Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-01-11 (five quarters ago):

"Will housing sector problems push the economy into recession? It is too early to tell right now, but what we can do is to examine the current situation closely and try to learn from it. Perhaps 'relearn' is a better word, because the mistakes that brought us to this point have been made before. There are no new lessons here." -- William Poole, President, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, in a speech delivered January 9, 2008.

[The submitter adds: it is refreshing, for a change, not to hear someone saying, "it's different this time!"]

http://stlouisfed.org/news/speeches/2008/01_09_08.html]

(submitted to the mailing list by Duffy O'Craven)

-- from the PBS television program Tavis Smiley, 2009-03-31 (link includes audio and transcript)

"The Great Depression, we said, 'Hey, we have to learn the facts. What caused this disaster, so that we can take steps, like pass the Glass-Steagall law, that will prevent future disasters?' Where's our investigation?

"What would happen if after a plane crashes, we said, 'Oh, we don't want to look in the past. We want to be forward looking.' Many people might have been, you know, 'we don't want to pass blame.' No. We have a nonpartisan, skilled inquiry. We spend lots of money on, get really bright people. And we find out, to the best of our ability, what caused every single major plane crash in America. And because of that, aviation has an extraordinarily good safety record. We ought to follow the same policies in the financial sphere. We have to find out what caused the disasters, or we will keep reliving them."

-- William K. Black, on the PBS television program Bill Moyers Journal, 2009-04-03

"The Republicans are like an arsonist who complains that the fire department is wasting water." -- Paul Begala, 2009-03-25 [ thanks to realinterrobang for re-re-quoting it where I would see it to re-re-re-quote here ... this'n seems to be popular]

"As a woman, it makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside to hear that men like Congressman Issa want to protect the female ideal. And by warm and fuzzy, I mean like if I drank bleach." -- Jezebel.com commenter BrutallyHonestBabes, 2009-03-27, regarding Rep. Issa's proposed legislation to "protect the historic role of the first lady"

"[...]

"The definition of feminism does not ask for two forms of photo ID. It does not care what you look like. It does not care what color skin you have, or whether that skin is clear, or how much you weigh, or what you do with your hair. You can bite your nails, or you can get them done once a week. You can spend two hours on your makeup, or five minutes, or the time it takes to find a Chapstick without any lint sticking to it. You can rock a cord mini, or khakis, or a sari, and you can layer all three. The definition of feminism does not include a mandatory leg-hair check; wax on, wax off, whatever you want. If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist.

"Yes, you are.

[...]

"It has nothing to do with your sexual preference or your sense of humor or your fashion sense or your charitable donations, or what pronouns you use in official correspondence, or whether you think Andrea Dworkin is full of crap, or how often you read Bust or Ms. -- or, actually, whether you've got a vagina. In the end, it's not about that. It is about political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, and it is about claiming that definition on its own terms, instead of qualifying it because you don't want anyone to think that you don't shave your pits. It is about saying that you are a feminist and just letting the statement sit there, instead of feeling a compulsion to modify it immediately with 'but not, you know, that kind of feminist' because you don't want to come off all Angry Girl. [...]"

-- Sarah D. Bunting, "Yes, You Are" [go read the whole thing; it's worth it -- DGA], Tomato Nation, 2003-09-30

"I have been complaining about this for ages. Religious issues aside, it is positively criminal to ruin the cadence of another person's poem like that." -- viaticus, 2005-09-20, on the subject of the phrase "under God" being added to the Pledge of Allegiance on 1954-06-14. (The Pledge was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy.)

Note that a similar complaint could be made about the change in 1923-1924 to replace "my Flag" with "the Flag of the United States of America."

Note also that today is the anniversary of "In God We Trust" being added to US currency, in 1955.

"I have been complaining about this for ages. Religious issues aside, it is positively criminal to ruin the cadence of another person's poem like that." -- viaticus, 2005-09-20, on the subject of the phrase "under God" being added to the Pledge of Allegiance on 1954-06-14. (The Pledge was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy.)

Note that a similar complaint could be made about the change in 1923-1924 to replace "my Flag" with "the Flag of the United States of America."

Note also that today is the anniversary of "In God We Trust" being added to US currency, in 1955.

"I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves ... too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: 'Our country, right or wrong!' They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: 'Our country-when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.'" -- Senator Carl Schurz, "The Policy of Imperialism," Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, pp. 119-20 (1913). ( thanks to bunnyjadwiga, from whom I copied this entry)

[And to all of my countrymen, a glorious Independence Day!]

"I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves ... too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: 'Our country, right or wrong!' They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: 'Our country-when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.'" -- Senator Carl Schurz, "The Policy of Imperialism," Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, pp. 119-20 (1913). ( thanks to bunnyjadwiga, from whom I copied this entry)

[And to all of my countrymen, a glorious Independence Day!]

"It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America." -- Molly Ivins (via Jone Johnson Lewis' collection of quotations on about.com)

Bonus quote in honour of the speaker's 70^th birthday: "I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself." -- Tom Stoppard, quoted in The New Yorker 1977-12-19

"It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America." -- Molly Ivins (via Jone Johnson Lewis' collection of quotations on about.com)

Bonus quote in honour of the speaker's 70^th birthday: "I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself." -- Tom Stoppard, quoted in The New Yorker 1977-12-19

"Authority under law must, I know, be respected as the foundation of society and as the protection of peace. The extension of state power, however, into every phase of man's life and thought is the abuse of authority, the destroyer of freedom, and the enemy of real peace." -- Lester Bowles Pearson (b. 1897-04-23, d. 1972-12-27), 14^th Prime Minister of Canada (1963-1968), in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, 1957

"Authority under law must, I know, be respected as the foundation of society and as the protection of peace. The extension of state power, however, into every phase of man's life and thought is the abuse of authority, the destroyer of freedom, and the enemy of real peace." -- Lester Bowles Pearson (b. 1897-04-23, d. 1972-12-27), 14^th Prime Minister of Canada (1963-1968), in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, 1957

"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others." -- Frederick Douglass, 1857-08-03 (from a speech, "The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies", in Canandaigua, New York)

[In the US, this date is known in some states as Juneteenth or Emancipation Day.]

"Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others." -- Frederick Douglass, 1857-08-03 (from a speech, "The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies", in Canandaigua, New York)

[In the US, this date is known in some states as Juneteenth or Emancipation Day.]

[Feh. Gotta fix the problem my post-to-three-blogs-at-once script has with multi-word subjects..]

This is, I think, a little too important to rick getting overlooked in the trivia and nattering of my previous entry, hence the second post in such a short time...

As a few other people have pointed out (mostly citing Pam's House Blend as where they saw it), Today is Loving Day:

On June 12, 1967, the US Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional all laws forbidding interracial marriage. The case was called Loving v. Virginia (1967). The decision was unanimous."

(I wish I'd realized this in time to pick a suitable QotD for the occasion.)

Ed Brayton adds: "I am still waiting for a conservative originalist to either defend the decision on originalist grounds (without completely contradicting their arguments against similar rulings in other case) or tell us why it was wrongly decided. No one has ever accepted that challenge."

[Feh. Gotta fix the problem my post-to-three-blogs-at-once script has with multi-word subjects..]

This is, I think, a little too important to rick getting overlooked in the trivia and nattering of my previous entry, hence the second post in such a short time...

As a few other people have pointed out (mostly citing Pam's House Blend as where they saw it), Today is Loving Day:

On June 12, 1967, the US Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional all laws forbidding interracial marriage. The case was called Loving v. Virginia (1967). The decision was unanimous."

(I wish I'd realized this in time to pick a suitable QotD for the occasion.)

Ed Brayton adds: "I am still waiting for a conservative originalist to either defend the decision on originalist grounds (without completely contradicting their arguments against similar rulings in other case) or tell us why it was wrongly decided. No one has ever accepted that challenge."

I propose an "all-purpose counter-protest" meme:

Inspired by Charles Kline. (It seems to me that this could be used by folks on all sides of various issues, as easily by people I disagree with as by reasonable people ... folks who agree with me. Hence "all-purpose". Or does surrealism itself have an inherent political implication?)

"The one thing I always remind people -- because they get discouraged, they say, 'you know, people around the world, they're expressing hatred toward America' -- you know, people outside of this country are expressing disappointment because they've got high expectations for America, and they want America to lead. They want America to lead through our values, and through our ideals, and through our example. But they have high expectations of us because, I think, that this country is still the last, best hope on Earth." -- US Senator (and Presidential candidate) Barack Obama (D-Illinois), on the CBS television show the Late Show with David Letterman [I'm not sure what date; I think it was 2007-04-09. Can anybody confirm or correct that?]