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“There are so many comics about violence. I'm not entertained or amused by violence, and I'd rather not have it in my life. Sex, on the other hand, is something the vast majority of us enjoy, yet it rarely seems to be the subject of comics. Pornography is usually bland, repetitive and ugly, and, at most, 'does the job.' I always wanted to make a book that is pornographic, but is also, I hope, beautiful, and mysterious, and engages the mind.”

“Bush is almost always clear when he's speaking cruelly. For example, when the subject is the punitive infliction of great pain, there is no problem with his syntax, grammar, or vocabulary, even if he happens to be lying. ... On the other hand, our president is extraordinarily tongue-tied when he's trying, off the cuff, to sound a note of idealism, magnanimity or -- especially -- compassion.”

“The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research.”

“Differences in political opinions are as unavoidable as, to a certain point, they may perhaps be necessary; but it is exceedingly to be regretted that subjects cannot be discussed with temper on the one hand, or decisions submitted to without having the motives, which led to them, improperly implicated on the other; and this regret borders on chagrin when we find that men of abilities, zealous patriots, having the same general objects in view, and the same upright intentions to prosecute them, will not exercise more charity in deciding on the opinions and actions of one another.”

“There are many reasons why the general public doesn't really understand our monetary system. In the first place, money is something that people tend to get emotional about. After all, money involves, and always has involved, something closely akin to faith-which probably explains why in many past societies the money system has been in the hands of a priesthood, the subject of magical rites, and the ceremonial services of the tribe's medicine man.”

“The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should insist on the need to engage in a meaningful debate on the entire issue of the truth or falsity (or probability or improbability) of religious tenets, without being subject to accusations of impiety, immorality, impoliteness, or any of the other smokescreens used by the pious to deflect attention from the central issues at hand.”

“I am a Jew: Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with die same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?”

“while the executive should give every possible value to the information of the specialist, no executive should abdicate thinking on any subject because of the expert. The expert's information or opinion should not be allowed automatically to become a decision. On the other hand, full recognition should be given to the part the expert plays in decision making.”

“The enthronement of Christ over the minds of men is steadily going forward. His kingdom embraces the princes in the realm of mind. It embraces the nations of highest civilization. They are all beneath the cross. It is maintained by simple authority. Other mental monarchs rule by logic; Christ's word is law--it is satisfying to His subjects. His truth in the hands of His disciples, like the bread He broke upon the mountains, is an ample supply for the millions that gather at His table.”

“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical...A wise and frugal government...shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned...Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated...Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands?”

“Those voices telling you that it's all wrong, and you should be louder or softer or more fashionable or marketable? Those are the bad voices. The only guide you can afford to listen to is the obsessive, lovestruck thing inside you that keeps insisting it finds some particular subject utterly fascinating. Do not shame this part of yourself. Take it by the hand and lead it to safety.”

“A child of three cannot raise its chubby fist to its mouth to remove a piece of carpet which it is through eating, without being made the subject of a psychological seminar of child-welfare experts, and written up, along with five hundred other children of three who have put their hands to their mouths for the same reason.”

“There is something in the eloquence of the pulpit, when it is really eloquence, which is entitled to the highest praise and honour. The preacher who can touch and affect such an heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long worn thread-bare in all common hands; who can say any thing new or striking, any thing that rouses the attention, without offending the taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man whom one could not (in his public capacity) honour enough.”

“So often has my judgment deceived me in my life, that I always suspect it, right or wrong,--at least I am seldom hot upon cold subjects. For all this, I reverence truth as much as any body; andif a man will but take me by the hand, and go quietly and search for itI'll go to the world's end with him:MBut I hate disputes.”

“Astronomers have a common ground for discussion with musicians in the harmony of the stars and musical concords in tetrads and triads of the fourth and the fifth, and with geometricians in the subject of vision; and in all other sciences many points, perhaps all, are common so far as the discussion of them is concerned. But the actual undertaking of works which are brought to perfection by the hand and its manipulation is the function of those who have been specially trained to deal with a single art.”

“They are, in a sense, two sides of the same coin: women are, on the one hand, subjects of an extremely real and abject (as Julia Kristeva put it) body and denigrated sexuality; on the other, the proliferation of images, and their digitalisation produces more and more abstract and air-brushed representations of impossible female bodies. Both indicate, certainly, a "lack of progress." But, one hopes, discussions and resistance are emerging in response.”

“We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands: we have a check upon two branches of the legislature, as each branch has upon the other two; the power I mean of electing at stated periods, one branch, which branch has the power of electing another. It becomes necessary to every subject then, to be in some degree a statesman: and to examine and judge for himself of the tendencies of political principles and measures.”

“I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave of her structure's rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble pines, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.”

“Every sky with its varied tints and every feather of each bird were coloured by hand; and when it is considered that nearly two hundred and eighty thousand illustrations in the present work have been so treated, it will most likely cause some astonishment to those who give the subject a thought.”

“Everybody enjoys arguing about the current state of music because it feels as if you are talking about something incredibly important, yet it requires little understanding of the subject matter at hand. It's like world politics meets the pink questions in Trivial Pursuit. Points are made but nothing gets accomplished.”

“Education is character development, harmonious completion of human personality. But what the state accomplishes in this field is dull drill, extinction of natural feeling, narrowing of the spiritual field of vision, destruction of all the deeper elements of character in man. The state can train subjects...but it can never develop free men who take their affairs into their own hands; for independent thought is the greatest danger that it has to fear.”

“Here we observe the basic obsessive fantasy of Žižek's position: do nothing, sit still, prefer not to, like Melville's Bartleby, and silently dream of a ruthless violence, a consolidation of state power into one man's hands, an act of brutal physical force of which you are the object or the subject or both at once.”

“We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us - and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject. - How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, "admire me I am a violet! dote upon me I am a primrose!"”

“Sure, I've gotten old. I've had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement, new knees... I've fought prostate cancer and diabetes. I'm half blind, can't hear anything quieter than a jet engine, and take 40 different medications that make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts. I have bouts with dementia, poor circulation, hardly feel my hands or feet anymore, can't remember if I'm 85 or 92, but... thank God, I still have my Florida driver's license!”