Nowadays Quotes - page 21
There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they're afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows. Have you practical people ever thought that that's all it would take to blast your whole, big, complex structure, with all your laws and guns-just somebody naming the exact nature of what it is you're doing?
John Galt
ALL Rivers go to the Sea, but none return from it. Xerxes wept when he beheld his Army, to consider that in less than a Hundred Years they would be all Dead. Anacreon was' Choakt with a Grape-stone, and violent Joy Kills as well as violent Grief. There is nothing in this World constant but Inconstancy; yet Plato thought that if Virtue would appear to the World in her own native Dress, all Men would be Enamoured with her. But now since Interest governs the World, and Men neglect the Golden Mean, Jupiter himself, if he came on the Earth would be Despised, unless it were as he did to Danae in a Golden Shower. For Men nowadays Worship the Rising Sun, and not the Setting.
Jonathan Swift
Thereafter, the scenes had succeeded one another, turn and turn about, in the drama as in reality, to the point that, in the end, Kingbitter did not know what to admire more: the author's-his dead friend's-crystal-clear foresight or his own, so to say, remorseful determination to identify with his prescribed role and stick to the story.
Nowadays, though, with the lapse of nine years, Kingbitter was interested in something else. His story had reached an end, but he himself was still here, posing a problem for which he more and more put off finding a solution. He would either have to carry on his story, which had proved impossible, or else start a new story, which had proved equally impossible. Kingbitter undoubtedly could see solutions to hand, both better ones and worse; indeed, if he reflected more deeply, solutions were all he could see, rather than lives.
Imre Kertész
...A lot of women write about messy, complex and complicated things. Our lives and experiences as women are complicated, and very dense, and on some levels, I think more multidimensional, because we have a whole lot more to deal with. Men don't have periods. They don't have babies, and nowadays they don't have to worry about just taking care of a family. We women do all of that. And so, I find on some levels, our lives are a little bit more interesting...
Terry McMillan
When the [Mystical Shit] CD first started to take shape, I was very unsure about what was happening-I wasn't sure I liked what these guys were coming up with. I missed Dogbowl's melodies, and I didn't like that it was loud. But other people seemed to like it a lot, and at that time, that was important to me, so I went with it. As time went by, I started to appreciate the oddity of me in a rock band. Unfortunately, I didn't really embrace the idea fully until that band had broken up. Nowadays, I can look back and think it was fun and funny that I was in a rock band, but at the time, it bothered me a lot and I complained about it all the time, but I lacked the moral character to do anything about it.
John S. Hall
Harold Laswell ... explained a couple of years after this in the early 1930s that we should not succumb to what he called democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests.... In what's nowadays called a totalitarian state, military state or something, it's easy. You just hold a bludgeon over their heads, but as societies become more free and democratic you lose that capacity and therefore you have to turn to the techniques of propaganda. The logic is clear-propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state....
Noam Chomsky
The idea that there was an unbridgeable gap between Soviet Communism and National Socialism, which is nowadays so widespread, would have seemed curious at the time. To be sure, there were some in Moscow, and a few more in Berlin, who believed that there must eventually come a reckoning with their "real” enemy. But theirs were minority voices. Many more gladly went along with the idea that the two socialist systems were joined in battle against "decadent Anglo-Saxon liberalism”.
Daniel Hannan
