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W Quotes

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All W Quotes

“While we’ve been grabbing for things to give meaning to life, we have lost our way. We grow addicted to reference points. We grow afraid and lose our unfettered curiosity. Our wants, needs, desires, ideas, aspirations and beliefs, become so embedded that it is like they are glued to our cells, our nerves, our eyes, brain, heart…our whole body.”

“While we've painted the guardians of the pale in a somewhat reactionary light, let's give the gatekeepers their due. What lies beyond the pale isn't always safe and secure. Outside the fence of state-sanctioned consciousness, there are, to be sure, peaks of profound insight and inspiration. But there are also the swamps of addiction, superstition, and groupthink, where the unprepared can get stuck.”

“While we were finishing our coffee, one of these men stood up and called out the name of a song. Everyone joined in, loud, lusty and wonderful, as I'd heard it before among Pentecostals. By the middle of the second song a woman at the next table was weeping. There was nothing especially emotional about the song itself; it was one of the standard old Gospel hymns, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." But crying seems to be as infectious as laughter. Soon some of the men on the platform were unabashedly bringing out their handkerchiefs. What was it that swept a room this way? I felt it too; so did Tib sitting next to me. Both of us were studiously avoiding looking the other one in the eye. As the music continued, several people at the tables began to sing "in the Spirit." Soon the whole room was singing a complicated harmony-without-score, created spontaneously. It was eerie but extraordinarily beautiful. The song leader was no longer trying to direct the music but let the melodies create themselves: Without prompting, one quarter of the room would suddenly start to sing very loudly while other subsided. Harmonies and counter-harmonies wove in and out of each other.”

“While we were never able to provide 100 percent certainty regarding the disposition of Iraq's proscribed weaponry, we did ascertain a 90-95 percent level of verified disarmament. This figure takes into account the destruction or dismantling of every major factory associated with prohibited weapons manufacture, all significant items of production equipment, and the majority of the weapons and agent produced by Iraq.”

“While we were shooting the movie, we shot in the actual hotel in Hong Kong where it all went down, the Mira Hotel. Laura Poitras was coming to Hong Kong to do a screening of Citizenfour, and she ended up staying at the Mira Hotel. It was her first time back in Hong Kong, and I ran into her in the elevator. Literally I had just finished shooting one day, and I came back to the hotel and she was in the elevator.”

“While we were walking around, we came to the Catholic church, and we saw that some people had set fire to carpets and banked them around the rectory, which was made out of wood. They knew every fire truck on the South Side was going to be in the park, that the rectory would just burn to the ground. Our one little act was putting out that fire.”

“While we've doubled renewable energy, it was only a tiny portion of the energy portfolio to start with. But what we did was totally take the lid off fossil fuel extractions in every way imaginable. On the day following [Barack] Obama's trip to the Louisiana floods, you know, we had, I think, another 25 million acres that went on sale in the Gulf for further extraction.”

“While whites were still the majority, they established preferences for blacks and Hispanics that took such deep root that Congress and state legislatures have been powerless to abolish them. These programs would provoke outrage if they were practiced in favor of whites, but they have been partially curbed only by state ballot initiatives and equivocal Supreme Court decisions. Demography would change this. In 2006, the state of Michigan voted to abolish racial preferences in college admissions and state contracting, but the measure passed only because whites were still a majority. Eighty-five percent of blacks and 69 percent of Hispanics voted to maintain racial preferences for themselves. When they have a voting majority nothing will prevent non-whites from reestablishing and extending preferences. Are there portents in the actions of Eric Holder, the first black attorney general, appointed by the first black president? J. Christian Adams, a white Justice Department lawyer resigned in protest when the department dropped a case of voter intimidation the previous administration had already won by default against the New Black Panther Party. In this 2008 case, fatigue-clad blacks waved billy clubs at white voters and yelled such things as “You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker!” Mr. Adams called it “the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career.” He believed the decision to dismiss the case reflected hostility to the rights of whites. He said some of his colleagues called selective prosecution “payback time,” adding that “citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims.” Christopher Coates, who was the head of the voting section of the Civil Rights Division, agreed with this assessment. In sworn testimony before Congress, he called the dismissal of the Black Panthers case a “travesty of justice” and described a “hostile atmosphere” against “race-neutral enforcement” of the Voting Rights Act. He said the department had a “deep-seated opposition to the equal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act against racial minorities and for the protection of white voters who have been discriminated against.” How will the department behave when whites become a minority?”