P Taylor Quotes

Because being part of him isn't just anything. It's kind of everything.

[Otto von Bismarck] only considered the interests of his own country - always the worst offense that a statesman can commit in the eyes of foreigners.

In retrospect, though many were guilty, none was innocent.

There is nothing nicer than nodding off while reading. Going fast asleep and then being woken by the crash of the book on the floor, then saying to yourself, well it doesn't matter much. An admirable feeling.

When you're given an opportunity to change your life, be ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The world doesn't give things, you take things. (p.35)

Subject: This is a work environment and this is harassment Mr. Zaccadelli, I am writing to inform you that your proposition has been rejected. Due to both the fact that we are coworkers, as well as roommates, I would find it inappropriate to “visit the stacks” with you. I will reject all further offers at this time. If, in the future, I decide to entertain such an offer, I will inform you via correspondence. Respectfully (not) yours, Miss Taylor Caldwell P.S. Stop fucking emailing me.

Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.

...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed all mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes. [Letters to John Taylor, 1814, XVIII, p. 484]

It's always thoughts of family that drive me crazy, and it's always my friends who bring me back. Agents of Light and Darkness p.218

Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.

History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.

Revolutions in short are made in the name of the proletariat, not by it, and usually in countries where the proletariat hardly exists.

This is what is meant by the phenomenology of the science-making process: Self-observation always leads us to an existential point about the metaphysics of experience, and it is almost always a transforming moment. (p. 286)

Revolutions occurred in almost every European city with more than 50,000 inhabitants. The occasion for the revolutions was hunger.

Tedium and ennui are the demons of modernity. These haunt us when the routines fail, the narratives dissolve, and time disintegrates (p. 718).

Study of the past often turns into love of the past and a desire to keep it.

There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment — and nothing more corrupting.

Absolute power corrupts, and power corrupts absolutely

P.S. The pink flowers are amaranth, which represent immortality—what we’re fighting for, after all. And the yellow are tansy. They are said to represent a declaration of war. Fun, right?

Marx was concerned to change society or rather, if he adhered rigidly to his system, expected society to change in the way he wanted.

Our task as historians is to make past conflicts live again; not to lament the verdict or to wish for a different one. It bewildered me when my old master A. F. Pribram, a very great historian, said in the nineteen-thirties: 'It is still not decided whether the Habsburg monarchy could have found a solution for its national problems.' How can we decide about something that did not happen? Heaven knows, we have difficulty enough in deciding what did happen. Events decided that the Habsburgs had not found a solution for their national problems; that is all we know or need to know. Whenever I read the phrase: 'whether so-and-so acted rightly must be left for historians to decide', I close the book; the writer has moved from history to make-believe.

KENNA ROWAN’S PLAYLIST 1) “Raise Your Glass”—P!nk 2) “Dynamite”—BTS 3) “Happy”—Pharrell Williams 4) “Particle Man”—They Might Be Giants 5) “I’m Good”—The Mowgli’s 6) “Yellow Submarine”—The Beatles 7) “I’m Too Sexy”—Right Said Fred 8) “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”—Justin Timberlake 9) “Thunder”—Imagine Dragons 10) “Run the World (Girls)”—Beyoncé 11) “U Can’t Touch This”—MC Hammer 12) “Forgot About Dre”—Dr. Dre featuring Eminem 13) “Vacation”—Dirty Heads 14) “The Load Out”—Jackson Browne 15) “Stay”—Jackson Browne 16) “The King of Bedside Manor”—Barenaked Ladies 17) “Empire State of Mind”—JAY-Z 18) “Party in the U.S.A.”—Miley Cyrus 19) “Fucking Best Song Everrr”—Wallpaper. 20) “Shake It Off”—Taylor Swift 21) “Bang!”—AJR

The British are entitled always to mistrust other people but others are not entitled to mistrust the British. That is why England is known or was known abroad as 'Perfide Albion', because the British have two standards, one for themselves and one for other people.

Life is an addiction and self-preservation is its sweetest high

I want to tell you that I have made progress, capital P Progress. I want to tell you that I am better. I am great.

Acho que o que estou querendo dizer é que nem tudo depende da sorte. Além de ter sorte, é preciso saber ser filho da p*ta.

There is nothing more disastrous than a committee of extremely able men.

Liko Yuen 7/ 16 6: 09 p.m. I don’t like people seeing my binder. I’m gonna join track to fill in for it.

Assim é o mundo. Usamos a língua para destruir coisas todos os dias...

Certo ou errado não passam de diferentes perspectivas.

I know who you are. My father told me stories about you. He talked about your hands- hands that created the world surrendered to cruel nails

I know who you are. My father told me stories about you. He talked about your hands-hands that created the world surrendered to cruel nails

A. J. P. Taylor who said that the historian’s inevitable task is to decide whether something that happened in history was a Good Thing or a Bad Thing.

actually more a beer man. Belgian

Stars have passed judgement over the most terrible of our failures and have been the proud witnesses of our grandest triumphs. They are the silent observers of our history and lives.

From the days of our ancestors, those forgotten few who birthed us all, mankind has gazed awestruck into the heavens above. Night falls and the brilliant blue sky rolls away, allowing us a brief glimpse into a universe we will never fully understand. Yet we do not need its secrets to bathe in its beauty. Its empty blackness resonates in the depths of our souls, kindling a longing in our hearts that we can never fill.

Where are we as a modern civilization if our educational institutions conspire to train only a fraction of our capacities? and if this is all they can really do, then why not acknowledge that fact openly and give legitimacy to the other alternative forms of education that do cultivate those neglected dimensions of personality, instead of pretending that anything lying outside the standards set by the Wester analytic tradition is either inferior, anti-intellectual, or diabolic? (p. 293-294)

If you buy an S&P 500 index fund, your investment is highly diversified and its performance will match that of 500 leading U.S. corporations' stocks. Is it possible to lose all of your money? Yes, but the odds of that happening are slim and none. If 500 leading U.S. corporations all have their stock prices plummet to zero, the value of your investment portfolio will be the least of your problems. An economic collapse of that magnitude would make the Great Depression look like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

Increasing prosperity for the capitalists has everywhere brought with it increasing prosperity for the proletariat, instead of the increasing misery which Marx foretold. The most advanced capitalist countries are also those where the working class has the highest standard of life.

p 16 ...although our limbic system [eg. attention, fear, rage....] functions throughout our lifetime, it does not mature. As a result, when our emotional "buttons" are pushed, we retain the ability to react to incoming stimulation as though we were a two-year-old, even when we are adults.

In October 2014 files released from the National Archives revealed that MI5 ‘opened personal files on the popular historian A. J. P. Taylor, the writer Iris Murdoch and the moral philosopher Mary Warnock after they and [Christopher] Hill signed a letter supporting a march against the nuclear bomb in 1959’.

[I]t's not enough to be right. I think you have to be generous. It's not enough to be logical. You have to be virtuous...[Y]our demeanor will carry your message, perhaps, even further than your words will...[P]eople don't just disagree with us. Many of them genuinely think that we are evil, and when people think you're evil, I don't think they listen very carefully to your words. They search your manner. They look for the slightest excuse to ignore all your impregnable arguments, all of your carefully-marshaled facts, and that's why we must never be mean-spirited or angry or petulant, or dismissive of the interest of others. I believe rudeness and arrogance, they would drive people away, that would only confirm their own prejudices. It's the excuse they're desperate for to walk away smug and happy and say 'these people are just small-minded angry bigots.' Our opponents don't recognize our good faith, but -and this is a hard thing- I think we must try our best to recognize their good faith...You can't expect them to recognize our good intentions unless we are willing to recognize theirs.

I’d better finish setting up.” “Tell me what you need done,” John says. “I’m your second-in-command at this shindig. Did people say ‘shindig’ in the forties?” I laugh. “Probably!” In a rush I say, “Okay, can you set up my speakers and iPod? They’re in the bag by the refreshments table. And can you pick up Mrs. Taylor in 5A? I promised her an escort.” John gives me a salute and runs off. Tingles go up and down my spine like soda water. Tonight will be a night to remember!

The historian A.  J.  P.  Taylor calls the massacre ‘the decisive moment when Indians were alienated from British rule’. No other ‘punishment’ in the name of law and order had similar casualties: ‘The Peterloo Massacre had claimed about eleven lives. Across the Atlantic, British soldiers provoked into firing on Boston Commons had killed five men and were accused of deliberate massacre. In response to the self-proclaimed Easter Rebellion of 1916 in Dublin, the British had executed sixteen Irishmen.’ Jallianwala confirmed how little the British valued Indian lives.

The point was made many times that scientific management benefitted workers not at all, perhaps most clearly by a short statement by John P. Frey, editor of the International Molders Journal and participant in a bipartisan survey of the claims of scientific management, 'If generally applied the craftsmen would pass out of existence, and the workers would become dependent for their existence upon the scanty and insignificant industrial knowledge and experience afforded them by their limited opportunities, regulated by those who in addition to their ownership of machinery, had also acquired possession of craft knowledge and the skilled workers’ methods.

The upshot is a hermeneutics of suspicion; if someone tells you that he or she has converted to unbelief because of science, don’t believe them. Because what’s usually captured the person is not scientific evidence per se, but the form of science: “Even where the conclusions of science seem to be doing the work of conversion, it is very often not the detailed findings so much as the form” (p. 362). Indeed, “the appeal of scientific materialism is not so much the cogency of its detailed findings as that of the underlying epistemological stance, and that for ethical reasons. It is seen as the stance of maturity, of courage, of manliness, over against childish fears and sentimentality” (p. 365).

Our age makes higher demands of solidarity and benevolence on people today than ever before. Never before have people been asked to stretch out so far, and so consistently, so systematically, so as a matter of course, to the stranger outside the gates” (p. 695). How do we manage to do it? Or how could we? “Well, one way is that performance of these standards has become part of what we understand as a decent, civilized human life” (p. 696). The mechanism then becomes shame: to not meet these expectations is not only to be abnormal but almost inhuman. One can see this at work in a heightened version of holier-than-Thou: You don’t recycle (gasp)? You use plastic shopping bags (horror)? You don’t drive a Prius (eek!)? “You won’t wear the ribbon?!”44 This has to also be seen in light of Taylor’s earlier analysis of the sociality of mutual display and the self-consciousness it generates (pp. 481-82). So what we get is justice chic.

Asunto: Estás totalmente imaginándome desnudo ahora mismo Missy, Entonces, ¿qué tal si tú y yo nos adentramos entre las pilas para hacer algo de "estantería"? Fulminó con la mirada el mensaje antes de golpear la respuesta. Asunto: Este es un entorno de trabajo y esto es acoso. Sr. Zaccadelli, Me dirijo a usted para informarle que su propuesta ha sido rechazada. Debido al hecho de que somos compañeros de trabajo, así como compañeros de cuarto, me parece inapropiado visitar las estanterías con usted. Voy a rechazar todas las nuevas ofertas en este momento. Si, en el futuro, me decido a entretener dicha oferta, le informaremos a través de correspondencia. Respetuosamente (no) tuya, Señorita Taylor Caldwell PD: Deja de enviarme jodidos correo electrónico. Vi sus ojos echarle una ojeada al mensaje y una sonrisa en su rostro. Me Miró fijamente a los ojos mientras escribía, nunca mirando el teclado. Golpeó la tecla enter con una leve inclinación de cabeza. Ping. Asunto: No es una casualidad Missy, Acepto el reto, y te recuerdo que si quieres que te deje en paz, esta esta pequeña apuesta que tenemos. Gánala, y me voy. Impacientemente (y descaradamente) tuyo, Sr. Hunter Aaron Zaccadelli, escudero. PD: Demuéstralo Oh, él no estaba recibiendo la última palabra. Baje el volumen en mi computadora e hice un rápido barrido visual en la habitación para asegurarme de que no íbamos a quedar arrestados. Todo el mundo estaba absorto en lo que estaban haciendo. Asunto: Desafío aceptado Sr. Zaccadelli, Si sigues así, te voy a reportar a la línea directa de trabajo para el acoso. Ellos no tienen la amabilidad por los tatuajes, tocar la guitarra-amigos avanzando hacia las niñas dulces e inocentes. El Juego comienza. Atentamente, La chica que nunca tendrás PD: Escudero? Estás tan lleno de mierda. Escuché una risa ahogada del lado de Hunter en la mesa, pero mantuve mis ojos pegados a la pantalla del ordenador. Escaleras. Las precauciones de seguridad cuando trabaje con escaleras... Ping. Mire a la computadora con irritación. Supongo que no podía apagar el sonido. Asunto: Vuelve al trabajo Missy, Me estás distrayendo de los más importantes tópicos de seguridad en el trabajo. ¿Cómo te sentirías si yo subiera mal una escalera por no aprender el procedimiento adecuado y luego cayera a mi muerte? Siempre, El chico sobre el que sueñas. P.D: Yo también soy un príncipe perdido en una tierra lejana. ¿Qué quieres hacerme ahora?

Hope hurt.

Life marched on. There was nothing to do but stumble along and deal with it.

History is not a manifesto for action, a list of crimes to be avenged, a litany of positions to be reversed or a collection of rights to be wronged. History is, to paraphrase the great A.J.P. Taylor, the answer you give a child when he or she asks you: ‘What happened?’ It is a description of what happened.

After finishing his fried rice and cashew chicken, he headed to the dark room so she could eat her second smelly egg roll without gagging him.

mailto:mmcdonald64@gmail.com

boy. He moved closer to the gate, aware of Jim

The statistics tell part of the story. In America government spending increased from 7.5 percent of GDP in 1913 to 19.7 percent in 1937, to 27 percent in 1960, to 34 percent in 2000, and to 41 percent in 2011. In Britain it rose from 13 percent in 1913 to 48 percent in 2011, and the average share in thirteen rich countries has climbed from 10 percent to around 47 percent.4 But these figures do not fully capture the way that government has become part of the fabric of our lives. America’s Leviathan claims the right to tell you how long you need to study to become a hairdresser in Florida (two years) and the right to monitor your e-mails. It also obliges American hospitals to follow 140,000 codes for ailments they treat, including one for injuries from being hit by a turtle. Government used to be an occasional partner in life, the contractor on the other side of Hobbes’s deal, the night watchman looking over us in Mill’s. Today it is an omnipresent nanny. Back in 1914 “a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman,” the historian A.J.P. Taylor once observed. “He could live where he liked and as he liked. . . . Broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.” Today the sensible, law-abiding Englishman cannot pass through an hour, let alone a lifetime, without noticing the existence of the state.

In 1886 the S.P.R. published their detailed report on such accounts as a book, under the title Phantasms of the Living. More than 1300 pages long and consisting of over 700 cases, the work involved in compiling the two-volume report was enormous: researchers would follow up each case reported to them, interviewing the witness and seeking to verify the account with testimony from third parties, contemporary written reports and so on. The main researcher and author, Edmund Gurney, would often pen 50 to 60 letters a day; locations had to be visited and witnesses interviewed; cases had to be deliberated upon and categorized. And then, of course, the book had to actually be written.

In retrospect, though many were guilty, none was innocent.” The Origins of the Second World War A.J.P. Taylor

What motivates people to seek out dubious or frankly bogus treatments? Diverse motivations are likely to be at play, including imitation, conformity, desperation, and indiscriminate reliance on authority figures. According to one survivor of the Spanish flu pandemic: My mother used goose grease and turpentine mixed like a salve, sometimes she made a poultice out of it. I think it really helped. She told me it did, so I had to believe it. (Pettigrew, 1983, p. 120)

El arte más noble, es la de hacer felices a los demás

The myth of a golden age of public schooling is the creation of Ell-wood P. Cubberley, Dean of Teacher Education at Stanford University. There never was such a thing.

digress just for a bit of fun. This was a difficult political period that coincided with the birth of populism in the US. Indeed, L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is regarded by some as a clever political satire, a parable on populism, and a commentary on monetary policy. References are numerous. Yellow brick road? Gold. Ruby slippers? In the book, they were silver, and a reference to a populist demand for ‘free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold’ at the 16:1 ratio. Scarecrow? Farmers who weren’t as dim as first thought. Tin Man? Industrial workers. Flying monkeys? Plains Indians. The Cowardly Lion? William Jennings Bryan, Nebraska representative in Congress and later the democratic presidential candidate. Emerald City, where the Wizard lives? Washington DC. The Wizard, an old man whose power is achieved through acts of deception? Well, pick any politician in Washington. Now can you guess what ‘Oz’ is a reference to? Yes, the unit for precious metals. These parallels are discussed in more detail by Quentin P. Taylor, Professor of History, Rogers State College in a fascinating essay “Money and Politics in the Land of Oz.

. . . Seven hundred thousand people in our society (and their families) who will experience stroke this year. (p.xiv)

Once men imagine a danger they soon turn it into a reality.

Naturally, at different centres of Palestinian Christianity the lists would differ. All agreed that Mary of Magdala was one of the number, but at one centre the names of local women would be remembered, and at another centre those of others. Luke’s (Caesarean) tradition preserved the names of Joanna and Susanna, Mark’s (Jerusalem) tradition a second Mary and Salome. (Taylor 1957, p. 652)

A man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on earth for the people to see. —Black Elk. Oglala Sioux shaman

1) “Raise Your Glass”—P!nk 2) “Dynamite”—BTS 3) “Happy”—Pharrell Williams 4) “Particle Man”—They Might Be Giants 5) “I’m Good”—The Mowgli’s 6) “Yellow Submarine”—The Beatles 7) “I’m Too Sexy”—Right Said Fred 8) “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”—Justin Timberlake 9) “Thunder”—Imagine Dragons 10) “Run the World (Girls)”—Beyoncé 11) “U Can’t Touch This”—MC Hammer 12) “Forgot About Dre”—Dr. Dre featuring Eminem 13) “Vacation”—Dirty Heads 14) “The Load Out”—Jackson Browne 15) “Stay”—Jackson Browne 16) “The King of Bedside Manor”—Barenaked Ladies 17) “Empire State of Mind”—JAY-Z 18) “Party in the U.S.A.”—Miley Cyrus 19) “Fucking Best Song Everrr”—Wallpaper. 20) “Shake It Off”—Taylor Swift 21) “Bang!”—AJR

The example of the Jewish state gives detailed indications of how an Islamic Palestinian state should be organised. Israel has no written constitution, but the Ministry of Religious Affairs controls every law issued by the Knesset to ensure its accordance with the Torah. If the state is sometimes too slow or unwilling to implement religious laws and to supervise their observance, truly religious people (al-qubba ‘āt al-sūd or black hats) themselves go into the street and control their fellow citizens. Nusse, Andrea. Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas (p. 49). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

Lewis, Taylor—Collins,” he began, addressing the new arrivals as he pulled a Sig-Sauer P226 from a holster beneath his jacket and screwed a suppressor into the threaded barrel, “you three take the back—go through the alleyway. Rogers and I will take the front.” He said nothing more, briefly brass-checking the chamber of his pistol as they began to advance across the street. Nothing more needed to be said—he’d led these men into battle before. And now, as then, they had their orders

In the 1960s the journalists Henry Fairlie and Anthony Sampson had popularized the disdainful name that the historian A. J. P. Taylor had given it: ‘The Establishment’.

It is always tempting when you have political discontent in your own country to say it is the fault of some other country and not of your own government.

we need to stop asking the history of centuries past to vindicate our actions today. History is not a manifesto for action, a list of crimes to be avenged, a litany of positions to be reversed or a collection of rights to be wronged. History is, to paraphrase the great A.J.P. Taylor, the answer you give a child when he or she asks you: ‘What happened?

5. “1 John v. 7, is by far the most notorious, and most universally acknowledged and reprobated. Note!;—“ In our common editions of the Greek Testament, are MANY readings, which exist not in a single manuscript, but are founded on CONJECTURE.”—Marsh, vol. 2, p. 496,

That the name of CHRISHNA, and the general outline of his story, were long anterior to the birth of our Saviour, and probably to the time of Homer, we know very certainly.”—Asiatic researches, Vol. 1. p. 259. I ask the reader then to direct his researches to those researches! I ask the Christian to say, whether he can suspect, that this Christian writer would have spelt the name CHRISHNA rather than Krishna, or Krishnu, with a base design of producing an apparent resemblance where there was none in reality?

Burton Malkiel, professor of economics, Princeton University and author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street: "Through the past thirty years more than two-thirds of professional portfolio managers have been outperformed by the unmanaged S&P 500 Index.

earlier wars, and in the Second World War, generals, even marshals, also ran risks and died in action. In the First World War they led comfortable lives. All except Kitchener. He was the only outstanding military figure on either side who came to a violent end. Asquith

Those British generals who prolonged the slaughter kept their posts and won promotion; any who protested ran the risk of dismissal. By

It is important to remember that events now long in the past were once in the future.

Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach yours to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach yours to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology — all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone; they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired, quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more important life, and they can. Don't let your own children have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a preteen, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age, . . . there's no telling what your own kids could do. (p. xxii) — John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction

The music moves us very strongly, because it is moved, as it were; it captures, expresses, incarnates being profoundly moved. (Think of Beethoven quartets.) But what at? What is the object? Is there an object?” (p. 355). Nevertheless, we can’t quite shake our feeling that “there must be an object.” And so, Taylor suggests, even this disembedded art “trades on resonances of the cosmic in us” (p. 356). And conveniently, art is never going to ask of you anything you wouldn’t want to do. So we get significance without any ascetic moral burden. But

If reading the Bible does not raise profound problems for you as a modern reader, then check with your doctor and inquire about the symptoms of brain-death. Robert P. Carroll

On the contrary, all experience shows that revolutionaries come from those who are economically independent, not from factory workers. Very few revolutionary leaders have done manual work, and those who did soon abandoned it for political activities. The factory worker wants higher wages and better conditions, not a revolution. It is the man on his own who wants to remake society, and moreover he can happily defy those in power without economic risk.

Soup kitchens were the prelude to revolution. The revolutionaries might talk about socialism, those who actually revolted wanted 'the right to work'- more capitalism, not its abolition.

I may have flipped off the P.E. teacher for forcing me to wear my too-short and too-tight uniform. I may have also suggested Coach Taylor was a pervert for insisting on required activewear for adolescent minors that showcased the female form. While

constant companions throughout the project: Stanley Weintraub’s A Stillness Heard Round the World, A. J. P. Taylor’s The First World War, John Keegan’s The First World War, and Malcolm Brown’s The Western Front.

The Germans drew up elaborate plans for moving Italian forces to the French front, and the Italians enjoyed this planning greatly.

Here is where Taylor locates the most significant shift in the post-’60s West: while ideals of tolerance have always been present in the modern social imaginary, in earlier forms (Locke, the early American republic, etc.) this value was contained and surrounded by other values that were a scaffolding of formation (e.g., the citizen ethic; p. 484). What erodes in the last half century is precisely these limits on individual fulfillment (p. 485). The Place of the Sacred in Our Secular Age What is the “imagined place of the sacred” in a society governed by expressivist individualism (p. 486)? Taylor has already hinted that such a society seems to forge its own “festive” rendition of the sacred — “moments of fusion in a common action/feeling, which both wrench us out of the everyday, and seem to put us in touch with something exceptional, beyond ourselves.

Dr. Stephen Scherer is a Canadian researcher and was  Lead Investigator for the Autism Genome Project, which started January 1, 2006. 170 scientists from 11 countries were involved in this project right from the start. One point of interest in their finds to date is the identification of a Copy Number Variant (CNV) at chromosome 16p11.2 that is associated with autism.” People

There is a specter haunting our secular age, “the spectre of meaninglessness” (p. 717) — which is, in a sense, a dispatch from fullness. And because this won’t go away, but rather keeps pressing and pulling, it generates “unease” (p. 711) and “restlessness” (p. 726).

high on Xanax they put up with his bullshit, and

woman. I usually like their company, too. Most

make my peace with

Just then Dad walked into the kitchen and stopped in his tracks at the sight of us. “What’s with the nightly meeting?” “Taylor’s making tuna.” His eyes widened. “Oh. Umm, I’m going back into the living room, then. Let me know when it’s safe to come back for my ice cream.

. Organization resides between smoke and crystal just as it resides between conversation and text. Organization is talked into existence when portions of smoke-like conversation are preserved in crystal-like texts that are then articulated by agents speaking on behalf of an emerging collectivity. Repetitive cycles of texts, conversations, and agents define and modify one another and jointly organize everyday life (Taylor and Van Every, 2000, p. 31).

recognize “a fundamental ambivalence of human reality” (p. 673). So once again, both exclusive humanism and Christianity are hooked on the same horns. That shouldn’t be cause for premature rejoicing for Christians (p. 674), since that would just be Schadenfreude — we don’t have a “solution” either (p. 675). Instead, it raises the apologetic question: “who can respond most profoundly and convincingly to what are ultimately commonly felt dilemmas?” (p. 675). The secular3 age is a level playing field. We’re all trying to make sense of where we are, even why we are, and it’s not easy for any of us. Taylor insists that, while he believes a Christian “take” can account for

A Good Start in Financial History You really can’t learn enough financial history. The following, listed in descending order of importance, are landmarks in the field. Edward Chancellor. Devil Take the Hindmost. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999. What manias look like; how to recognize—and hopefully avoid—irrational exuberance. Benjamin Roth. The Great Depression: A Diary. New York: PublicAffairs, 2009. What the bottoms look like; how to keep your courage and your cash up. Roger G. Ibbotson and Gary P. Brinson. Global Investing. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993. Five hundred years of hard and fiat money, inflation, and security returns in a small, easy-to-read package. Adam Fergusson. When Money Dies. New York: PublicAffairs, 2010; Frederick Taylor. The Downfall of Money. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013. What real inflation looks like. Be afraid, very afraid. Benjamin Graham. Security Analysis. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996. You’re not a pro until you’ve read Graham “in the original”—the first edition, published in 1934. An authentic copy in decent condition will run you at least a grand. Fortunately, McGraw-Hill brought out a facsimile reprint in 1996. Charles Mackay. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Petersfield, U.K.: Harriman House Ltd., 2003. If you were smitten with Devil Take the Hindmost, you’ll love this nineteenth-century look at earlier manias. Sydney Homer and Richard Sylla. A History of Interest Rates, 4th ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Loan markets from 35th-century B.C. Sumer to the present.

upside down is the one we daily live in, in which sin has upset all order. A humourless determination to castigate sin and disorder takes over, a denial of ambiguity and complexity in an unmixed condemnation, which reflects the attempts by controlling élites to abolish carnivalesque and ludic practices, on the grounds that they sew disorder, mix pagan and Christian elements, and are a breeding ground of vice. (We are witnessing the birth of what will become in our day p.c.) Delumeau relates this to a parallel shift in attitude to madness;94 where previously this could be seen as the site of vision, even holiness, it now comes more and more to be judged unambiguously as the fruit of sin.

Taylor’s assignment was to think through the intersection between what was important and what was actionable.

Non devi piangere, non devi tremare, perché sotto di te c'è una caduta di almeno trenta metri e tu non sopravviveresti nemmeno a tre" gli fece notare, facendo un passo in avanti. Salì a sua volta sull'arbusto, rimanendo comunque lontano da lui. "P-perché devo r-restare qui?" chiese titubante il giovane, sforzandosi di non crollare. "Prendi un bel respiro e guardami, guardami negli occhi, piccolo. Va tutto bene, dipende tutto da te, non lo capisci? Puoi essere una preda o un predatore, puoi avere coraggio o scoppiare a piangere, hai scelta. Era questo il posto che volevo mostrarti, era questo che volevo farti vedere, quello che potresti essere. Ora guardami." intimò, mantenendo un tono tranquillo ma che non ammette obiezioni. Taylor rialzò gli occhi, incontrando quelli scuri e folli dell'uomo e improvvisamente capì, a piccole dosi, percepì esattamente ciò di cui stava parlando Dunken. Obbligò se stesso a ritrovare la calma, prendendo respiri profondi, mentre gli occhi dell'uomo continuavano a fissarlo, spingendolo ad osare. Davanti all'audacia di quel ragazzino, Dunken sorrise sardonico, sentendo il petto riempirsi di quel brivido che mai nessuno, prima di Taylor, aveva provocato. "Lo senti, Taylor? Quel senso di immortalità, sei imbattile, in piedi sulla cima del mondo, ma non cadrai, perché hai le palle di sopportare questa vita. Allora cammina, cazzo, tienila stretta questa sensazione!" sbottò, mentre il suo sorriso diabolico si allargava

Dunken?" sussurrò, pronunciando per la prima volta il suo nome. L'uomo alzò entrambe le sopracciglia, piacevolmente sorpreso dal comportamento del ragazzo, che mettendosi a sedere lo guardò negli occhi, senza alcun timore. "Q-quindi se... se p-puoi dimenticare cosa ho fatto p-pensi ancora che i-io sia... sia prezioso, vero?" chiese con voce insicura. Dunken, già in piedi di fianco al letto, infilò una mano fra i suoi capelli, abbassandosi per poter raggiungere le sue labbra gonfie. Lo baciò lentamente, accarezzando la lingua del giovane che in risposta s'intrecciò alla sua, mugolando soffusamente all'interno del bacio. "Sei fottutamente prezioso, Taylor. La cosa più preziosa che io abbia mai posseduto" soffiò piano contro la sua bocca, vedendolo arrossire, mentre un sorriso si faceva spazio sul suo viso dai lineamenti meravigliosi

M-mi troveranno, mi... mi porteranno v-via da te ma h-ho dovuto farlo, loro... loro adesso m-mi troveranno!" pianse ancora con disperazione Taylor, aggrappandosi con le poche forze rimaste al corpo muscoloso del sicario, che a quelle parole scosse il capo, indurendo il suo sguardo. "No, tesoro mio, non ti troveranno, non ti succederà niente. Hey, ascoltami! Coprirò tutte le tue tracce, ti renderò invisibile. Penso io a te, ci sono io, guardami Taylor, sono qui, piccolo, ti difenderò da tutto" lo rassicurò Dunken, cercando il suo sguardo. L'uomo se lo tirò addosso, spostando i capelli bagnati dal volto distrutto del ragazzo. "Dimmi che hai capito, Taylor, dimmi che hai capito che andrà tutto bene, sei così forte, così prezioso, sei stato davvero bravo" continuò l'uomo, tenendo il viso del giovane stretto tra le mani. "P-preda o predatore, t-tesoro mio, n-non farti braccare" ripeté con un soffio di voce Taylor, ricambiando stancamente lo sguardo dell'assassino di fronte a sé. Il sicario annuì, sentendo Taylor rilassarsi fra le sue braccia. Si ritrovarono entrambi seduti a terra, nel punto esatto in cui poco meno di tre mesi prima Dunken aveva posizionato la tenda da campeggio per inscenare la morte del marito della vedova. Taylor guardò l'uomo dal basso, con la testa appoggiata al suo petto e la schiena sulle sue gambe, mentre Dunken lo stringeva a sé, accarezzandogli il labbro inferiore con un dito. Sentì le labbra del ragazzo sollevarsi appena sotto al tocco del suo polpastrello e l'osservò, non comprendendo il perché di quel sorriso.