Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Markham Shaw Pyle

Quote by Markham Shaw Pyle

“Public life in this country is too damn dominated by people who’d read more if only their lips didn’t get so tired.”

Quote by Markham Shaw Pyle

Create image

Author

Markham Shaw Pyle

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Markham Shaw Pyle. more

You May Also Like

“... they only trusted the wisdom of people brighter and more worldly than themselves when it was expressed in the vocabulary and style of rural idiots. In his guise as Brazenydol, he had once had a contract with DARPA to teach a team of physicists the basic terminology of tractor pulls so that they could give an acceptable explanation of omniwavelength stealth to a Congressional committee that didn’t understand tractor pulls, either.”

FunnySatireAmerican PoliticsFunny But TrueConsultants
Book:Raise the Gipper!
Create image

“What we have here is a war—the war of matter and spirit. In the classical era, spirit was in harmony with matter. Matter used to condense spirit. What was unseen—the ghost of Hamlet’s father—was seen—in the conscience of the king. The spirit was trapped in the matter of theater. The theater made the unseen, seen. In the Romantic era, spirit overwhelms matter. The glass of champagne can’t contain the bubbles. But never in the history of humanity has spirit been at war with matter. And that is what we have today. The war of banks and religion. It’s what I wrote in Prayers of the Dawn, that in New York City, banks tower over cathedrals. Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion. When I came back to midtown a week after the attack—I mourned—but not in a personal way—it was a cosmic mourning—something that I could not specify because I didn’t know any of the dead. I felt grief without knowing its origin. Maybe it was the grief of being an immigrant and of not having roots. Not being able to participate in the whole affair as a family member but as a foreigner, as a stranger—estranged in myself and confused—I saw the windows of Bergdorf and Saks—what a theater of the unexpected—my mother would have cried—there were only black curtains, black drapes—showing the mourning of the stores—no mannequins, just veils—black veils. When the mannequins appeared again weeks later—none of them had blond hair. I don’t know if it was because of the mourning rituals or whether the mannequins were afraid to be blond—targets of terrorists. Even they didn’t want to look American. They were out of fashion after the Twin Towers fell. To the point, that even though I had just dyed my hair blond because I was writing Hamlet and Hamlet is blond, I went back to my coiffeur immediately and told him—dye my hair black. It was a matter of life and death, why look like an American. When naturally I look like an Arab and walk like an Egyptian.”

HumorFearTerrorismAmerican PoliticsWar On TerrorHoly WarArabsSeptember 11 Attacks
Author:Giannina Braschi
Create image

“I'm not issuing some naïve plea for civility or bipartisanship here, or pretending that the opposing sides in this fight are intellectually equal. We have irreconcilable visions of the kind of country we want this to be: some of us would just like to live in Canada with better weather; others want something more like Iran with Jesus. My cruelest hope for the Tea Party is that one of their candidates wins the nomination for the presidency and they implode of their hubristic stupidity. But at least when I hear about them now, instead of reflexively picturing some braying ignoramus like Michele Bachmann, I try to remember that Matt [a friend of the Author's, ed] is out in that crowd somewhere, too. God agreed to spare Sodom if ten good men could be found within its walls (Abraham had to haggle him down from fifty). He ended up napalming those perverts anyway but the basic principle of sparing the sinner for the sake of the righteous, or the shithead for the sake of the basically okay, remains sound.”

ToleranceAmerican PoliticsTea Party
Book:We Learn Nothing
Create image

“Shit, man, democracy failed before it started. Who thought it was a good idea to let the masses of fucktards decide anything? [Guess I've got more faith in people.] People? The election of 2044 -- Curls Bellberry, a boy band presidency on the platform that the Earth is flat and that he'd nuke New York to save Social Security. There's a good reason he was the last president. Problem with letting people pick a leader is they gravitate towards confident sociopaths no matter how stupid they are. It's the perception of qualification that fools people. At least by having corporate executives rule us we get folks who are good at business. Life hurts, the world is fucked, and that's not going to change. . .”

VotingCynicismSocial SecurityAmerican PoliticsWestern CivilizationDemocracy In AmericaRick RemenderTokyo GhostBoy Band
Book:Tokyo Ghost, Vol. 2: Come Join Us
Create image

“The long-term effect of Hillary’s loss could be more beneficial to the future of America than one might think. For if Obama’s reign placed hope in the hearts of the young and instilled in them a belief that differences must be embraced then Hillary’s crushing defeat has awakened them to the harsh realities of a hopeful indifference and raised their voices in opposition of all those ideals that would not only darken their future but the future of the entire world.”

DiversityMisogynyUnited States Of AmericaAmerican PoliticsAmerican RevolutionDonald TrumpHate SpeechUs PoliticsBarak ObamaTrump AdministrationHilary ClintonUs ElectionsUs Elections 2016Young America
Author:Aysha Taryam
Create image

“There's no evidence from decades of Pew Research surveys that public opinion, in the aggregate, is more extreme now than in the past. But what has changed -- and pretty dramatically -- is the growing tendency of people to sort themselves into political parties based on their ideological differences.”

PoliticsNewsResearchIdeologyVotingPolitical PartiesPublic OpinionSegregationAmerican PoliticsAmerican CultureExtremismPartisansFactionsPublic PolicyAmericansPartisanshipCurrent EventsPolarizationIdeologuesCategorizationCurrent AffairsIdeologiesPolitical BeliefsChanging TimesU S PoliticsVoter BehaviorFactionalismSelf Segregation
Book:The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown
Create image

“You know, sometimes there is light in front of us, but we just shut our eyes because we are scared of what we might see. We'd be afraid to move on after it had been so long since we did, but fear is normal, you know. It's a human need, fear, for us to survive. Yet, sometimes we have to take a step towards the light even though we're afraid of the outcome. You know why? Because hiding in fear and not making any progress means nothing. No income, no outcome. A complete nothing. That's something you'd regret later, so how about you take a step towards that light you've been ignoring, so you don't regret this later on?”

LightHopeBlurred Starlight
Book:Blurred Starlight: Volume 4
Create image

“A rising sun died in America and the world on Nov. 22, 1963. Some say that we have never again seen such a rising sun in the sky as we did that morning. Even if it was cloudy or raining that day, the country and world were more innocent and optimistic at that moment than they have been since then. Some say that a piece of all of us – the hope that helps us get through another day - died that day. Others say the act just opened the eyes of many about what the U.S. government and other governments had done in our names for a long time.”

American PoliticsU S HistoryJfkJohn F KennedyJfk AssassinationJfk ConspiracyAmerican PresidentsPolitical Assassinations
Book:Death of the Rising Sun: A Search for Truth in the JFK Assassination
Create image