Issue Quotes (page 17)
People tend to assess the relative importance of
issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory—and this is
largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media. Frequently
mentioned topics populate the mind even as others slip away from
awareness. In turn, what the media choose to report corresponds to their
view of what is currently on the public’s mind. It is no accident that
authoritarian regimes exert substantial ...
Daniel Kahneman
But when Odysseus rose, that man of many devices, fixing his down-cast eyes on the ground he stood: nor his scepter swayed, either this way or that like a practiced speaker, but held it motionless, even as a man unskilled in the arts of persuasion. One would declare him mute with passion or wanting in judgment. But when he spoke, when his powerful voice went forth from his bosom, issuing words which fell like flakes of snow in winter, surely no mortal man might hope to compete with Odysseus....
Homer
Traditional progressive bread and butter economic issues are the heart of the solution. It's about ensuring decent jobs with a good wage. It's about ensuring a free public education in all the communities of America, whether they are in the shiny new affluent suburbs or the crumbling old schools of the older suburbs and cities. It's about ensuring a system where all Americans have access to health care, instead of a steadily declining share of our population.
Paul Wellstone
I write because it’s a way of puzzling out answers to situations in the world that I don’t understand. The act of writing a book gives me the same experience that I hope reading it gives readers. It forces me to sort through the various points of view on a given issue or situation and ultimately come to a conclusion. Doing that might not change my mind, but it almost always gives me a stronger sense of why my opinion is what it is—a question we rarely ask ourselves.
Jodi Picoult
[And there was the matter of Dick Turpin. It looked like the same car, except that forever afterwards it seemed able to do 250 miles on a gallon of petrol, ran so quietly that you practically had to put your mouth over the exhaust pipe to see if the engine was firing , and issued its voice-synthesized warnings in a series of exquisite and perfectly-phrased haikus, each one original and apt...
Late frost burns the bloom
Would a fool not let the belt
Restrain the body?
...it would say....
Terry Prachett
What it taught me was forgiveness. It taught me that when people present themselves in a certain way, there's probably some back story or issue or reason for the way that they are. It's not you. It's them. And a lot of times, its about something that's completely out of their control
Denzel Washington
Down our way we're always had a theory that the Civil War was not brought on by Secession of Slavery or the State's Rights issue. These matters contributed to the quarrel, but there is a deeper reason. It was bought on by some Yankee coming down south and putting nutmeg in a julep. So our folks up and left the Union flat.
Irvin S. Cobb
For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not,...
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
In drawing attention to the physical characteristics of women leaders, they can be dismissed as either too pretty or too ugly. The net effect is to prevent women's identification with the issues. If the public women is stigmatized as too 'pretty,' she's a threat, a rival--or simply not serious; if derided as too 'ugly,' one risks tarring oneself with the same brush by identifying oneself with her agenda.
Naomi Wolf
I do not deny, but strongly affirm, the right of the State to interfere to cure a great evil. I say that in this case it would interfere to create a great evil; and I am not going to be turned from the discussion of that direct issue to bottomless botherations about Socialism and Individualism, or the relative advantages of always turning to the right and always turning to the left.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
The pessimists believe that the cosmos is a clock that is running down; the progressives believe it is a clock that they themselves are winding up. But I happen to believe that the world is what we choose to make it, and that we are what we choose to make ourselves; and that our renascence or our ruin will alike, ultimately and equally, testify with a trumpet to our liberty.- The Illustrated London News, July 10, 1920 Issue.
Gilbert K. Chesterton