Center Quotes - page 47
If the Dodgers had kept Clemente with them at Ebbets Field-as they did with Sandy Koufax-the course of baseball might have been drastically changed. This intrigued me and I did some research on the subject. For years, the Dodgers kept looking for a left fielder to pair up with Duke Snider in center and Carl Furillo in right. This might have been an all-time outfield: Clemente-Snider-Furillo. Imagine Clemente taking dead aim at the comfortable home-run area in Ebbets Field for four years and the short left field fence in the Coliseum for the next three years. The Dodgers won the pennant in 1955 and again in 1956. They won after a playoff in 1959 and copped it again in 1963. But wouldn't it be safe to assume they could have won in 1957, 1958, 1960, 1961 and 1962 with a Clemente in their lineup?
Roberto Clemente
Ted Abernathy was just one strike away from pocketing a 5-4 Cub decision over the Pirates when he found himself in a head-to-head battle with Roberto Clemente. This was the ninth inning in Chicago and there were two outs, none on. Abernathy had Clemente no balls and two strikes, but apparently the Pirate slugger worried the Cub reliever and he grew too careful. He threw three balls and then Clemente put on a dazzling display of bat control. Abernathy threw eight straight strikes and Clemente fouled off every pitch, seven to right field. Then he drew a walk and Willie Stargell, who always hits Abernathy, hit him again. Abernathy worked the count to 3-and-1 and Stargell fouled two pitches, then rammed a long, line-drive double high off the center field wall to score Clemente from first with the tying run. The Bucs won it with four runs in the eleventh, but it was Clemente who saved it with his remarkable performance.
Roberto Clemente
Clemente's homer – his second in two nights – was a prodigious wallop of some 430 feet that landed about 12 rows up in the steps to the right of the service ramp in center field. In addition to loosening a few boards and frightening small children, it also tied the score at 3-all. Matty Alou was aboard with a walk when Ray tried to fling one pitch too many past the dangerous Clemente. Clemente saw the ball good and he sped up his swing and timed the connection perfectly. Wynn, in center, gave token pursuit of the eighth blast this year off the 34-year-old Puerto Rican hero's bat. But he'd have needed a ladder to reach the blast which soared far over Wynn's head.
Roberto Clemente
All right-thinking people are deeply shocked by the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We are appalled by the event and the unbelievable death toll, and send our deepest sympathy to the American people. One positive thing to come out of it is that Maitreya has decided to come forward even sooner than planned to try to prevent precipitate action of revenge. One other positive thing that may come out of it is that the mass of ordinary Americans might have a more realistic view of the world than their media has allowed them in the past, feeding them 'soft' instead of 'hard' news. It is a change but in the long run it might be a change for the better, and prepare them for Maitreya's ideas.
Benjamin Creme
September 11, 2001 marks the onslaught of the "Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT), used as a pretext and a justification by the US and its NATO allies to carry out a "war without borders”, a global war of conquest. At eleven o'clock, on the morning of September 11, the Bush administration had already announced that Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon. This assertion was made prior... an in depth police investigation. CIA Director George Tenet stated that same morning that Osama bin Laden had the capacity to plan "multiple attacks with little or no warning.”... The tragic events of 9/11 provided the required justification to wage war on Afghanistan on "humanitarian grounds”, with the full support of World public opinion and the endorsement of the "international community”.
Michel Chossudovsky
Poetry is not; or seems not to be. But it appears that among the great conflicts of this culture, the conflict in our attitude toward poetry stands clearly lit. There are no guards built up to hide it. We call see its expression, and we can see its effects upon us. We can see our own conflict and our own resource if we look, now, at this art, which has been made of all the arts the one least acceptable.
Anyone dealing with poetry and the love of poetry must deal, then, with the hatred of poetry, and perhaps even Ignore with the indifference which is driven toward the center. It comes through as boredom, as name-calling, as the traditional attitude of the last hundred years which has chalked in the portrait of the poet as he is known to this society, which, as Herbert Read says, "does not challenge poetry in principle it merely treats it with ignorance, indifference and unconscious cruelty."
Poetry is foreign to us, we do not let it enter our daily lives.
Muriel Rukeyser
Certainly Mr Eliot in the twenties was responsible for a great vogue for verse-satire. An ideal formula of ironic, gently "satiric", self-expression was provided by that master for the undergraduate underworld, tired and thirsty for poetic fame in a small way. The results of Mr Eliot are not Mr Eliot himself: but satire with him has been the painted smile of the clown. Habits of expression ensuing from mannerism are, as a fact, remote from the central function of satire. In its essence the purpose of satire - whether verse or prose - is aggression. (When whimsical, sentimental, or "poetic" it is a sort of bastard humour.) Satire has a great big glaring target. If successful, it blasts a great big hole in the center. Directness there must be and singleness of aim: it is all aim, all trajectory.
Wyndham Lewis
I think the first reason that we should love our enemies, and I think this was at the very center of Jesus' thinking, is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that's the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil. And that is the tragedy of hate, that it doesn't cut it off. It only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Moral equivalence is a term of propaganda that was invented to try to prevent us from looking at the acts for which we are responsible. ...There is no such notion. There are many different dimensions and criteria. For example, there's no moral equivalence between the bombing of the World Trade Center and the destruction of Nicaragua or of El Salvador, of Guatemala. The latter were far worse, by any criterion. So there's no moral equivalence.
Noam Chomsky
I think the trick for any songwriter is authenticity. For the young songwriter coming up who is connected to his generation, as I was connected to mine, write honestly about what's going on in the center of your life. You know, when "We've Only Just Begun" was a Number 1 record, I think the Number 1 album in the country was "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." So it was as far away from what was happening in the music scene as you can get. And yet it was a hit. I think it was a hit because of, obviously, Karen's amazing vocal, but I think that any time we write authentically and honestly about what's going on in the center of our chest, because people are so much alike, there's a big a chance that it's going on in the center of your chest, too.
Paul Williams (songwriter)
In Germany there is much complaining about my "eccentricities." But since it is not known where my center is, it won't be easy to find out where or when I have thus far been "eccentric." That I was a philologist, for example, meant that I was outside my center (which fortunately does not mean that I was a poor philologist). Likewise, I now regard my having been a Wagnerian as eccentric. It was a highly dangerous experiment; now that I know it did not ruin me, I also know what significance it had for me - it was the most severe test of my character.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nixon: The French have had a helluva time and they're half-Latin, and all of Latin America is not any good at government. They either go to one extreme or another. It's either a family, ah, three extremes: family, oligarchy, or a dictatorship; or a dictatorship on the right, or one on the left, very seldom in the center. Now, having said all that, however, as you compare the Latin dictatorships, governments, etc., and their forms of government, they at least do it in their way. It is an orderly way which works relatively well. They have been able to run the damn place. Looking at the black countries, of course, there are only two old ones-Haiti is an old one and Liberia is a very old one.
Richard Nixon
It has been... hard... to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in ...society. Even after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that collapsed the twin towers of the World Trade Center and sliced through the Pentagon, [...] [we are] still sleepwalking into [an uncertain] [...] future. We have walked out of our burning house, and we are now headed off the edge of a cliff. Beyond that cliff is an abyss of economic and political disorder on a scale that no one has ever seen before. [...] The national government will prove to be so impotent and ineffective in managing the enormous vicissitudes we face that the United States may not survive as a nation in any meaningful sense but... will devolve into a set of autonomous regions.
James Howard Kunstler
This center will reflect the finest artistic achievements of our time. It is our hope that it will house the leading artists and performers. Almost every industrialized nation in the world, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, has one or more national centers for the arts. Washington has lagged behind. Far too often, American actors and singers and musicians must travel to foreign countries to even be heard. Now, because of President Kennedy's leadership and your efforts, they will have a stage here in the Capital of their own country. I expect this center to be a living force for the encouragement of art. Washington needs new theaters and new concert halls. But if that is all that we are building, we will have fallen far short of today's expectation and promise.
Lyndon B. Johnson
This Nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space, and we have no choice but to follow it. Whatever the difficulties, they will be overcome. Whatever the hazards, they must be guarded against. With the vital help of this Aerospace Medical Center, with the help of all those who labor in the space endeavor, with the help and support of all Americans, we will climb this wall with safety and with speed-and we shall then explore the wonders on the other side.
John F. Kennedy
