“To cause wit in others, you must learn how to be laughed at, how to absorb it, and finally how to triumph over it, in high good humor.” – Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
“In the first chapter of The Art of War it is written, ‘All warfare is based on deception.’ Deceiving one’s own country about warfare treats them like the enemy. After a while it becomes difficult to know who the enemy really is.” – Rayne, “Putin’s FSB: Failed Straightforwardness and Benevolence,” emptywheel, March 12, 2022
“The social interest in the integrity and competence of the judicial process requires that courts and judges should not be shielded from wholesome exposure to public view, and if this interest is to be well served, then some latitude must be allowed for inaccurate and intemperate comment.” – People v. Goss, 10 Ill. 2d 533 (1957)
“Strong and effective extemporaneous rhetoric cannot be nicely channeled in purely dulcet phrases. An advocate must be free to stimulate his audience with spontaneous and emotional appeals for unity and action in a common cause. When such appeals do not incite lawless action, they must be regarded as protected speech. To rule otherwise would ignore the profound national commitment that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” – National Ass’n for the Advancement of Colored People v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886 (1982) (internal cites and quotation marks omitted)
“The mere tendency of speech to encourage unlawful acts is not a sufficient reason for banning it. First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.” – Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002)
“Criminal sanctions are retrospective in nature; they seek to punish a contemnor for past acts which he cannot now undo. Civil sanctions are prospective in nature; they seek to coerce compliance at some point in the future. That point might be immediate compliance in open court or whenever the contemnor chooses to use his ‘key’—namely, compliance—to open the jailhouse door.” – In re Marriage of Betts, 200 Ill. App. 3d 26 (1990) (emphases in original)
“The insolence of power is stronger than the plea of necessity. The tamed submission to usurped authority or even the natural resistance to it, has nothing to excite or flatter the imagination: it is the assumption of a right to insult or oppress others that carries an imposing air of superiority with it. We had rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love of power in ourselves and the admiration of it in others are both natural to man: the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance, has more attraction than abstract right.” – William Hazlitt (quoted in Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human)
“The defense presented two witnesses: Dr. Dawna Gutzmann and Cordelia Parker, Johnson’s eighth-grade special education teacher. Both witnesses testified that Johnson had low intelligence and limited reading and comprehension skills.
“Parker testified that, when the 1992 school year began, Johnson was reading out of a third-grade reading book; however, she believed he had advanced to a fourth-grade reader by the end of the year. He passed a modified constitution test and graduated from elementary school pursuant to a Chicago Board of Education policy that required the promotion to high school of all students over 15 years of age. Parker acknowledged that her report on Johnson indicated that his ability to express himself verbally was adequate.
“Gutzmann testified she was appointed to interview Johnson and did so on separate occasions. The purpose of her initial examination was to form and render an opinion regarding Johnson’s ability to comprehend Miranda warnings and waive his constitutional rights. She first advised Johnson that what he said was not confidential and what he said could later be brought out in court. Gutzmann said she discovered that Johnson had not understood her initial explanation. After she repeated it several times, Johnson indicated he understood.
“In her first interview with Johnson, Gutzmann questioned Johnson about the meaning of key concepts regarding Miranda warnings. Johnson told her he had never signed a statement prior to the one at issue in this case. Gutzmann reviewed some pertinent psychological reports and learned that Johnson had a score of 57 on a verbal subtest of the Wechsler Intelligence Test. She noted that a complete IQ test involves more than just the verbal test.
“Based upon her initial interview, Gutzmann made a provisional diagnosis of major depressive disorder and mild mental retardation. She noted that a firm diagnosis would require additional information regarding Johnson’s adaptive functioning and a full IQ test. After her initial meeting with Johnson, it was her impression that he had dependent features to his personality which were manifest in a tendency to be deferential. Johnson seemed to have low self-esteem, and he appeared to be easily influenced by her authoritative position.”
– Justice Philip J. Rarick, People v. Johnson, 803 N.E.2d 405 (Ill. 2004), Illinois Supreme Court
“Our system of justice requires that a defendant’s guilt or innocence be determined based upon relevant evidence and legal principles, upon the application of reason and deliberation by a jury, not the expression of misdirected emotion or outrage by a mob.” – Justice Philip J. Rarick, People v. Johnson, 803 N.E.2d 405 (Ill. 2004), Illinois Supreme Court
“Word choices frame our discourse on every subject, and to a large extent govern the range of our thinking.” – Ed Walker, “Index And Introduction To The Subject And Power By Michel Foucault”
“Actual authorship of a military document is seldom known.” – James Lee Cate, E. Kathleen Williams, & Louis E. Asher Fellow, “The Air Corps Prepares for War, 1939-41,” The Army Air Forces in World War II
“Fagan’s battalion, with Company M of the 3d Raider Battalion and a forward observer team from the l2th Marines attached, embarked on board LCMs and LCVPs at cape Torokina early on the morning of 29 November [1943]. One hour later, at 0400, the boats moved in toward the Koiari beach and the Marines were landed virtually in the middle of a Japanese supply dump. The surprise was mutual. A Japanese officer, armed only with a sword, and apparently expecting Japanese boats, greeted the first Marines ashore. His demise and the realization of his mistake were almost simultaneous. The Marines, now committed to establishing a beachhead in the midst of an enemy camp, dug in as quickly as possible to develop the situation.” – Maj. Douglas T. Kane, USMC, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., “Northern Solomons Operations: End of a Mission,” Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II
“Every defect in a man, and in others’ way of taking him, our agreement that gold has value gives us power to rise above.” – Regina Corrado, “Unauthorized Cinnamon”, Deadwood
“A disappearance isn’t like a death. You spend your time saying to yourself, One day, he’ll come back. You wonder, Where does he live? What’s become of him? Is he suffering? A missing person is a ghost.” – Emmanuel Carrère, “The Art of Nonfiction” (interviewed by Susannah Hunnewell in The Paris Review)
“The death of belief becomes the birth of invention.” – Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
“I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it.” – Nick Cave (interviewed by Jarvis Cocker, Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service)
“In the war against Ethiopia, 1935-36, Italian bombers gained experience in the use of various types of projectiles, and experiments were conducted in dropping ammunition, food, and water to the Italian ground forces; even fresh meat was supplied for the troops by the dropping of live goats and sheep which parachuted to the desert and took up the march with the army until they were needed for food.” – E. Kathleen Williams & Louis E. Asher Fellow, “Air War, 1939-41,” The Army Air Forces in World War II
“New Georgia lacked the drama of the early months of Guadalcanal and the awesome scope of later battles in the Central Pacific. Instead, it was characterized by a considerable amount of fumbling, inconclusive combat; and the final triumph was marred by the fact that a number of command changes were required to insure the victory. There were few tactical or strategic successes and the personal hardships of a rigorous jungle campaign were only underscored by the planning failures.” – Maj. Douglas T. Kane, USMC, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., “End of a Campaign,” Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II
“Breakfast on the morning of the 10th was not a problem for the raiders who had not eaten since the morning of the 9th. There was no food.” – Maj. Douglas T. Kane, USMC, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., “The Dragons Peninsula Campaign: Capture of Enogai,” Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II
“Western culture, if it is to survive its current self-hatred, must become only more Hamlet-like. We have no equally powerful and influential image of human cognition pushed to its limits; Plato’s Socrates comes closest. Both think too well to survive.” – Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
“I don’t fear things that will only kill me. I don’t even fear things that will kill me and take out a city block. I fear most the things that will leave me alive in good health, and living with the terror of my continued existence.” – Matt Harbowy, “What Chemical Do Scientists Fear the Most?”
“Nature is a forgiving mistress, and you might could have some time to fill before she collects her due.” – Jody Worth, “A Lie Agreed Upon (Part II)”, Deadwood
“Each of us is a servile breath, a fool or victim, base, cowardly, sleepy, a concourse of atoms, caught between past and future in an illusory present, poor, moon-crazed, friendless, and subject to a thousand little deaths. We are our anxieties; no more, no less.” – Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
“Modern war with its extravagant material factors places an especial importance upon a nation’s economic structure and particularly upon its ‘industrial web.’ A nation may be defeated simply by the interruption of the delicate balance of this complex organization, which is vulnerable to the air arm and directly to neither of the other arms. It is possible that a moral collapse brought about by disturbances in this close-knit web may be sufficient to force an enemy to surrender.” – James Lea Cate and Wesley Frank Craven, “The Army Air Arm Between Two Wars, 1919-39,” The Army Air Forces in World War II
“Of the roughly 21,000 Japanese defenders, 216 survived the battle to be taken prisoner, and an estimated 3,000 went into hiding during the U.S. occupation of the island. By August 1945, most of these had either been killed, captured, or had surrendered, but one group did not lay down its arms until 1949.” – Carsten Fries, “Battle of Iwo Jima”
“I wouldn’t trust a man that wouldn’t try to steal a little.” – Elizabeth Sarnoff, “Suffer the Little Children,” Deadwood
“Some goddamned time a man’s due to stop arguin’ with hisself. Feeling he’s twice the goddamned fool he knows he is. Because he can’t be somthin’ he tries to be every goddamned day without once getting to dinnertime and not fucking it up.” – Elizabeth Sarnoff, “Here Was a Man,” Deadwood
“People never prize what they have always had in abundance.” – Anton Chekhov, “The Trousseau” (trans. Constance Garnett)
“Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one’s eyes shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness.” – Anton Chekhov, “A Living Chattel” (trans. Constance Garnett)
“Blind love finds ideal beauty everywhere.” – Anton Chekhov, “A Living Chattel” (trans. Constance Garnett)