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To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of toil.

Now, where were we? Read me back the last line.''Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take shorthand.'Not my last line, stupid!' the colonel shouted. 'Somebody else's.''Read...

Bribery is against the law, and you know it. But it's not against the law to make a profit, is it? So it can't be against the law for me to bribe someone in order to make a fair profit, can it? No, of...

I am not so afraid that I cannot see the truth.

Religion explains what man cannot explain. But when I see something before my eyes, and my religion hastens to assure me that I am mistaken, that I do not see it at all . . . No, I may no longer be a...

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent

Huey Newton laid down his life for us," Stokely Carmichael had said the same night. But of course Huey Newton had not yet laid down his life at all, was just here in the Alameda County Jail waiting to...

Sometimes, she said, mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children... It was a fleeting statement, one I didn't think she'd hold on to; after all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us,...

{About Georgia O'Keeffe:} 'The city men.' 'The men.' 'They.' The words crop up again and again as this astonishingly aggressive woman tells us what was on her mind when she was making her...

It's all just fictions anyway. We do what we do and then we make up reasons for it afterward but they're never the true reasons, the truth is always just out of reach.

…kissing George was a little like rolling in caramel after spending years surviving off rice sticks.

In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual...

Reading a novel is not an exercise in censure.

Wine is like many of the fine experiences in life which take time and experience to extract their full pleasure and meaning.

Besides, said Suriyawong. This was not a rescue operation.What was it, target practice? Chinese skeet?An offer of transportation to an invited guest of the Hegemon, said Suriyawong. And the loan of a...

Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows...

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation...

Reality's such a pain sometimes, you know?

It's tempting to think of red for sun," she said, "but it has to be just a dash, not much. More of a dark orange and a hint of brown. And then white on yellow on white. Not bright white,' she said....

Round the World! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the very point whence we started, where...

Joan Baez was a personality before she was entirely a person, and, like anyone to whom that happens, she is in a sense the hapless victim of what others have seen in her, written about her, wanted her...

There is not much mental distance between a feeling of having been screwed and the ethic of total retaliation, or at least the kind of random revenge that comes with outraging the public decency.

am saying their religion has made a state that does not halt injustice, but rather institutionalizes it. They feel superior to others who have different beliefs. They feel only they possess the right...

We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.

His goading remained gentle. Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think...

If you are there to staunch the tears of the world, then it does not cross your mind that you yourself may weep.

Could you say that your business had expanded if it had gone from owning one teapot to two? Somehow she thought that Dr. Profit would answer both those questions with a shake of his head. Of course,...

Being loved and admired by a man like that-and she knew that this man, this mechanic, this fixer of machines with their broken hearts, did indeed love and admire her-was like walking in the sunshine;...

Every straight line can be forced into a curve!

This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?Yes, she said.That's influenza, said Miro. Watch for nausea...

Instinct and study, love and hate;Audacity-reverence. These must mate,And fuse with Jacob's heart,To wrestle with the angel -- Art.

To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.