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… the American government did not want to face the consequences of peace. It was, after all, one thing to wish for an end to the war and quite another to confront the issues upon which the war had begun. President Johnson had wanted to end the war; so, too, had President Kennedy. But to end the war and not to lose it: the distinction was crucial, and particularly crucial after all the American lives that had been spent and all the political rhetoric expended.
— Frances Fitzgerald (1940- ), from Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and Americans in Vietnam, 1972.
Americans see history as a straight line and themselves standing on the cutting edge of it as representatives for all mankind. They believe in the future as if it were a religion; they believe that there is nothing they cannot accomplish, that solutions wait somewhere for all problems, like brides.
— Frances Fitzgerald (1940- ), American journalist, author
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He forgets to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.
— Karl Marx (1818-1893), German journalist, founder of Communism
In Aristotelian terms, the good leader must have ethos, pathos and logos. The ethos is his moral character, the source of his ability to persuade. The pathos is his ability to touch feelings, to move people emotionally. The logos is his ability to give solid reasons for an action, to move people intellectually.
— Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001), American philosopher, educator
Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean I’d love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.
— Mariah Carey (1970- ), American singer, songwriter, record producer, music video director and actress
There is a mandate to impose a voluntary return to traditional values.
— Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), 40th President of the United States
“Look what he did in his news conference — the president — the other day. He said Congress has no function except to send the money. And the American people, their function only is if they don’t like the war to sit back and let me prosecute it. Well!”
— Sam Donaldson, journalist, on the July 15 episode of ABC’s This Week
Saving the earth is not an issue of right and left, it’s an issue of right and wrong.
— Larry Schweiger, CEO of National Wildlife Federation, at the Serve to Preserve Conference in Miami
No one is fool enough to choose war instead of peace. For in peace sons bury fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and fathers bury sons.
— Herodotus (485-425 B.C.), Greek historian
I have no hostility toward men. Some of my best friends are men. I married a man, and my father was a man.
— Jill Ruckelshaus (1937- ), lecturer, Costco board member
