Categories
Thought

“Johnny Nolan”

I wonder what people did before they invented coffee.

Johnny Nolan, a character in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945, directed by Elia Kazan, written by Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis, performed by James Dunn); based on the novel of the same name by Betty Smith (1943).
Categories
Thought

Kamala Harris

This is just an extraordinary day. It’s a testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy, and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy and strengthening alliances.

Vice President Kamala Harris yammers on about President Biden’s diplomatic triumph, on the tarmac welcoming freed prisoners from Russia, while the president looks dumbly (or dumbfoundedly) away.

Categories
Thought

Branch Cabell

Unreason is at all times one of the happier privileges of patriotism.

Branch Cabell, Ladies and Gentlemen: A Parcel of Reconsiderations (1934), p. 274.
Categories
Thought

André Gide

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.

André Gide, Autumn Leaves (Feuillets d’automne, 1941, trans. Jeanine Parisier Plottel).

Categories
Thought

Scott Adams

I don’t think our current system gives us any chance of an election result that the country accepts.

Scott Adams, Real Coffee with Scott Adams, Episode 2555 (August 3, 2024).
Categories
Thought

Christopher Columbus

And they know neither sect nor idolatry, with the exception that all believe that the source of all power and goodness is in the sky, and they believe very firmly that I, with these ships and people, came from the sky, and in this belief they everywhere received me, after they had overcome their fear.

Christopher Columbus, “Letter to the Sovereigns” (1493).
Categories
Thought

Albert Camus

Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic.

Albert Camus, The Rebel (1951).
Categories
Thought

Peter Drucker

Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany.

Peter Drucker, The End of Economic Man: The Study of the New Totalitarians (1939), pp. 245-246.
Categories
Thought

Winston Churchill

Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of communism. . . . As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism. Thus were set on foot those kindred movements which were destined soon to plunge the world into more hideous strife, which none can say has ended with their destruction.

Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Volume 1, The Gathering Storm (1948).
Categories
Thought

Albert Camus

Fascism is an act of contempt, in fact. Inversely, every form of contempt, if it intervenes in politics, prepares the way for, or establishes, Fascism.

Albert Camus, The Rebel (1951).