Too often it turns out that your worst enemy is some other son of a bitch’s best friend.
— Former MLB player Dick Wakefield talking about how bad press - his in particular - spreads. Quoted in Donald Honig’s Baseball Between the Lines: Baseball in the Forties and Fifties as Told by the Men Who Played It (1976), pg. 80.
[T]hink about what would happen if there were no national parks. You know? The Grand Canyon would be lined with mansions; we’d never see that view. The Everglades would’ve long since been drained and be filled with tract housing and all sorts of ugly development. Yosemite, one of the most beautiful valleys on Earth, would be a gated community. Yellowstone would become Geyser World - something like that. We’re talking about the difference between Pottersville and Bedford Falls. And we choose in It’s a Wonderful Life to live in Bedford Falls; we reject Pottersville. But yet so much of the arguments today are, ‘Wait a minute - that selfishness is very much what America’s about.’ You know what? It’s not what we’re about. We’re about sharing these things in common. It’s about common wealth. Which is a wonderful idea and not Socialism. Because if it’s Socialism, then the people you call at 3 am when your house is on fire - that’s Socialism. And the people who’re in Afghanistan risking their lives - that’s Socialism. And the people who’re picking up your trash - that’s Socialism, too.
— Ken Burns, On The Rachel Maddow Show, September 24th, 2009.
Let me just say something about the 9-12 Project. On September 12, 2001 everyone was an American. There were no Blue States and no Red States. There were no Black Americans and no White Americans. There were no Europeans, no Asians, no Hispanics, no Africans… The world was standing with America against the evil that is terrorism. The globe was united like never before. And what did our President do when given that moment? He told us all to go shopping while he and his buddies planned a war. And 8 years later the 9-12 project has been reduced to a movement of no Blacks, no Hispanics, no Asians… just 78,000 white people who can’t spell.
— Helen Philpot, from her post We Is America, on the blog Margaret and Helen, September 17th, 2009
I followed the investigative accounts of the von Bulow case with that special attention I always pay to the troubles of society people.
With their advantages and connections, they have a better chance of being involved in a stimulating crime. Some of them, it is true, simply stab or shoot one another, but a few go to the trouble of using classic means: poisons and deceptions, subterfuge and wit. With all the lack of subtlety in modern murder, it is heartening to find that a few people still aspire to the perfect crime.
— Roger Ebert, from his review of Reversal of Fortune, October 17, 1990
I was informed that my entry was “typical liberalism.” This is correct. I am a liberal. If you are a conservative, this appears to be a difference between us: I think you should have guaranteed health insurance.
— Roger Ebert, responding to criticisms of a prior posting, on his blog, August 20th, 2009
[A]ny self-sacrifice feels to us westerners like tyranny. We’re not ready for it. Our evolution into apex individualists has superbly attuned us to injustices against us while atrophying our awareness of the vastly greater number that work in our favour. It’s not our fault, it’s how we were raised.
Our fear of being encroached upon has made us forget that there are few freedoms that can be fully exercised without impinging on someone else’s. The freedom to stab has long since been subordinated to the freedom not to be stabbed. But we still have the freedom not to recycle and to borrow or lend money recklessly, regardless of others’ freedom to live on a habitable planet and in a functional economy. We’ve hugely prioritised our rights over our duties because it’s only the former that tyrants try to take away.
But it can make us ridiculous. Explaining why mid-terrace residents had no option but to keep the unsightly wheelie bins in front of their houses, a Chester resident said: “Otherwise they would have to walk three bins all the way down the street, round the corner and into the backyard. Imagine doing that with three bins? It’s just crazy.”
— David Mitchell, “Spare me that rubbish about your ‘rights’”, The Observer, June 21st, 2009
What was peculiar, and what was quite startling to me, is that it turned out that nobody ever did any scientific test on Van Meegeren[’s fraudulent paintings], even the stuff that was available in his day, until after he confessed. And to this day, people hardly ever test pictures, even multi-million dollar ones. And I was so surprised by that that I kept asking, over and over again: why? Why would that be? Before you buy a house, you have someone go through it for termites and the rest. How could it be that when you’re going to lay out $10 million for a painting, you don’t test it beforehand? And the answer is that you don’t test it because, at the point of being about to buy it, you’re in love! You’ve found something. It’s going to be the high mark of your collection; it’s going to be the making of you as a collector. You finally found this great thing. It’s available, and you want it. You want it to be real. You don’t want to have someone let you down by telling you that the painting isn’t what you think it is. It’s like being newly in love. Everything is candlelight and wine. Nobody hires a private detective at that point. It’s only years down the road when things have gone wrong that you say, “What was I thinking? What’s going on here?” The collector and the forger are in cahoots. The forger wants the collector to snap it up, and the collector wants it to be real. You are on the same side. You think that it would be a game of chess or something, you against him. “Has he got the paint right?” “Has he got the canvas?” You’re going to make this checkmark and that checkmark to see if the painting measures up. But instead, both sides are rooting for this thing to be real. If it is real, then you’ve got a masterpiece. If it’s not real, then today is just like yesterday. You’re back where you started, still on the prowl.
— Edward Dolnick, quoted in Bamboozling Ourselves, part 2
Newspapers reveal the thinking and confusions of their time, but they don’t necessarily provide answers.
— Erroll Morris, Bamboozling Ourselves, part 1
What’s going on in Iran, really? They have some ethnic differences there and some religious differences, but basically, this is about a government trying to deny the modern world.
And the idea is they just don’t think they can keep control, if everybody gets to say what they really believe, and go where they really want, and be who they want to be, and they’re right, right there.
— Bill Clinton, on Iran
Religion is regarded by the ignorant as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
— Seneca
