Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Another edition of "Quotes," consisting of quotes I've gathered and enjoyed:
The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
- H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies . . . a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16 1953. http://i.imgur.com/ZC6zn.jpg
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.
- Hector Berlioz (1803 - 1869)
If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.
- J. K. Rowling
Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
Is there life before death?
- Graffito, in Belfast
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
- Paul Dirac (1902 - 1984)
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
- Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855)
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006)
Here's another batch of quotes I've collected over the past few months:
We’ve already had campaign financial reform. It granted corporate personhood and unlimited anonymous campaign contributions.
- Anon at Reddit.com
If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
- Emma Goldman
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
- Chinese Proverb
Politeness, n. The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary
Our foreign policy is not something simply concocted by people in Washington, D.C., and then imposed on us. Our foreign policy may be concocted in Washington, D.C., but it reflects the perceptions of our political elite about what we the people want. And what we want, by and large, is to sustain the flow of very cheap consumer goods. We want to be able to pump gas into our cars regardless of how big they happen to be, in order to be able to drive wherever we want to be able to drive. And we want to be able to do these things without having to think about whether or not the books balance at the end of the month or the end of the fiscal year. And therefore, we want an unending line of credit.
Andrew Bacevich
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
— Albert Einstein
They only call it “class war” when we fight back.
- anon
I envy people who drink. At least they have something to blame everything on.
- Oscar Levant (1906 - 1972)
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.
- Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924)
Virtue is its own punishment.
- Aneurin Bevan (1897 - 1960)
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
- Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)
Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.
- Laurence J. Peter (1919 - 1988)
A short saying oft contains much wisdom.
- Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC)
Creation is daunting. Partly because the drive to create is always rooted in admiration for others' creations. What writer hasn't struggled against inadvertently ghost-writing their favorite author? What aspiring auteur, poet, or painter doesn't begin with work that is heartrendingly derivative of others' better attempts? Or worse-- what creative person hasn't struggled to make something 'great', something 'great' as the art they adore, only to find they can't quite compete? And who doesn't infer from these failings that maybe they weren't cut out to be a creative type after all?
Ira Glass, creator and longtime host of This American Life, says there's a very simple reason for the head-bashing frustrations of early creative production. Simply put: if you are interested in creating something, it's probably because you have immaculate taste. Taste that outpaces your own ability. At least, at first. Glass says:
“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.
It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
I found this snippet in a video interview with Glass (below) a year or two ago, and I find it incredibly inspiring. Glass' view of creativity suggests that even if you lack innate, immediate creative ability, you are not a lost cause-- and that, in fact, a little creative self-loathing may be a sign of good aesthetic instincts. It also suggests there is a solution to the problem of making unsatisfying dreck: just keep making more. And more. And more.
This wisdom is especially powerful in context. As a radio producer, Glass was a very late bloomer. He worked in public radio for twenty years before conceiving of This American Life; he readily admits (in another portion of his interview, and on his program) that the first seven years of his radio work was deeply underwhelming and often poorly-paced. He'll readily admit that his early stories were bad, and that even he knew they were bad, and that this tormented him. Only through tireless efforts and the cultivation of exceptional taste was he able to develop and bloom. And he bloomed big: This American Life is one of the most widely-heard public radio programs ever, with 1.7 million weekly listeners, and has topped the Itunes podcast chart continuously for years. If Ira had given up after a few years of shoddy radio stories, we'd all have missed out on TAL's hundreds of hours of thoughtful, poignant, high-quality public radio.
I found this interview snippet a little over a year ago, and Glass' words of experience have galvanized me ever since. Whenever I write something that strikes me as uninspiring or derivative dreck, I reassure myself it's a matter of taste, and time. And more time.
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