Quiet Era Quotes

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

I kept quiet, but the knowledge gathered like a storm. I could see the future: My father wasn't coming back. And this one fact seemed to point to other facts and others still: Love frays and humans fail, time passes, eras end.

But the paradox of their success is that most modern readers are unaware of the overwhelming obstacles both women had to overcome. Without knowing the history of the era, the difficulties Wollstonecraft and Shelley faced are largely invisible, their bravery incomprehensible. Both women were what Wollstonecraft termed “outlaws.” Not only did they write world-changing books, they broke from the strictures that governed women’s conduct, not once but time and again, profoundly challenging the moral code of the day. Their refusal to bow down, to subside and surrender, to be quiet and subservient, to apologize and hide, makes their lives as memorable as the words they left behind. They asserted their right to determine their own destinies, starting a revolution that has yet to end.

Before the Titanic, all was quiet. Afterward all was tumult. That is why, to anybody who lived at the time, the Titanic more than any other single event marks the end of the old days, and the beginning of a new, uneasy era.

Take a little thought experiment. Imagine all the rampage school shooters in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas; now imagine they were black girls from poor families who lived instead in Chicago, New Haven, Newark, Philadelphia, or Providence. Can you picture the national debate, the headlines, the hand-wringing? There is no doubt we’d be having a national debate about inner-city poor black girls. The entire focus would be on race, class, and gender. The media would doubtless invent a new term for their behavior, as with wilding two decades ago. We’d hear about the culture of poverty, about how living in the city breeds crime and violence. We’d hear some pundits proclaim some putative natural tendency among blacks toward violence. Someone would likely even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in a vain imitation of boys. Yet the obvious fact that virtually all the rampage school shooters were middle-class white boys barely broke a ripple in the torrent of public discussion. This uniformity cut across all other differences among the shooters: some came from intact families, others from single-parent homes; some boys had acted violently in the past, and others were quiet and unassuming; some boys also expressed rage at their parents (two killed their parents the same morning), and others seemed to live in happy families.

His wife, Emilie, still lived, without any financial help from him, in her little house in San Vicente, south of Buenos Aires. She lives there at the time of the writing of this book. As she was in Brinnlitz, she is a figure of quiet dignity. In a documentary made by German television in 1973, she spoke—without any of the abandoned wife’s bitterness or sense of grievance—about Oskar and Brinnlitz, about her own behavior in Brinnlitz. Perceptively, she remarked that Oskar had done nothing astounding before the war and had been unexceptional since. He was fortunate, therefore, that in that short fierce era between 1939 and 1945 he had met people who summoned forth his deeper talents.

Let me kiss you here,” he coaxed. “Just once.” “Oh, God… no.” She reached down and weakly pushed his hand away. “It’s a sin.” “How do you know?” “Because it feels like one,” she managed to say. He laughed quietly and pulled her hips farther toward him with a decisiveness that drew a little yelp from her. “In that case… I never sin by half measures.

Now we will live!” This is what the hungry little boy liked to say, as he toddled along the quiet roadside, or through the empty fields. But the food that he saw was only in his imagination. The wheat had all been taken away, in a heartless campaign of requisitions that began Europe’s era of mass killing. It was 1933, and Joseph Stalin was deliberately starving Soviet Ukraine. The little boy died, as did more than three million other people. “I will meet her,” said a young Soviet man of his wife, “under the ground.” He was right; he was shot after she was, and they were buried among the seven hundred thousand victims of Stalin’s Great Terror of 1937 and 1938. “They asked for my wedding ring, which I….” The Polish officer broke off his diary just before he was executed by the Soviet secret police in 1940. He was one of about two hundred thousand Polish citizens shot by the Soviets or the Germans at the beginning of the Second World War, while Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union jointly occupied his country. Late in 1941, an eleven-year-old Russian girl in Leningrad finished her own humble diary: “Only Tania is left.” Adolf Hitler had betrayed Stalin, her city was under siege by the Germans, and her family were among the four million Soviet citizens the Germans starved to death. The following summer, a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in Belarus wrote a last letter to her father: “I am saying good-bye to you before I die. I am so afraid of this death because they throw small children into the mass graves alive.” She was among the more than five million Jews gassed or shot by the Germans.

I hate the cliché that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, because covers say so much about what’s inside. Take The Great Gatsby, for instance—the woman’s melancholic face against the city lights in the distance is the perfect representation of the quiet misery of that era. Covers matter. Those who don’t think so are full of crap.

The day of heroes has passed,” Uncle Edwarn said. “The stories of people breaking out of history belong to another world. We have reached an era of modernism, both louder and more silent at the same time. You watch. Where once kings and warriors shaped the world, now quiet men in offices will do the same—and do it far, far more effectively.

We like to believe that we live in a grand age of creative individualism. We look back at the midcentury era in which the Berkeley researchers conducted their creativity studies, and feel superior. Unlike the starched-shirted conformists of the 1950s, we hang posters of Einstein on our walls, his tongue stuck out iconoclastically. We consume indie music and films, and generate our own online content. We “think different” (even if we got the idea from Apple Computer’s famous ad campaign). But the way we organize many of our most important institutions—our schools and our workplaces—tells a very different story.

In the Sixties, the hippies used to say, "Never trust anyone over 30." Now all the Sixties hippies are in their sixties, and they've gone quiet about that, but it's good advice for you: never trust anyone over 30 with the societal checkbook. You thought you were the idealistic youth of the Obama era, but in fact you're the designated fall-guys. You weren't voting for "the future," but to deny yourself the very possibility of one--like turkeys volunteering to waddle around with an "Audacity of Thanksgiving" bumper sticker on your tush. Instead of swaying glassy-eyed behind President Obama at his campaign rallies singing "We are the hopeychange," you should have been demanding that the government spend less money on small agencies with fewer employees on smaller salaries. Because if you don't, there won't be a future. "You can be anything you want to be"--but only if you first tell today's big spenders that, whatever they want to be, they should try doing it on their own dime.

The disturbing images from the Jim Crow era also make it easy to forget that many African Americans were complicit in the Jim Crow system, profiting from it directly or indirectly or keeping their objections quiet out of fear of the repercussions. Our

Do you remember when everyone thought Bush (sr) had a mistress too"" he asks in the course of a Clinton era conversation. "But she was rumored to be someone wealthy and Waspy, of course...The problem here is the goddamn Democrats, who sleep down, you see. They love that white trash...And white trash loves publicity,so the Democrats are the ones who get into all the trouble. As opposed to the Republicans. They sleep up...Up, where all is Episcopalian and quiet as death itself, and no one ever has to hear a thing about it

A historic transition is occurring, barely noticed. Slowly, quietly, imperceptibly, religion is shriveling in America, as it has done in Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and other advanced societies. Supernatural faith increasingly belongs to the Third World. The First World is entering the long-predicted Secular Age, when science and knowledge dominate. The change promises to be another shift of civilization, like past departures of the era of kings, the time of slavery, the Agricultural Age, the epoch of colonialism, and the like. Such cultural transformations are partly invisible to contemporary people, but become obvious in retrospect.

The only thing that could soothe and calm me during this era was music. That's continued to be true throughout my life. My mother would put my sister and me to bed and turn on the radio to sing us to sleep. There was something very comforting about being in a dark, cold room with Prince, Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper, or Madonna playing quietly. I didn't have to think about anything - the music took me away from myself and I got lost in it. I needed it like a drug. I felt disconnected and alone, and I realized around this time that things would never get better. It got so bad that I would pretend to be sick at school just so I could come home and lie in bed listening to music. It was like being adrift on the ocean at night. I still have trouble falling asleep without music now.

Aveva con sé l'inattaccabile quiete degli uomini che si sentono al loro posto. Ogni tanto, nelle giornate di vento, scendeva attraverso il parco fino al lago, e si fermava per ore, sulla riva, a guardare la superficie dell'acqua incresparsi formando figure imprevedibili che luccicavano a caso, in tutte le direzioni. Era uno solo, il vento: ma su quello specchio d'acqua, sembravano mille, a soffiare. Da ogni parte. Uno spettacolo. Lieve e inspiegabile. Ogni tanto, nelle giornate di vento, Hervé Joncour scendeva fino al lago e passava ore a guardarlo, giacché, disegnato sull'acqua, gli pareva di vedere l'inspiegabile spettacolo, lieve, che era stata la sua vita.

Sociopaths are the guys who get into brutal bar fights; psychopaths are better as hired assassins who leave no trace. The rage of psychopaths tends to be more quietly menacing. They wear a cold smile that hides the terror that they will perpetrate when they are ready. Sociopaths are messy and bombastic with their rage.

[...] i termini più usati per definirci descrivevano la nostra funzione rispetto ad altri. Persino le parole più benevole – «pulzella», «moglie», «madre» – dicevano al mondo se eravamo vergini o no. Qual era l’equivalente maschile di pulzella? Non ne avevo idea. Qual era l’equivalente maschile di signora, di puttana, di disturbatrice della quiete pubblica?

The pistol had been one hell of a find, because it hadn't quite been what she'd thought it was at first blush. Not simply the S&W Mk 39, but rather a modified version of the same, the Mk 22 Mod 0, also called the "hush puppy". It was Vietnam-era, not the most reliable gun in the world, but wonderfully silent, not only equipped with a silencer to eliminate the sound of gunfire, but also with a slide lock, to keep the actual mechanical operation of the gun quiet as well. She'd test-fired the gun at the market before purchasing, and been stunned that it still worked. The Uzbek vendor had offered to sell it to her cheap. "It's too quiet," he'd explained. "No one wants it." Chace shut her eyes, half smiling at the memory.

La notte calò lenta e fredda sulla foresta intorno a lui, e scese una quiete spettrale. Come se qualcosa stesse per accadere, grilli e uccelli notturni tacquero spaventati. Lui accelerò il passo. Nel buio ormai completato si ritrovò smarrito in una foresta paludosa, si dibatté nei pantani risucchianti e si mise quasi a correre [...]. Quando piombò fragorosamente nella radura in mezzo al pioppeto, cadde lungo disteso e rimase per terra con la guancia appoggiata al suolo. E mentre giaceva così un lampo remoto percorse il cielo con la sua luce azzurra, e, in una primordiale visione del mondo dall'occhio fessurato di un embrione d'uccello, scorrendo atroce e istantaneo da buio a buio, gli regalò infine lo spettacolo della cavità e dell'informe plasma bianco che si dibatteva sul muschio rigoglioso e iniziatico, come una magra lepre di palude. Lo avrebbe preso per un fratello senz'ossa della paura stessa che si sentiva in cuore, se il bambino non avesse gridato. Il bambino urlava la sua maledizione al mondo tenebroso e maleodorante in cui era nato, piangendo e piangendo, mentre l'uomo giaceva a terra farfugliando con le mascelle paralizzate, e con le mani respingeva la notte come un folle paracleto assediato dalle suppliche dell'intero limbo.

Without a child I could dance across the sexism of my era, whereas becoming a mother shoved my face right down into it. A latent bias, internalized by both of us, suddenly leapt forth in parenthood. It was now obvious that Harris was openly rewarded for each thing he did while I was quietly shamed for the same things. There was no way to fight back against this, no one to point a finger at, because it came from everywhere.

Aliena al Mondo, era costretta a vivere dove non poteva sentirsi a casa; avida di tenerezza e quiete, doveva cibarsi d'indifferenza, insensibilità e rumore. Un'indole che, anche nel luogo estraneo e ostile in cui era costretta a vivere, non aveva la ferocia necessaria per combattere la forza brutale che la contrastavano e non poteva che ritirarsi delicatamente nel silenzio e lì farsi piccola piccola, restare immobile ed essere dimenticata.

Damien was ready to die, until she came to town,” Arion states quietly, glossing over Damien’s interruption. “Now I’d rather see all of you die so I can just enjoy her by myself for a while,” Damien mutters like a petulant child, as he sniffs the baby’s ass and wrinkles his nose. “I’m not tending to that. You brought him, Vampyre. He’s your responsibility.” Arion sneers. “As if I know how to tend to a paper shit catcher. I’ve been underground. What was wrong with cloth diapers? The downside is the trash this era has created out of laziness and—” “Why are you off on this tangent to begin with, Arion? 

Mr. President, Dr. Biden, Madam Vice President, Mr. Emhoff, Americans and the world, when day comes we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry asea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace. In the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice. And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one. And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. That even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped. That even as we tired, we tried that will forever be tied together victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division. Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid. If we’re to live up to her own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made. That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare. It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a forest that would shatter our nation rather than share it. Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. This effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith we trust for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us. This is the era of just redemption. We feared it at its inception. We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves so while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us? We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be a country that is bruised, but whole, benevolent, but bold, fierce, and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. Our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain, if we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright. So let us leave behind a country better than one we were left with. Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one. We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the West. We will rise from the wind-swept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution. We will rise from the Lake Rim cities of the Midwestern states. We will rise from the sun-baked South. We will rebuild, reconcile and recover in every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful. When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough.

Most of all, there had been a time when honor meant something at the Colgan School, when school property was respected, when the faculty was revered—when the headmaster’s mint-condition 1958 Porsche Speedster would never have been placed on top of the fountain in the quad with water shooting out of its headlights on an unusually warm evening in November. There had been a time when the girl responsible—the very one who had lucked into that last-minute vacancy only a few months before—would have had the decency to admit what she’d done and quietly taken her leave of the school. But unfortunately, that era, much like the headmaster’s car, was finished.

L'inquietudine era nella mia natura; e qualche volta mi agitava fino alla sofferenza. Allora il mio unico sollievo era di camminare su e giù per il corridoio del terzo piano, rifugiarmi nella sua solitudine, abbandonare il mio spirito alle splendide visioni che mi sovrastavano, lasciare il mio cuore vibrare di un'esaltazione che lo turbava sì, ma lo dilatava; e soprattutto aprire l'orecchio a una voce inesistente, una voce creata dalla mia immaginazione e che non mi dava pace, alimentata dalla vita, dal fuoco e dalle sensazioni a cui aspiriamo, e che nella mia esistenza allora non avevo. Inutile dire agli uomini di essere contenti della tranquillità. Quel che essi desiderano è l'azione, e se non la troveranno, la creeranno. Milioni di esseri sono condannati a un destino più pacifico del mio, e milioni si ribellano contro la loro sorte. Nessuno sa quanti ribelli, oltre i ribelli politici, popolano la terra. In genere si crede che le donne siano molto quiete. Le donne invece provano gli stessi sentimenti degli uomini. Hanno bisogno di esercitare le loro facoltà, e di provare le loro capacità come i loro fratelli; soffrono come gli uomini dei freni e dell'inattività, e fa parte della mentalità ristretta dei loro compagni più fortunati il dire che si devono limitare a cucinare e a far la calza, a suonare il piano e a far ricami. E' stupido condannarle o schernirle, se cercano di fare di più o imparare di più di quello che è solito al loro sesso.

This is one of the great charms of Poirot’s investigations, for they reveal a world where manners and morals are quite different from today. There are no overt and unnecessary sex scenes, no alcoholic, haunted detectives in Poirot’s world. He lives in a simpler, some would say more human, era: a lost England, seen through the admiring eyes of this foreigner, this little Belgian detective. For me, that makes the stories all the more appealing, for although the days he lives in seem far away, they are all the more enchanting because of it." "In those first days after the series had begun on ITV, I realised for the first time that Poirot touches people’s hearts in a way that I had never anticipated when I started to play him. I cannot put my finger on precisely how he does it, but somehow he makes those who watch him feel secure. People see him and feel better. I don’t know exactly why that is, but there is something about him. My performance had touched that nerve." "The more Poirot welcomes his fellow characters, the more the audience sympathise with him, and the more he extends his gentle control over everything around him, as if wrapping it all in his own personal glow. I believe he is unique in fictional detectives in that respect, because he carefully welcomes everyone – be they reader, viewer, or participant character – into his drama. He then quietly explains what it all means and, in doing so, he becomes what one critic called ‘our dearest friend’.

This is where the music starts to slow. Because, let’s face it, the fact remains that in two decades since his arrival Wenger has had a greater, more visible – albeit rather tenuous – influence on Germany’s world champions than he has on the current England team. Despite being the only long-serving Premier League-era manager with any real sway or heft in the wider world – coach of five of France’s world champions in 1998 – he will leave no real mark on English football development or theory. Rather than cherished, brain selectively picked, Wenger is instead quietly mocked these days, cast as a cobwebbed crank, some doomed, sad stone knight still tending the hearth, a little creaky and mad, friends only with the flies and the beetles and the spiders.

On the other hand, white women face the pitfall of being seduced into joining the oppressor under the pretense of sharing power. This possibility does not exist in the same way for women of Color. The tokenism that is sometimes extended to us is not an invitation to join power; our racial "otherness" is a visible reality that makes that quite clear. For white women there is a wider range of pretended choices and rewards for identifying with patriarchal power and its tools. Today, with the defeat of ERA, the tightening economy, and increased conservatism, it is easier once again for white women to believe the dangerous fantasy that if you are good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough, quiet enough, teach the children to behave, hate the right people, and marry the right men, then you will be allowed to co-exist with patriarchy in relative peace, at least until a man needs your job or the neighborhood rapist happens along. And true, unless one lives and loves in the trenches it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless. But Black women and our children know the fabric of our lives is stitched with violence and with hatred, that there is no rest. We do not deal with it only on the picket lines, or in dark midnight alleys, or in the places where we dare to verbalize our resistance. For us, increasingly, violence weaves through the daily tissues of our living — in the supermarket, in the classroom, in the elevator, in the clinic and the schoolyard, from the plumber, the baker, the saleswoman, the bus driver, the bank teller, the waitress who does not serve us.

We have seen mass protests about military invasions and about injustices of many kinds, but we are now entering a new era of understanding and for the first time we are going to see people protesting in large numbers about the conspiracy itself and not just its individual expressions, like globalisation and wars. It is a time when the irresistible force (the human awakening) is going eye-to-eye with what it thinks is the immovable object (the agenda for global control). Immovable it is not, as we shall see in due course, but it is not going to go quietly. We need to be strong and refuse to acquiesce to these control freaks under any circumstances, no matter what the scale of intimidation and provocation. The Illuminati families may have the money, governments, banks, corporations, police and military, but the humanity that they so mercilessly target has the sheer numbers.

The law isn’t supposed to be about unspoken excuses and behind-the-scenes calculations. The beauty of the system is that judges and juries are allowed to consider only what is seen and heard in open court. In between the white lines of this arena, it’s all supposed to make sense. This is where we all get to be equal again. In the defendant’s chair, rich and poor ride the same roller coaster, face the same music. Case has to match case. Sentence should match sentence. But they don’t match anymore. They probably never did, and probably it was never even close. But at least there was the illusion of it. What’s happened now, in this new era of settlements and non prosecutions is that the state has formally surrendered to its own excuses. It has decided just to punt from the start and take the money which doesn’t become really wrong until it turns around the next day and decides to double down on the less-defended, flooring it all the way to trial against a welfare mom or some joker who sold a brick of dope in the projects. Repeat the same process a few million times, and that’s how the jails in American get the population they have. Even if every single person they sent to jail were guilty, the system would still be an epic fail—it’s the jurisprudential version of Pravda, where the facts int he paper might have all been true on any given day, but the lie was all in what was not said. That’s what nobody gets, that the two approaches to justice may individually make a kind of sense. but side by side they’re a dystopia, here common city courts become factories for turning poor people into prisoners, while federal prosecutors on the white-collar beat turn into overpriced garbage men, who behind closed doors quietly dispose of the sins of the rich for a fee. And it’s evolved this way over time and for a thousand reasons, so that almost nobody is aware of the whole picture, the two worlds so separate that they’re barely visible to each other. The usual political descriptors like “unfairness” and “injustice” don’t really apply. it’s more like a breakdown into madness.

When a middle school teacher in San Antonio, Texas, named Rick Riordan began thinking about the troublesome kids in his class, he was struck by a topsy-turvy idea. Maybe the wild ones weren’t hyperactive; maybe they were misplaced heroes. After all, in another era the same behavior that is now throttled with Ritalin and disciplinary rap sheets would have been the mark of greatness, the early blooming of a true champion. Riordan played with the idea, imagining the what-ifs. What if strong, assertive children were redirected rather than discouraged? What if there were a place for them, an outdoor training camp that felt like a playground, where they could cut loose with all those natural instincts to run, wrestle, climb, swim, and explore? You’d call it Camp Half-Blood, Riordan decided, because that’s what we really are—half animal and half higher-being, halfway between each and unsure how to keep them in balance. Riordan began writing, creating a troubled kid from a broken home named Percy Jackson who arrives at a camp in the woods and is transformed when the Olympian he has inside is revealed, honed, and guided. Riordan’s fantasy of a hero school actually does exist—in bits and pieces, scattered across the globe. The skills have been fragmented, but with a little hunting, you can find them all. In a public park in Brooklyn, a former ballerina darts into the bushes and returns with a shopping bag full of the same superfoods the ancient Greeks once relied on. In Brazil, a onetime beach huckster is reviving the lost art of natural movement. And in a lonely Arizona dust bowl called Oracle, a quiet genius disappeared into the desert after teaching a few great athletes—and, oddly, Johnny Cash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers—the ancient secret of using body fat as fuel. But the best learning lab of all was a cave on a mountain behind enemy lines—where, during World War II, a band of Greek shepherds and young British amateurs plotted to take on 100,000 German soldiers. They weren’t naturally strong, or professionally trained, or known for their courage. They were wanted men, marked for immediate execution. But on a starvation diet, they thrived. Hunted and hounded, they got stronger. They became such natural born heroes, they decided to follow the lead of the greatest hero of all, Odysseus, and

A scuola, Camp Dark picchiava i ragazzini come un quartetto. Lo facevamo in un silenzio animale. Trascinavamo un ragazzino isterico dietro l'edificio di scienze in mattoni rossi - di solito qualcuno più piccolo, delle classi precedenti - e poi martellavamo e pompavamo i nostri pugni nel suo corpo che si dimenava graffiando e gridando, finché il ragazzino non si afflosciava come uno straccio. Sentivo quelle urla come se provenissero dalla mia stessa gola, e scoprii di non riuscire a rilassarmi finché non lo faceva il ragazzo. Avvertivo che c'era una qualche logica profonda da catena di montaggio in quello che facevamo: una volta che avevamo fatto urlare un ragazzino, eravamo obbligati a tappargli la bocca di nuovo. Pensavo a questo processo come ciò che chiamano "un male necessario". Eravamo come una squadra di operai che fabbricava una calma che non era disponibile in natura da nessuna parte, ad Anthem. Avevamo un disperato bisogno di questa quiete che solo le nostre vittime potevano produrre per noi, il silenzio che arrivava dopo un'aggressione; per la nostra amicizia era altrettanto vitale del respirare. Come il sangue per un vampiro. Ci inginocchiavamo lì, ansimando insieme, e lasciavamo che la bolla di quiete buona uscisse dal moccioso di turno per entrarci nei polmoni.

If this is true—if solitude is an important key to creativity—then we might all want to develop a taste for it. We’d want to teach our kids to work independently. We’d want to give employees plenty of privacy and autonomy. Yet increasingly we do just the opposite. We like to believe that we live in a grand age of creative individualism. We look back at the midcentury era in which the Berkeley researchers conducted their creativity studies, and feel superior. Unlike the starched-shirted conformists of the 1950s, we hang posters of Einstein on our walls, his tongue stuck out iconoclastically. We consume indie music and films, and generate our own online content. We “think different” (even if we got the idea from Apple Computer’s famous ad campaign). But the way we organize many of our most important institutions—our schools and our workplaces—tells a very different story. It’s the story of a contemporary phenomenon that I call the New Groupthink—a phenomenon that has the potential to stifle productivity at work and to deprive schoolchildren of the skills they’ll need to achieve excellence in an increasingly competitive world. The New Groupthink elevates teamwork above all else. It insists that creativity and intellectual achievement come from a gregarious place. It has many powerful advocates. “Innovation—the heart of the knowledge economy—is fundamentally social,” writes the prominent journalist Malcolm Gladwell. “None of us is as smart as all of us,” declares the organizational consultant Warren Bennis,

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The character of the disillusioned warrior soothed by the simplicity and silence of nature is an archetype of this war-driven, industrialized era. It is the story arc that traces the trail of the once-idealistic-now-misanthropic protagonist led astray by progressing culture who ultimately finds themselves and a long-sought truce with their demons in the honesty of the landscape, be it alone or among a native people with a more rightly-aligned set of values. …There is some element of hope for the hopeless found in these stories that speak to the profound depths of our weariness and sparks in even the most disillusioned soul the hope of peace and a quiet life of meaning.

With the sound of three short blasts on the ship’s whistle, we backed away from the pier. This ship was unlike most ships and we all noticed a definite difference in her sounds and vibrations. At that time, most American vessels were driven by steam propulsion that relied on superheating the water. The reciprocating steam engines, with their large pistons, were the loudest as they hissed and wheezed, turning a huge crankshaft. Steam turbines were relatively vibration free, but live steam was always visible as it powered the many pumps, winches, etc. Steam is powerful and efficient, but can be dangerous and even deadly. Diesel engines were seldom used on the larger American ships of that era, and were not considered cost or energy efficient. The Empire State was a relatively quiet ship since she only used steam power to drive the turbines, which then spun the generators that made the electricity needed to energize the powerful electric motors, which were directly geared to turn the propeller shafts. All in all, the ship was nearly vibration free, making for a smooth ride. We all had our sea projects to do and although they were not difficult, they were time consuming and thought of as a pain in the azz. The best time to work on these projects was while standing our make-work, lifeboat watches. One of the ship’s lifeboats was always on standby, hanging over the side from its davits. Day and night, we would be ready to launch this boat if somebody fell overboard. Fortunately, this never happened, so with little else to do we had plenty of time to do our projects.

Being constantly active made time fly, and so it didn’t take long before the day of departure came. With the last of everything aboard, we set sail just as many did before us. We were among those that continued the tradition of... “they that go down to the sea in ships” and we were very aware that this tradition rested on our shoulders. On January 4, 1953, with the sound of three short blasts on the ship’s whistle, we backed away from the pier. This ship was unlike most ships and we all noticed a definite difference in her sounds and vibrations. At that time, most American vessels were driven by steam propulsion that relied on superheating the water. The reciprocating steam engines, with their large pistons, were the loudest as they hissed and wheezed, turning a huge crankshaft. Steam turbines were relatively vibration free, but live steam was always visible as it powered the many pumps, winches, etc. Steam is powerful and efficient, but can be dangerous and even deadly. Diesel engines were seldom used on the larger American ships of that era, and were not considered cost or energy efficient. The TS Empire State was a relatively quiet ship since she only used steam power to drive the turbines, which then spun the generators that made the electricity needed to energize the powerful electric motors, which were directly geared to turn the propeller shafts. All in all, the ship was nearly vibration free, making for a smooth ride.

With the sound of three short blasts on the ship’s whistle, we backed away from the pier. This ship was unlike most ships and we all noticed a definite difference in her sounds and vibrations. At that time, most American vessels were driven by steam propulsion that relied on superheating the water. The reciprocating steam engines, with their large pistons, were the loudest as they hissed and wheezed, turning a huge crankshaft. Steam turbines were relatively vibration free, but live steam was always visible as it powered the many pumps, winches, etc. Steam is powerful and efficient, but can be dangerous and even deadly. Diesel engines were seldom used on the larger American ships of that era, and were not considered cost or energy efficient. The Empire State was a relatively quiet ship since she only used steam power to drive the turbines, which then spun the generators that made the electricity needed to energize the powerful electric motors, which were directly geared to turn the propeller shafts. All in all, the ship was nearly vibration free, making for a smooth ride.

Being constantly active made time fly, and so it didn’t take long before the day of departure came. It was January 4, 1953, and with the last of everything we needed aboard, we set sail just as many did before us. We were among those that continued the tradition of... “they that go down to the sea in ships” and we were very aware that this tradition rested on our shoulders. With the sound of three short blasts on the ship’s whistle, we backed away from the pier. This ship was unlike most ships of that era and we all noticed a definite difference in her sounds and vibrations. At that time, most American vessels were driven by steam propulsion that relied on superheating the water. The reciprocating steam engines, with their large pistons were the loudest as they hissed and wheezed, turning a huge crankshaft. Steam turbines were relatively vibration free, but live steam was always visible as it powered the many pumps, winches, etc. Steam is powerful and efficient, but can be dangerous and even deadly. Diesel engines were seldom used on the larger American ships of that era, and were not considered cost or energy efficient. The Empire State was a relatively quiet ship since she only used steam power to drive the turbines, which then spun the generators that made the electricity needed to energize the powerful electric motors, which were directly geared to turn the propeller shafts. All in all, the ship was nearly vibration free, making for a smooth ride.

This was the low point of Presley’s career: the bulky jumpsuit and isosceles sideburns era. His colon had expanded so dramatically that it crowded his diaphragm and had begun to compromise his breathing and singing. Beneath the polyester and girth, it was hard to see the man who had performed on the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater, his moves so loose and frankly sexual that the producers had ordered him filmed from the waist up. Now there was a different reason to do so. “Sometimes right in the middle of the performance, he’d think, ‘I’m passing a little gas,’ and it wouldn’t be gas,” Nichopoulos says quietly. “And he’d have to get off stage and change clothes.

Do I take time during my prayers and quiet time to say, “Heavenly Father, I believe in Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I believe in Jesus Christ”? Do I say it frequently in my mind? Do I regularly say it, exercise it, mean it, and allow that conviction to fill me?

The following year, in April 1986, the AP published yet another report on Contras and cocaine. It revealed that the FBI had quietly launched an investigation into accounts of weapons shipments from the United States to Contra base camps in Central America, Contra involvement in drug smuggling, and a reported conspiracy to assassinate the U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica. Several individuals interviewed by the AP confirmed the stories, sharing firsthand knowledge on the condition of anonymity.

Quello fu il primo di una lunga serie di pomeriggi caratterizzati dalla quiete profonda che soltanto l'infanzia può regalare. (...) La sensazione di essere al sicuro, come sottovetro, in un mondo protetto che niente e nessuno avrebbe potuto scalfire, e di essere al tempo stesso dei privilegiati perché non c'era la guerra, si poteva mangiare ogni giorno e si possedeva, come un tesoro, l'infinito regno delle parole.

Senza volerlo si accese in me il ricordo di com’era da noi, a casa, fino a non molto tempo prima, ma anche molto tempo prima, al di là degli albori dell’infanzia, quando tutt’a un tratto arrivavano gli spari dal confine o da oltre gli agrumeti, dalle colline lontane: spari nella notte, spari prima del mattino; e i mormorii del sentito dire, l’oscuramento, e un’atmosfera seria, minacciosa e preoccupante, la corsa, il segreto, l’ascolto nervoso, le ombre di sagome che uscivano armate di fucili, sconosciute e solenni a un tempo, che correvano in fondo alla strada, e le voci concitate che qualcuno zittiva perché si facesse silenzio – subito. E cosí, per associazione d’idee, mi apparve un’immagine nitida: in quella stessa casa di calce bianco-azzurrina con le persiane verdi, adesso qualcuno si fermava, in preda all’angoscia, e nella capanna di fango qualcun altro interrompeva il pasto, e nel gruppo di case sul lato destro si metteva a tacere chi stava parlando in quel momento: «Sparano!» La pelle si accapponava, le viscere si contorcevano, una madre, spaventata a morte, usciva per far rientrare a casa i figli con il cuore che quasi le si fermava. A un tratto calava la quiete paralizzante della sorpresa, della famosa preghiera «ti prego mio Dio, non noi!» che rimaneva sospesa per un momento nella stanza; un momento prolungato, antico, misterioso, che oscillava qua e là prima di emettere un verdetto. Nel cuore di ognuno e di tutti un tamburo ancestrale urlava: Pericolo, pericolo, pericolo! E anche se avessero voluto ignorarlo, erano costretti a riscuotersi e a prendere in fretta una decisione mentre il fischio dei proiettili decretava: Sta iniziando!

Suddenly Moore began to understand the quiet faith of his father. Having grown up as the pastor’s son in Jim Crow–era Mississippi, Gary Moore had seen things inside the church that haunted him. The story of the Southern Baptist Convention, after all, was inseparable from America’s original sin. Formed in 1845 by slave-owning whites who were alarmed at abolitionist efforts within the national Baptist Church, the SBC became an avatar of religious justification for the trafficking and ownership of human beings. Losing the Civil War did little to reform the Southern Baptist worldview: For most of the century that followed Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Court House, SBC churches were intentionally and proudly segregated. Gary

Our era, which began and has developed under the banner of the Enlightenment, first invented liberal democracy, then took it as its political ideal. But we have become enslaved by speed, and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, impairs our concentration and forces us to consume information in ever-smaller packets. To be worthy of the name, we Homo sapiens should rid ourselves of speed before it reduces us to a species in danger of extinction. A firm defense of quiet, rational deliberation is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life. Our defense of reason must rest on three pillars. First, we must better understand the conditions that make it possible. Second, we must deliberate about how to improve those conditions. And finally, we must engage in collective action aimed at bringing about those improvements. Only in this way can we banish the degrading effects of Fast Life. In its frenzied competition for attention, Fast Politics has changed our way of making decisions, making us prey to demagogues. This threatens our democracy and our way of life. Slow Politics is now the only truly progressive answer. Politics should be about cultivating intelligence rather than demeaning it, building on experience rather than going with our gut feelings. What better way to set about this than an international exchange of experiences, knowledge, projects? Slow Politics promises a better future. Slow Politics cannot succeed as an individual endeavor. It is an idea that needs many committed supporters who can help turn this into an international movement.

Era di nuovo notte. La locanda della Pietra Miliare era in silenzio, e si trattava di un silenzio in tre parti. La parte più ovvia era una quiete vuota, riecheggiante, formata da cose che mancavano. Se ci fosse stato del vento, avrebbe spirato attraverso gli alberi, fatto scricchiolare l’insegna della locanda sui suoi cardini e spazzato via il silenzio lungo la strada come vorticanti foglie autunnali. Se ci fosse stata una folla o anche solo un gruppetto di avventori, questi l’avrebbero riempito con conversazioni e risa, il fracasso e gli schiamazzi che ci si aspetta da una taverna nelle buie ore notturne. Se ci fosse stata musica...ma no, ovviamente non c’era alcuna musica. In realtà non c’era nulla di tutto ciò, perciò rimaneva il silenzio. All’interno della Pietra Miliare alcuni uomini erano radunati a un angolo del bancone. Bevevano con calma determinazione, evitando serie discussioni di notizie preoccupanti. Nel fare ciò essi aggiungevano un piccolo, cupo silenzio a quello, vuoto, più grande. Formava una sorta di lega, un contrappunto. Il terzo silenzio non era facile da notare. Se foste rimasti in ascolto per un’ora, avreste potuto cominciare a sentirlo nel pavimento di legno sotto i piedi e nei ruvidi barili scheggiati dietro il bancone. Era nel peso del focolare di pietra nera che tratteneva il calore di un fuoco spento da molto. Era nel lento andirivieni di un bianco panno di lino che sfregava le venature del bancone. Ed era nelle mani dell’uomo che se ne stava lì in piedi a pulire un tratto di mogano che già risplendeva alla luce delle lampade. L’uomo aveva capelli di color rosso vivo, come fiamma. I suoi occhi erano scuri e distanti, e lui si muoveva con la sottile certezza che proviene dal conoscere molte cose. La Pietra miliare era sua, proprio come il terzo silenzio. Era appropriato, dato che dei tre era il silenzio più grande, che avvolgeva gli altri. Era profondo e vasto come la fine dell’autunno. Era pesante come una grossa pietra levigata dal fiume. Era il paziente suono di fiori recisi, di un uomo che sta aspettando di morire.

Fidel Castro becomes a Sex Symbol “After entering Havana on January 8, 1959 as the conquering hero, women threw themselves at the normally quiet Fidel Castro. Much to his own surprise, he became a sex symbol and was tempted by the many bikini-clad young ladies at the as the conquering hero, women threw themselves at the normally quiet Fidel. Much to his own surprise, he became a sex symbol and was tempted by the many bikini-clad young ladies at the hotel pool of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. Errol Flynn, the famous movie star and ladies’ man of that era, met Castro and had a number of Hollywood beauties with him, expecting to make a movie in Havana. For the most part Fidel was preoccupied with the affairs of government, but he always made time for the chosen few.

Ci sedemmo al tavolo del retro bottega, circondati dai libri e dal silenzio. La città era addormentata e la libreria pareva una barca alla deriva in un oceano di quiete.

Kirsch’s voice grew suddenly quiet and somber. “To permit ignorance is to empower it. To do nothing as our leaders proclaim absurdities is a crime of complacency. As is letting our schools and churches teach outright untruths to our children. The time for action has come. Not until we purge our species of superstitious thinking can we embrace all that our minds have to offer.” He paused and a hush fell over the crowd. “I love humankind. I believe our minds and our species have limitless potential. I believe we are on the brink of an enlightened new era, a world where religion finally departs … and science reigns.

Era, dico, una cosa singolare a vedere alcune di quelle capre, ritte e quiete sopra questo o quel bambino, dargli la poppa; e qualche altra accorrere a un vagito, come con senso materno, e fermarsi presso il piccolo allievo, e procuprar d’accomodarcisi sopra, e belare, e dimenarsi, quasi chiamando chi venisse in aiuto a tutt’e due.

the era of the transgenic chicken is quietly dawning, coming soon to your bathroom medicine cabinet.

Excerpted From Chapter One “Rock of Ages” floated lightly down the first floor corridor of the Hollywood Hotel’s west wing. It was Sunday morning, and Hattie Mae couldn’t go to church because she had to work, so she praised the Lord in her own way, but she praised Him softly out of consideration for the “Do Not Disturb” placards hanging from the doors she passed with her wooden cart full of fresh linens and towels. Actually Sundays were Hattie Mae’s favorite of the six days she worked each week. For one thing, her shift ended at noon on Sundays. For another, this was the day Miss Lillian always left a “little something” in her room to thank Hattie Mae for such good maid service. Most of the hotel’s long-term guests left a little change for their room maids, but in Miss Lillian’s case, the tip was usually three crinkly new one dollar bills. It seemed like an awful lot of money to Hattie Mae, whose weekly pay was only nineteen dollars. Still, Miss Lillian Lawrence could afford to be generous because she was a famous actress in the movies. She was also, Hattie Mae thought, a very fine lady. When Hattie Mae reached the end of the corridor, she knocked quietly on Miss Lillian’s door. It was still too early for most guests to be out of their rooms, but Miss Lillian was always up with the sun, not like some lazy folks who laid around in their beds ‘til noon, often making Hattie Mae late for Sunday dinner because she couldn’t leave until all the rooms along her corridor were made up. After knocking twice, Hattie Mae tried Miss Lillian’s door. It opened, so after selecting the softest towels from the stacks on her cart, she walked in. With the curtains drawn the room was dark, but Hattie Mae didn’t stop to switch on the overheard light because her arms were full of towels. The maid’s eyes were on the chest of drawers to her right where Miss Lillian always left her tip, so she didn’t see the handbag on the floor just inside the door. Hattie Mae tripped over the bag and fell headlong to the floor, landing inches from the dead body of Lillian Lawrence. In the dim light Hattie Mae stared into a pale face with a gaping mouth and a trickle of blood from a small red dot above one vacant green eye. Hattie Mae screamed at the top of her lungs and kept on screaming.

ANNALS OF LANGUAGE WORD MAGIC How much really gets lost in translation? BY ADAM GOPNIK Once, in a restaurant in Italy with my family, I occasioned enormous merriment, as a nineteenth-century humorist would have put it, by confusing two Italian words. I thought I had, very suavely, ordered for dessert fragoline—those lovely little wild strawberries. Instead, I seem to have asked for fagiolini—green beans. The waiter ceremoniously brought me a plate of green beans with my coffee, along with the flan and the gelato for the kids. The significant insight the mistake provided—arriving mere microseconds after the laughter of those kids, who for some reason still bring up the occasion, often—was about the arbitrary nature of language: the single “r” rolled right makes one a master of the trattoria, an “r” unrolled the family fool. Although speaking feels as natural as breathing, the truth is that the words we use are strange, abstract symbols, at least as remote from their objects as Egyptian hieroglyphs are from theirs, and as quietly treacherous as Egyptian tombs. Although berries and beans may be separated by a subtle sound within a language, the larger space between like words in different languages is just as hazardous. Two words that seem to indicate the same state may mean the opposite. In English, the spiritual guy is pious, while the one called spirituel in French is witty; a liberal in France is on the right, in America to the left. And what of cultural inflections that seem to separate meanings otherwise identical? When we have savoir-faire in French, don’t we actually have something different from “know-how” in English, even though the two compounds combine pretty much the same elements? These questions, about the hidden traps of words and phrases, are the subject of what may be the weirdest book the twenty-first century has so far produced: “Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon,” a thirteen-hundred-page volume, originally edited in French by the French philologist Barbara Cassin but now published, by Princeton University Press, in a much altered English edition, overseen by the comp-lit luminaries Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood. How weird is it? Let us count the ways. It is in part an anti-English protest, taking arms against the imperializing spread of our era’s, well, lingua franca—which has now been offered in English, so that everyone can understand it. The book’s presupposition is that there are significant, namable, untranslatable differences between tongues, so that, say, “history” in English, histoire in French, and Geschichte in German have very different boundaries that we need to grasp if we are to understand the texts in which the words occur. The editors, propelled by this belief, also believe it to be wrong. In each entry of the Dictionary, the differences are tracked, explained, and made perfectly clear in English, which rather undermines the premise that these terms are untranslatable, except in the dim sense that it sometimes takes a few words in one language to indicate a concept that is more succinctly embodied in one word in another. Histoire in French means both “history” and “story,” in a way that “history” in English doesn’t quite, so that the relation between history and story may be more elegantly available in French. But no one has trouble in English with the notion that histories are narratives we make up as much as chronicles we discern. Indeed, in the preface, the editors cheerfully announce that any strong form of the belief to which their book may seem to be a monument is certainly false: “Some pretty good equivalencies are always available. . . . If there were a perfect equivalence from language to language, the result would not be translation; it would be a replica. . . . The constant recourse to the metaphor of loss in translation is finally too easy.” So their Dictionary is a self-exploding book,

Nina could scarcely believe a house could be as quiet as the one on Washington Street. Although there were moments when she missed her children, her main response to living apart from her husband was relief…[H]er current solitude was not just a respite, it was a time to contemplate her future options. Nina marveled that she had choices to consider.

To teach people to tend their own gardens and to start a quiet movement of wise warriors who stop getting in the mud with narcissists, who stop engaging with them,

There is no need to chant, and a lotus position is optional, but if you find a quiet place and let your mind slowly and freely float along the cosmic timeline, moving through and then past our epoch, past the era of distant receding galaxies, past the era of stately solar systems, past the era of graceful swirling galaxies, past the era of burnt-out stars and wandering planets, past the era of glowing and disintegrating black holes, and onward to a cold, dark, nearly empty but potentially limitless expanse—in which the evidence that we once existed amounts to an isolated particle located here instead of there or another isolated particle moving this way instead of that—and if you are at all like me and let that reality fully settle in, the fact that we’ve traveled fantastically far into the future hardly diminishes the shuddering yet awestruck feeling that wells up inside. Indeed, in one essential way, the enormous sweep of time only adds weight to the nearly unbearable lightness of being;

Many of the passengers were a generation or two older than me, men and women who would remember the pre-revolution era; they had probably supported the overthrow of the Shah at the time. Considering that over ninety-eight per cent of the population had voted for the creation of an Islamic Republic back in 1979, it was highly likely that most of these quiet, tea-drinking folk around me had ticked the YES box in that fateful referendum. I wondered if they regretted that decision now.

In times past, the power gap meant we stayed quiet about our work around the people who could be our champions. But we are in a new era.

La locanda della Pietra Miliare era in silenzio, e si trattava di un silenzio in tre parti. La parte più ovvia era una quiete vuota, riecheggiante, formata da cose che mancavano. Se ci fosse stato del vento, avrebbe spirato attraverso gli alberi, fatto scricchiolare l'insegna della locanda sui suoi cardini e spazzato via il silenzio lungo la strada come vorticanti foglie autunnali. Se ci fosse stata una folla o anche solo un gruppetto di avventori, questi l'avrebbero riempito con conversazioni e risa, il fracasso e gli schiamazzi che ci si aspetta da una taverna nelle buie ore notturne. Se ci fosse stata musica... ma no, ovviamente non c'era alcuna musica. In realtà non c'era nulla di tutto ciò, perciò rimaneva il silenzio. All'interno della Pietra Miliare alcuni uomini erano radunati a un angolo del bancone. Bevevano con calma determinazione, evitando serie discussioni di notizie preoccupanti. Nel fare ciò essi aggiungevano un piccolo, cupo si- lenzio a quello vuoto più grande. Formava una sorta di lega, un contrappunto. Il terzo silenzio non era facile da notare. Se foste rimasti in ascolto per un'ora, avreste potuto cominciare a sentirlo nel pavimento di legno sotto i piedi e nei ruvidi barili scheggiati dietro il bancone. Era nel peso del foco- lare di pietra nera che tratteneva il calore di un fuoco spento da molto. Era nel lento andirivieni di un bianco panno di lino che sfregava le venature del bancone. Ed era nelle mani dell'uomo che se ne stava li in piedi a pulire un tratto di mogano che già risplendeva alla luce delle lampade.

On the Birthday of Murtaza Bhutto My nephew drives on a route that crosses alongside 70 Clifton every day since I am in Karachi. It reminds me that I was then a working journalist. I visited the last 70 Clifton in 1977, the resident of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, later, Benazir Bhutto, and then Murtaza Bhutto and Fatima Bhutto during the driving towards Karachi Press Club; I asked my nephew to stop near 70 Clifton so that we can click a few pics of it. Today is Murtaza Bhutto's Birthday, and he became the victim of armed evil and murder. I stood outside 70 Clifton, remembering inside the conversations, discussions, and delightful atmosphere in the Bhutto era. I felt sadness and pain, imagining that time when pleasure, joy, and mob walked around it, but today it was dead-quiet and displayed sadness on its walls; the Birthday existed; however, the figure held that day was not there, and his daughter far away from Pakistan in exile-life, though the justice has failed, not the God.

It shouldn't even be up for discussion, in a perfect world. The rights of women should be sacrosanct. If men bore children, there would be no need for law; the right would simply exist. As a woman, I take great exception to my rights being used as a political platform by greedy and dishonest politicians to gather voters to their side. It reinforces the fact that women--in general--are viewed as lesser beings in our society. That being said, I appreciate your thoughts on this subject, Tom. As men go, you're exceptional. I hate what most people view as feminism these days. It's become ugly and combative, and the movement has lost its focus. It's become a man vs. woman "blame game", and it has to stop before we can evolve further. To me, feminism is simply equal rights--HUMAN rights. I will always thank a guy for those lovely gestures like holding my door and helping me with my coat. I'm old-fashioned that way. However, I realize that if I want to be respected, I have to give a man something to respect. I treat him and his feelings with equal care. A lot of my "new feminist" friends hate me because I actually THINK that it's okay to be pretty, to shave my legs and under my arms, to have long hair and to smile...and I choose to keep my bra, not burn it. Like Bukowski said, "I have little time for things for things that have no soul." That sums up our government, our politicians and their shameless manipulation of my rights as a woman. I saw my Grandmother and my Mom destroyed by the way that it was back in the good old days. I'll always be grateful for the strong and quiet femininity that they've passed on to me, and for the passionate blood in my veins manifested as a child born in the era of revolution.

My own beliefs should not concern you. What should concern you is that this prophecy of a coming enlightenment is echoed in virtually every faith and philosophical tradition on earth. Hindus call it the Krita Age, astrologers call it the Age of Aquarius, the Jews describe the coming of the Messiah, theosophists call it the New Age, cosmologists call it Harmonic Convergence and predict the actual date.” “December 21, 2012!” someone called. “Yes, unnervingly soon . . . if you’re a believer in Mayan math.” Langdon chuckled, recalling how Solomon, ten years ago, had correctly predicted the current spate of television specials predicting that the year 2012 would mark the End of the World. “Timing aside,” Solomon said, “I find it wondrous to note that throughout history, all of mankind’s disparate philosophies have all concurred on one thing—that a great enlightenment is coming. In every culture, in every era, in every corner of the world, the human dream has focused on the same exact concept—the coming apotheosis of man . . . the impending transformation of our human minds into their true potentiality.” He smiled. “What could possibly explain such a synchronicity of beliefs?” “Truth,” said a quiet voice in the crowd. Solomon wheeled. “Who said that?” The hand that went up belonged to a tiny Asian boy whose soft features suggested he might be Nepalese or Tibetan. “Maybe there is a universal truth embedded in everyone’s soul. Maybe we all have the same story hiding inside, like a shared constant in our DNA. Maybe this collective truth is responsible for the similarity in all of our stories.” Solomon was beaming as he pressed his hands together and bowed reverently to the boy. “Thank you.” Everyone was quiet. “Truth,” Solomon said, addressing the room. “Truth has power. And if we all gravitate toward similar ideas, maybe we do so because those ideas are true . . . written deep within us. And when we hear the truth, even if we don’t understand it, we feel that truth resonate within us . . . vibrating with our unconscious wisdom. Perhaps the truth is not learned by us, but rather, the truth is re-called . . . re-membered . . . re-cognized . . . as that which is already inside us.” The silence in the hall was complete. Solomon let it sit for a long moment, then quietly said, “In closing, I should warn you that unveiling the truth is never easy. Throughout history, every period of enlightenment has been accompanied by darkness, pushing in opposition. Such are the laws of nature and balance. And if we look at the darkness growing in the world today, we have to realize that this means there is equal light growing. We are on the verge of a truly great period of illumination, and all of us—all of you—are profoundly blessed to be living through this pivotal moment of history.

Make it a habit to set some quiet and peaceful time to reflect and think on a daily basis.

Pensavo al significato di questa parola, a che cosa volesse dire veramente, come quando si disturba la quiete o la televisione è disturbata. O quando ci si sente disturbati da un libro o da un film o dalla foresta vergine che brucia o dalle calotte polari che si ritirano. O dalla guerra in Iraq. Era uno di quei momenti in cui ti sembra di non aver mai sentito una certa parola e non riesci a credere che abbia proprio quel significato, e cominci a riflettere su come ci si è arrivati. E' come il rintocco di una campana, cristallino e puro, disturbato disturbato disturbato, sentivo il suono vero della parola, così ho detto, come se me ne fossi appena accorto: .

By the time that Donald J. Trump was elected to the Presidency, the elections which chose the President had transformed from referendums about who would best administer the international slave trade into contests about who’d get the chance to reduce illiterate Muslims into pulpy masses of intestines. The people who’d voted for Trump went nuts because they’d won and had no idea what to do with their impossible victory. The country’s political liberals went nuts because Trump put them in the position of facing an undeniable and yet unpalatable truth. This was the truth that the political liberals could not deny and could not face: beyond making English Comp courses at community colleges very annoying, forty years of rhetorical progress had achieved little, and it turned out that feeling good about gay marriage did not alleviate the taint of being warmongers whose taxes had killed more Muslims than the Black Death. You can’t make evil disappear by being a reasonably nice person who mouths platitudes at dinner parties. Social media confessions do not alleviate suffering. You can’t talk the world into being a decent place while sacrificing nothing. The socialists didn’t go nuts. They were the people who’d thought about the complex problems facing the nation and decided that an honest solution to these problems could be achieved with applied Leftism. But don’t get your hopes up. Despite being correct in their thinking, the socialists were the most annoying people in America. When they spoke, it was like bamboo slivers shoved under a fingernail. I don’t know why. It was the single biggest American tragedy of the last one hundred years. Here was the difference between the priestly castes, many of whom had opinions on deadline for money, and everyone else: sane people shut the fuck up, nodded their heads, and did what they needed to survive in a toxic political landscape. In an era when public discourse was the bought-and-paid property of roughly twenty companies, and the airing of an opinion could subject a person to unfathomable amounts of abuse and recrimination, the only reasonable option was to be quiet. So when you next fawn over someone’s brave public thoughts, repeat the following: The contours of discourse are so horrendous that one thing has become certain. Any individual offering up a public opinion necessarily must be either hopelessly stupid or insane. I am engaging with a product of madness and idiocy.

The enemies of Christ from Nero to Napoleon eventually discovered that to attack or murder the pope only creates sympathy and martyrs. It is a failed strategy in every era. So instead, they sought quietly to place one of their own in the papal shoes. It would require decades, even a century, to create the seminaries, the priests, the bishops, the cardinal electors, and then even the pope or popes themselves — but it would be worth the wait. It has been a slow, patient plan to establish a Satanic revolution with the pope as puppet.

Un sentimento di grande solitudine mi sopraffece; un sentimento che non teneva conto del capitano al timone né del signor Stevenson alla coffa, dove si era arrampicato per la prima veglia della notte, né della dozzina di altri corpi tiepidi sottocoperta. inclusa Natty. Mi dissi che dipendeva dal fatto che per la prima volta nella mia vita avevo una nozione veritiera della vastità del mondo e anche della sua indifferenza. La nostra prua tagliava le onde con una grazia meravigliosa, ma non sapeva nulla della sua meraviglia. La luna, che ora stava salendo tra le nuvole, scandiva il tempo al nostro viaggio, ma non sapeva nulla del tempo. Le onde facevano un delicatissimo miscuglio di panna e di marrone, di blu e di nero, ma non sapevano nulla della delicatezza. Tutto questo sarebbe potuto essere allarmante, eppure mi colmò di un profondo senso di quiete. Tenni le braccia lungo i fianchi e lasciai che il vento mi colpisse in faccia e sul petto, purificandomi di tutto quello che mi aveva pesato su di me nella mia vita precedente.

On the Birthday of Murtaza Bhutto My nephew drives on a route that crosses alongside 70 Clifton every day since I am in Karachi. It reminds me that when I was a working journalist. I visited the last 70 Clifton in 1977, the resident of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Later, Benazir Bhutto and then Murtaza Bhutto and Fatima Bhutto, during the driving towards Karachi Press Club, I asked my nephew to stop near 70 Clifton, so that we can click a few pics of it. Today is Murtaza Bhutto's Birthday, who became the victim of armed-evil and murdered. I stood outside 70 Clifton, remembering inside the conversations, discussions, and delightful atmosphere, in the Bhutto era. I felt sadness and pain, imagining that time when pleasure, joy, and mob walked around it, but today it was dead-quiet and displayed sadness on its walls, the Birthday existed; however, the figure held that day was not there, and his daughter far away from Pakistan, in exile-life, though, the justice has failed but not the God.

Non sapeva bene cosa fosse la poesia, ma se si considerava poesia la quiete della bruma mattutina, la grazia dei petali che fremono nella brezza, il lampo che attraversa l'istante, l'impeto del vento che fa ululare la terra, la solitudine della luna galleggiante nell'oscurità e tutto quanto gli trasmettevano le registrazioni delle partite di Alechin, ebbe la certezza che la poesia fosse senza dubbio un tesoro prezioso: per lui ogni mossa di Alechin era un verso che invadeva l'anima.

His personal approach was modest, direct, simple; his analysis of problems was exceptionally clear. His technique for sizing up group opinion dates from his early days. 'I recall him well,' a veteran Bolshevik told me, 'a quiet youth who sat at the edge of the committee, saying little and listening much. Towards the end, he would make a comment, perhaps only as a question. Gradually, we came to see that he summed up the best of our joint thinking.' This description will be recognized by anyone who ever sat in a discussion with Stalin. It explains how he kept his majority, for he sized up the majority before he laid down 'the line.' Thus, his mind was not that of a despot, who believes that orders can operate against the majority will. But neither was it that of the passive democrat, who awaits the vote and accepts it as final. Stalin knew that majority support is essential to sound political action; but he also knew how majorities are made. He first probed the thought of a group and then with his own words swung the decision as far as he could get the majority to go.

Instead of simply feeling loved, they felt that love came attached with conditions—love if they got good grades, behaved well, scored a goal, or kept quiet. This can become even more complicated if the conditions were also variable (sometimes they were loved when they behaved well, but sometimes they were not). The

Instead of simply feeling loved, they felt that love came attached with conditions—love if they got good grades, behaved well, scored a goal, or kept quiet. This can become even more complicated if the conditions were also variable (sometimes they were loved when they behaved well, but sometimes they were not). The humanistic model maintains that children be loved and know that they can love, and this comes only from a person’s being loved in a genuine manner without conditions attached.

when you walk away from them, do so quietly, peacefully, and kindly.

Sociopaths are the guys who get into brutal bar fights; psychopaths are better as hired assassins who leave no trace. The rage of psychopaths tends to be more quietly menacing. They wear a cold smile that hides the terror that they will perpetrate when they are ready. Sociopaths are messy and bombastic with their rage. Both patterns are similar. A significant proportion of psychopaths were raised in homes and settings characterized by violence and neglect, but psychopaths tend to be more coolly efficient and interpersonally skilled, so they may appear as glib and superficially charming. They are much more skilled at manipulating people and, as such, psychopaths make better criminals than sociopaths do, perhaps because, according to researchers like Robert Hare, they really do not have a grasp on that which is “morally right,” which makes it a bit more seamlessly simple to violate laws and norms.

we frequently do not recognize that confidence is a dish best served quietly.

True confidence is a bit more restrained and quiet, and tends to be backed up with an accurate assessment of one’s ability, an appropriate manner of communicating those abilities, the willingness to hear about other people’s skills or perspectives, and enough humility to put others at ease.

Blessed is the era that can honestly claim that it is not a desert wilderness. Woe, however, to the era in which the voices calling in the wilderness have fallen silent, shouted down by the noise of the day, or prohibited, or drowned in the intoxication with progress, or restricted and quiet out of fear and cowardice.

As a society, our collective understanding of racism has been powerfully influenced by the shocking images of the Jim Crow era and the struggle for civil rights. When we think of racism we think of Governor Wallace of Alabama blocking the schoolhouse door; we think of water hoses, lynchings, racial epithets, and "whites only" signs. These images make it easy to forget that many wonderful, good-hearted white people who were generous to others, respectful of their neighbors, and even kind to their black maids, gardeners, or shoe shiners—and wished them well—nevertheless went to the polls and voted for racial segregation. Many whites who supported Jim Crow justified it on paternalist grounds, actually believing they were doing blacks a favor or believing the time was not yet "right" for equality. The disturbing images from the Jim Crow era also make it easy to forget that many African Americans were complicit in the Jim Crow system, profiting from it directly or indirectly or keeping their objections quiet out of fear of the repercussions. Our understanding of racism is therefore shaped by the most extreme expressions of individual bigotry, not by the way in which it functions naturally, almost invisibly (and sometimes with genuinely benign intent), when it is embedded in the structure of a social system.

By 2008, storm clouds were gathering over Microsoft. PC shipments, the financial lifeblood of Microsoft, had leveled off. Meanwhile sales of Apple and Google smartphones and tablets were on the rise, producing growing revenues from search and online advertising that Microsoft hadn’t matched. Meanwhile, Amazon had quietly launched Amazon Web Services (AWS), establishing itself for years to come as a leader in the lucrative, rapidly growing cloud services business. The logic behind the advent of the cloud was simple and compelling. The PC Revolution of the 1980s, led by Microsoft, Intel, Apple, and others, had made computing accessible to homes and offices around the world. The 1990s had ushered in the client/server era to meet the needs of millions of users who wanted to share data over networks rather than on floppy disks. But the cost of maintaining servers in an ever-growing sea of data—and the advent of businesses like Amazon, Office 365, Google, and Facebook—simply outpaced the ability for servers to keep up. The emergence of cloud services fundamentally shifted the economics of computing. It standardized and pooled computing resources and automated maintenance tasks once done manually. It allowed for elastic scaling up or down on a self-service, pay-as-you-go basis. Cloud providers invested in enormous data ​centers around the world and then rented them out at a lower cost per user. This was the Cloud Revolution. Amazon was one of the first to cash in with AWS. They figured out early on that the same cloud infrastructure they used to sell books, movies, and other retail items could be rented, like a time-share, to other businesses and startups at a much lower price than it would take for each company to build its own cloud. By June 2008, Amazon already had 180,000 developers building applications and services for their cloud platform. Microsoft did not yet have a commercially viable cloud platform. All of this spelled trouble for Microsoft. Even before the Great Recession of 2008, our stock had begun a downward slide. In a long-planned move, Bill Gates left the company that year to focus on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But others were leaving, too. Among them, Kevin Johnson, president of the Windows and online services business, announced he would leave to become CEO of Juniper Networks. In their letter to shareholders that year, Bill and Steve Ballmer noted that Ray Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes, had been named the company’s new Chief Software Architect (Bill’s old title), reflecting the fact that a new generation of leaders was stepping up in areas like online advertising and search. There was no mention of the cloud in that year’s shareholder letter, but, to his credit, Steve had a game plan and a wider view of the playing field.

The Empire State was a relatively quiet ship since she only used steam power to drive the turbines, which then spun the generators that made the electricity needed to energize the powerful electric motors, which were directly geared to turn the propeller shafts. All in all, the ship was nearly vibration free, making for a smooth ride. With the sound of three short blasts on the ship’s whistle, we backed away from the pier. This ship was unlike most ships and we all noticed a definite difference in her sounds and vibrations. At that time, most American vessels were driven by steam propulsion that relied on superheating water. The reciprocating steam engines, with their large pistons, were the loudest as they hissed and wheezed, turning a huge crankshaft. Steam turbines were relatively vibration free, but live steam was always visible as it powered the many pumps, winches, etc. Steam is powerful and efficient, but can be dangerous and even deadly. Diesel engines were seldom used on the larger American ships of that earlier era since they were not considered cost or energy efficient. Led by German ships, diesel driven vessels, they are now the most popular engines in use. The NS Savanna was the only nuclear merchant ship, ever built. Launched in July 21 1959, at a cost of $46.9 million, the NS Savannah was a demo-project for the potential use of nuclear energy. She was deactivated in 1971, and is now located at the Canton Marine Terminal in Baltimore, Maryland.

These images make it easy to forget that many wonderful, good-hearted white people who were generous to others, respectful of their neighbors, and even kind to their black maids, gardeners, or shoe shiners—and wished them well—nevertheless went to the polls and voted for racial segregation. Many whites who supported Jim Crow justified it on paternalist grounds, actually believing they were doing blacks a favor or believing the time was not yet “right” for equality. The disturbing images from the Jim Crow era also make it easy to forget that many African Americans were complicit in the Jim Crow system, profiting from it directly or indirectly or keeping their objections quiet out of fear of the repercussions. Our understanding of racism is therefore shaped by the most extreme expressions of individual bigotry, not by the way in which it functions naturally, almost invisibly (and sometimes with genuinely benign intent), when it is embedded in the structure of a social system.

«Non sarà mai troppo presto.» Il suo branco era spaccato, i sentimenti che provava al riguardo erano contrastanti. Desiderava odiare Teagan, ma non riusciva a farlo completamente. Voleva disprezzare Jun, ma nessuno meglio di Aaron poteva comprendere il potere che Malcom aveva su di loro. E in mezzo a quel casino, Jordan era il suo faro. L’unico a non farlo sentire “solo contro il mondo”, come Jordan stesso una volta si era definito. Il tempo avrebbe sanato le ferite, forse. E se non l’avesse fatto, almeno poteva contare sulla speranza che la relazione con Jordan continuasse a gonfie vele. Non era più il lavoro a tenerlo a galla, ma la consapevolezza di aver trovato qualcuno di importante. Jordan gli prese la mano che Aaron teneva appoggiata in grembo, portandosela alle labbra, e il suo cuore perse un battito. Al di là di tutto, saltare in aria gli aveva permesso di conoscere Jordan, e non lo rimpiangeva. Perfino la rabbia era stata spazzata via dalle sue quiete riflessioni al riguardo. Aveva perso molto e guadagnato moltissimo. Più di quanto avrebbe mai potuto immaginare.

Did the girls know, the guide asked, that the Mona Lisa was a real woman, one who had lived and breathed and smiled at Leonardo da Vinci himself? That Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine cloth merchant named Francesco del Giocondo, would become an icon, an embodiment of ideal beauty, a symbol of the Italian Renaissance itself? That the man who painted her would become one of the most famous names in history? That the painter captured not just a woman sitting, hands quietly folded, but an entire era in one portrait?