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T Quotes

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All T Quotes

“The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.”

“The Second Amendment's language and historical and philosophical background demonstrated that it was designed to guarantee individuals the possession of certain kinds of arms for three purposes: (1) crime prevention or what we would today describe as self-defense; (2) national defense; and (3) preservation of individual liberty.”

“The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, was meant to inhibit only the federal government, not the states. The framers, as The Federalist Papers attest (see No. 28), saw the state militias as forces that might be summoned into action against the federal government itself, if it became tyrannical.”

“The second aspect of the moral appeal of the inner-child movement is consolation. Life is full of setbacks. People we love reject us. We don't get the jobs we want. We get bad grades. Our children don't need us anymore. We drink too much. We have no money. We are mediocre. We lose. We get sick. When we fail, we look for consolation, one form of which is to see the setback as something other than failure-to interpret it in a way that does not hurt as much as failure hurts. Being a victim, blaming someone else, or even blaming the system is a powerful and increasingly widespread form of consolation. It softens many of life's blows. Such shifts of blame have a glorious past. Alcoholics Anonymous made the lives of millions of alcoholics more bearable by giving them the dignity of a “disease” to replace the ignominy of “failure,” “immorality,” or “evil.” Even more important was the civil rights movement. From the Civil War to the early 1950s, black people in America did badly-by every statistic. How did this get explained? “Stupid,” “lazy,” and “immoral” were the words shouted by demagogues or whispered by the white gentry. Nineteen fifty-four marks the year when these explanations began to lose their power. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court held that racial segregation in schools was illegal. People began to explain black failure as “inadequate education,” “discrimination,” and “unequal opportunity.” These new explanations are literally uplifting. In technical terms, the old explanations—stupidity and laziness—are personal, permanent, and pervasive. They lower self-esteem; they produce passivity, helplessness, and hopelessness. If you were black and you believed them, they were self-fulfilling. The new explanations—discrimination, bad schools, lean opportunities are impersonal, changeable, and less pervasive. They don't deflate self-esteem (in fact, they produce anger instead). They lead to action to change things. They give hope. The recovery movement enlarges on these precedents. Recovery gives you a whole series of new and more consoling explanations for setbacks. Personal troubles, you're told, do not result as feared from your own sloth, insensitivity, selfishness, dishonesty, self-indulgence, stupidity, or lust. No, they stem from the way you were mistreated as a child. You can blame your parents, your brother, your teachers, your minister, as well as your sex and race and age. These kinds of explanations make you feel better. They shift the blame to others, thereby raising self-esteem and feelings of self-worth. They lower guilt and shame. To experience this shift in perspective is like seeing shafts of sunlight slice through the clouds after endless cold, gray days. We have become victims, “survivors” of abuse, rather than “failures” and “losers.” This helps us get along better with others. We are now underdogs, trying to fight our way back from misfortune. In our gentle society, everyone roots for the underdog. No one dares speak ill of victims anymore. The usual wages of failure—contempt and pity—are transmuted into support and compassion. So the inner-child premises are deep in their appeal: They are democratic, they are consoling, they raise our self-esteem, and they gain us new friends. Small wonder so many people in pain espouse them.”

“The second assault on Fallujah was a monument to brutality and atrocity made in the United States of America. Like the Spanish city of Guernica during the 1930s, and Grozny in the 1990s Fallujah is our monument of excess and overkill.”

“The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must-never for sport.”

“The second book, which was probably more from a professional standpoint - when I read Junot Díaz's Drown, I was like, Oh my god, you can write these stories and people will actually read them beyond your own little community. This guy's book is blowing up and it seems like [he's writing about] the neighborhood that I grew up in. That was a big deal. I read that in graduate school, so that's when I was really taking writing seriously, but I didn't know you could do it. I didn't know you can actually be an author. It was a weird epiphany.”

“The second, but more visible, untruth is the claim that for 23 years, EIC officials throughout the territory sponsored violent actions such as chopping off hands to force natives to collect rubber, leaving millions dead in a horror that should be directly compared to the Holocaust. There are about a dozen little cheats here, one embedded in the other like Russian nesting dolls.”

“The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the soul gives heed to any of these, they cause it great harm. For through fear of these not only do persons become lax in prayer—which is the aim of the devil when he begins to strive with them—but some give up prayer altogether, because they think that these things attack them more during that exercise than apart from it, which is true, since the devil attacks them then more than at other times, so that they may give up spiritual exercises.”

“The second course is a soft-shell crab tempura with miso rémoulade, fresh peaches, and lovage." "What's lovage?" Jen asked. "It's what I have for you," Peter replied. Chef smiled. "It is an herb, like parsley. Only more zesty." Everyone oohed and mmmed over first bites. The lovage lent a crisp note of citrus and celery to the deep umami flavor of the miso and crunchy fried crab's creamy inside, while the peaches picked up the sweetness.”

“The second course would feature six butter statues, one of which was an elephant, and another Hercules fighting the legendary monster Cerebus. A monstrous pastry stag was the centerpiece of that course, with red wine gelatin bleeding from where an arrow had pierced its side. The final course included six monstrous statues made of pastry: Helen of Troy; a nude Venus; a camel with a king upon its back; a unicorn with its horn in the mouth of a serpent; Hercules holding open the mouth of a lion; and Poseidon and his mighty trident. There were 361 bowls and plates of candied fruits: coconuts, apricots, grapes, pears, and melons, as well as plates of almonds, pistachios, pine nuts, and a variety of cheeses.”

“The second crucial thing I learned, especially from the authors of Crucial Conversations, is that every conversation takes place on two levels: the official conversation and the actual conversation. The official conversation is represented by the words we say about whatever topic we are nominally discussing: politics, economics, workplace issues—whatever. The actual conversation occurs in the ebb and flow of underlying emotions that get transmitted as we talk. With every comment you are either making me feel a little more safe or a little more threatened. With every comment I am showing you either respect or disrespect. With every comment we are each revealing something about our intentions: Here is why I am telling you this. Here is why this is important to me. It is the volley of these underlying emotions that will determine the success or failure of the conversation.”