean, think about it: How does a friendship become a subsidy? Seamlessly, when a senior government official decides to leave government and become a lobbyist for a private interest and convert his or her relationships into capital for their new masters. How does a bias become a policy? Insidiously, just the way that stop-and-frisk, for instance, became over time a bureaucratic numbers game. How does a slogan become a movement? Virally, in the way that the Tea Party, for instance, was able to take the "Don't Tread on Me" flag from the American Revolution, or how, on the other side, a band of activists could take a magazine headline, "Occupy Wall Street," and turn that into a global meme and movement. The thing is, though, most people aren't looking for and don't want to see these realities. So much of this ignorance, this civic illiteracy, is willful. There are some millennials, for instance, who think the whole business is just sordid. They don't want to have anything to do with politics. They'd rather just opt out and engage in volunteerism. There are some techies out there who believe that the cure-all for any power imbalance or power abuse is simply more data, more transparency. There are some on the left who think power resides only with corporations, and some on the right who think power resides only with government, each side blinded by their selective outrage. There are the naive who believe that good things just happen and the cynical who believe that bad things just happen, the fortunate and unfortunate unlike who think that their lot is simply what they deserve rather than the eminently alterable result of a prior arrangement, an inherited allocation, of power.
Eric Liu
Cultural Awareness Capabilities for Social MDM As we have worked with customers around the world, we have encountered numerous situations that have taught us to broaden our understanding, handling, and use of information about people—once again reminding us of the diversity and richness of human nature. Following are some of the things we have learned: • Birth dates can be surprisingly tricky. In some cultures, people have a religious birth date that is different from the birth date tracked by the government. This could be due to differences between religious calendars and secular calendars, or it could be that the religious birth date is selected for other reasons. Depending on how you ask people for their birth date, you may get either their actual or religious birth date. In other situations, the government may assign a birth date. For example, in some rural areas of India, children are assigned a legal birth date based on their first day in elementary school. So you need to exercise caution in using birth date as an attribute in matching individuals, and you also have to consider how information is gathered. • Names can also be challenging. In some cultures, people have official and religious names. So again, it is important to understand how and why an individual might give one or the other and perhaps provide the capability to support both. • In some countries, there are multiple government identification systems for taxation, social services, military service, and other purposes. In some of these schemes, an individual may, for instance, have multiple tax ID numbers: one that represents the individual and another that might represent individuals in their role as head of household or head of clan. • Different languages and cultures represent family relationships in different ways. In some languages, specific terms and honorifics reflect relationships that don’t have equivalents in other languages. Therefore, as you look at understanding relationships and householding, you have to accommodate these nuances. • Address information is country-specific and, in some cases, also region-specific within a country. Not all countries have postal codes. Many countries allow an address to be descriptive, such as “3rd house behind the church.” We have found this in parts Europe as well as other parts of the world.
Martin Oberhofer (Beyond Big Data: Using Social MDM to Drive Deep Customer Insight (IBM Press))
1. We believe in the freedom of religious expression. All individuals should be encouraged to develop a personal theology, and to openly present their religious opinions without fear of censure or reprisal. 2. We believe in tolerance of religious ideas. The religions of every age and culture have something to teach those who listen. 3. We believe in the authority of reason and conscience. The ultimate arbiter in religion is not a church, a document, or an official, but the personal choice and decision of the individual. 4. We believe in the search for truth. With an open mind and heart, there is no end to the fruitful and exciting revelations that the human spirit can find. 5. We believe in the unity of experience. There is no fundamental conflict between faith and knowledge; religion and the world; the sacred and the secular. 6. We believe in the worth and dignity of each human being. All people on earth have an equal claim to life, liberty, and justice; no idea, ideal, or philosophy is superior to a single human life. 7. We believe in the ethical application of religion. Inner grace and faith finds completion in social and community involvement. 8. We believe in the force of love, that the governing principle in human relationships is the principle of love, which seeks to help and heal, never to hurt or destroy. 9. We believe in the necessity of the democratic process. Records are open to scrutiny, elections are open to members, and ideas are open to criticism, so that people might govern themselves. 10. We believe in the importance of a religious community. Peers confirm and validate experience, and provide a critical platform, as well as a network of mutual support.
John A. Buehrens (A Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism)
So how do my election law offenses compare to those of leading progressives? Well, let’s see. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took $31,000 in late 2013 from his campaign funds to buy jewelry for his granddaughter Ryan Elisabeth Reid’s wedding. In his campaign year-end report, Reid tried to hide his granddaughter’s relationship to him by simply listing the transaction as a “holiday gift” to one “Ryan Elisabeth.” The impression Reid sought to convey was that he was buying gifts for his supporters. When it came to light that Reid had funneled campaign money to his granddaughter, Reid agreed to repay the money, but waxed indignant at continuing questions from reporters. “As a grandparent,” he fumed, “I say enough is enough.” Although Reid’s case involves obvious corruption, the Obama administration has neither investigated nor prosecuted a case against this stalwart Obama ally.6 Bill Clinton, you may recall, had his own campaign finance controversy. Following the 1996 election, the Democratic National Committee was forced to return $2.8 million in illegal and improper donations, most of it from foreign sources. Most of that money was raised by a shady Clinton fundraiser named John Huang. Huang, who used to work for the Lippo Group, an Indonesian conglomerate, set up a fundraising scheme for foreign businessmen seeking special favors from the U.S. government to meet with Clinton, in exchange for large sums of money. A South Korean businessman had dinner with President Clinton in return for a $250,000 donation. Yogesh Gandhi, an Indian businessman who claimed to be related to Mahatma Gandhi, arranged to meet Clinton in the White House and be photographed receiving an award in exchange for a $325,000 contribution. Both donations were returned, but again, no official investigation, no prosecutions.7
Dinesh D'Souza (Stealing America: What My Experience with Criminal Gangs Taught Me about Obama, Hillary, and the Democratic Party)
No, Omari and I hadn’t made our relationship official yet. But he was mine. I knew the day that we became official was coming soon.               “What’s
Jessica N. Watkins (Secrets of a Side Bitch)
Rolling my eyes, I took Dylan’s hand and followed Harlow inside. Jace sat in the front of the TV. I knew he was grumpy based on the way he didn’t look at me. When I flopped next to him on the couch, he did smile. “You smell like a strip club,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me. “How would you know?” “I’m not telling you my secrets.” Shaking my head, I sighed loudly. “Why do you make me do this to you? It’s like you want to suffer.” Jace knew what was coming, but his escape came too late. I pinned him on the couch and tickled him. Despite his efforts to seem unfazed, he couldn’t withstand armpit tickling. While I tormented my laughing brother, Dad and Mom walked out from the kitchen. “He missed you,” Mom said as I finally let Jace up. Catching his breath, my brother leaned next to me on the couch. “I miss beating you at videogames.” “I miss you beating me too,” I said, kissing his head. Harlow flopped on the couch next to us and I smiled at the familiar comfort of my family. Dylan watched us with a slight grin. When he caught Tad and Toni’s gazes, his smile grew. Suspicious now, I glanced at Harlow who was busy gluing herself to me. “Are they up to something?” I whispered. “Am I going to be embarrassed?” “I don’t know. If you feel embarrassed, I’ll punch Dylan in the crotch and distract everyone.” Rolling my eyes at her threat, I studied Dylan who grinned at me. “What?” I asked, nervous now. “She’s on to you,” Dad said. “Better ask now before she gets squirrely.” “Squirrely,” Jace snorted. “She gets batty too.” Harlow laughed. “Winnie can do so many animal impressions.” Ignoring them, I stood up and walked to a still smiling Dylan. “What?” “What happened to patience?” Without thinking, I reached to pinch my hand. Dylan took both hands then knelt on one knee. “Don’t,” Harlow blurted, grabbing for me. Everyone frowned at her. A moment passed where she stared at me in horror. Suddenly, she shrugged. “I meant don’t stop. Go ahead, Dylan.” The mood in the room shifted back to anticipation. Our gaze focused on Dylan who smiled up at me. “I know it’s been a few weeks. I don’t care. I love you and you love me, right?” “I love you so much.” “I’m not stupid. I know we’ll have problems. We run into issues. When we do, we’ll work them out. We’ll figure them out because we belong together. You believe that, don’t you?” “Yes,” I whispered, staring into his beautiful dark eyes. “Winona Todds, you are perfection and I refuse to live without you. Will you marry me?” My legs turning to jelly, I knelt down too. “Yes,” I whispered, afraid he was about to change his mind. Maybe it was a trick. All these awful things rushed through my mind. I wasn’t good enough for Dylan. He was going to leave me one day. I didn’t deserve to be happy when I was so weak. “You love me,” he whispered, pressing his forehead against mine. “You want me to be happy.” “Yes,” I said, tears rolling down my cheeks. “You’re what I need to survive.” “I’m not really strong yet.” “I love you now. I don’t want to wait. Do you want to wait for me?” Shaking my head, I looked at my smiling parents then back at Dylan. “We’re in love and planning to live together. We need to make our relationship official, so your daddy won’t kick my ass.” Even laughing, I asked, “You want this?” “I can give up everything else in my life, but never you. Married or not, you belong with me.” I exhaled uneasily then smiled. “Yes, I will marry you.
Bijou Hunter (Damaged and the Bulldog (Damaged, #6))
While Amanda may be considered as the “official candidate” whose breeding and background made her eminently acceptable at Court, the Prince was also conducting a stormy relationship with Anna Wallace, the daughter of a Scottish landowner whom he had met while fox hunting in November 1979. She was the latest of a long line of girlfriends, drawn for the most part from the upper reaches of the aristocracy, who had appeared on his romantic horizon. However Anna, fiery, wilful and impulsive, was temperamentally unsuitable for the regulated routine of royalty. Not for nothing was she known as “Whiplash Wallace”. Prince Charles, a man who by his own admission fell in love easily, pressed his suit even though his advisors told him that she had other boy-friends. Their relationship became so serious that, according to at least one account, he asked her to marry him. She is said to have turned him down but that rebuff did little to dampen his ardour. In May they were discovered by journalists lying on a blanket by the river Dee on the Queen’s estate at Balmoral. The Prince was furious at this intrusion into his private life and authorized his friend, Lord Tryon, who was present at the picnic to shout a four letter word at the journalists concerned.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
The dramatically different manner in which the couple responded to William’s injury publicaly underlined what those within their immediate circle have known for some time, the fairy-tale marriage between the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer is over in all but name. The breakdown of their marriage and the virtual collapse of their professional relationship is a source of sadness to many of their friends. This much discussed union which began with such high hopes has now reached an impasse of mutual recrimination and chilling indifference. The Princess has told friends that spiritually their marriage ended the day Prince Harry was born in 1984. The couple, who have had separate bedrooms at their homes for years, stopped sharing the same sleeping quarters during an official visit to Portugal in 1987. Little wonder then that she found a recent article in the Tatler magazine which posed the question: “Is Prince Charles too sexy for his own good” absolutely hilarious because of its unintentional irony.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
The constant needle and edge in their working relationship is matched by a cloak of secrecy the warring offices throw around their rival operations. Diana had to use all her guile to tease out information from her husband’s office before she flew to Pakistan on her first major solo overseas tour last year. She was due to stopover in Oman where Prince Charles was trying to woo the Sultan to win funding for an architectural college. Curious by nature, Diana wanted to know more but realized that a direct approach to Prince Charles or his senior advisers would receive a dusty response. Instead she penned a short memo to the Prince’s private secretary, Commander Richard Aylard and asking innocently if there was anything in the way of briefing notes she needed for the short stopover in Oman. The result was that, as she was travelling on official Foreign Office business, the Prince was forced to reveal his hand. In this milieu of sullen suspicion, secrecy is a necessary and constant companion. Caution is her watchword. There are plenty of eyes and ears as well as police video cameras to catch the sound of a voice raised in anger or the sight of an unfamiliar visitor. Tongues wag and stories circulate with electrifying efficiency. It is why, when she was learning about her bulimic condition, she hid books on the subject from prying eyes. She dare not bring home tapes from her astrology readings nor read the satirical magazine Private Eye with its wickedly accurate portrayal of her husband in case it attracts unfavourable comment. The telephone is her lifeline, spending hours chatting to friends: “Sorry about the noise, I was trying to get my tiara on,” she told one disconcerted friend.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
The Sovereign has also implied that the instability in their marriage is an over-riding consideration in any musings she may have about abdication. Naturally this does not please Prince Charles who refused to speak to his mother for several days following her 1991 Christmas broadcast when she spoke of her intention to serve the nation and the Commonwealth for “some years to come”. For a man who holds his mother in total awe that silence was a measure of his anger. Once again he blamed the Princess of Wales. As he stalked along the corridors at Sandringham the Prince complained to anyone who would listen about the state of his marriage. Diana pointed out to him that he had already abdicated his regal responsibilities by allowing his brothers, Princes Andrew and Edward, to take over as counsellors of state, the official “stand ins” for the Sovereign when she is abroad on official business. If the Prince showed such indifference to these nominal constitutional duties, she asked sweetly, why should his mother give him the job. Certainly the last twelve months have seen the Queen and daughter-in-law develop a more relaxed and cordial relationship. At a garden party last summer the Princess felt confident enough to essay a little joke about the Queen’s black hat. She complimented her on the choice, remarking how it would come in useful for funerals. In a more serious vein they have had confidential discussions about her eldest son’s state of mind. At times the Queen finds the direction of his life unfocused and his behaviour odd and erratic. It has no escaped her notice that he is as unhappy with his lot as his wife.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
Most successful developers have at least one person, if not a team of three or four, whose only job is to maintain solid relationships with – if not blatantly pay off – the local officials who sign off on various aspects of development projects, regardless of the directives from Beijing.
Dan Washburn (Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream)