“Some [people] may be "servants of the power structure," but that has to be shown. I think it often can be shown, but the burden of proof is on the critic who puts forth that thesis in particular cases.”
Quote collection
Thinking Quotes — page 566 of 4756
“I think a very important aspect of language has to do with the establishment of social relations and interactions. Often, this is described as communication. But that is very misleading, I think.”
“To go back to a moment of Western civilization remote enough in time so that we should be able to look at it dispassionately, ask what happened during World War I. What was the typical behavior of respected intellectuals in Germany, England, the United States? What happened to those who publicly questioned the nobility of the war effort, on both sides? I do not think the answers are untypical.”
“The community itself didn't support the union. Now that's kind of interesting about [Barack] Obama, because Obama was supposedly a community organizer in Chicago at that time. Now I'm sure he read the Chicago Tribune, so he knew about it, but when he went to show his solidarity with the workforce, the first place he went was Caterpillar. I don't think he's forgotten, and the labor movement didn't react. Even radical labor historians didn't remember. It was only 15 years ago, after all, but that's a real triumph of propaganda in many ways.”
“Leather is always sexy, and you have to wear leather when you ride a bike. It's more for protection, but it also gets you some style points, I think.”
“Prayer, to the thinking person, is almost inescapable.”
“People have been kind enough to compare me to Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. I think it's amazing that they even put my name in the same sentence.”
“I think that any songwriter - and I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us - you don't write the songs anyhow.”
“I think the environmental movement is the biggest people's movement in the world. Unfortunately, our governments and corporations haven't responded accordingly to protect our planet's natural resources.”
“Obviously people don't want other people to tell them how to think or what to believe, or to tell them what's right politically and what's wrong.”
“It's very hard to impose your beliefs or a specific message about any given movie. I think that audiences always extract what they want from a film even if something isn't overtly political. They may or may not get it, and it's hard to control that.”
“As far as my own dreams, I'm not a big dreamer, I think obviously we suppress things in life, emotions and thoughts, and we should wake up and look at that.”
“The longer they hang out, the deeper the history, the richer the life. If you use that as a template or as a way of realizing things, then I don't think you can go wrong.”
“I done me best when I was let. Thinking always if I go all goes. A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me? One in a thousand of years of the nights? All me life I have been lived among them but now they are becoming lothed to me. And I am lothing their little warm tricks. And lothing their mean cosy turns. And all the greedy gushes out through their small souls. And all the lazy leaks down over their brash bodies. How small it's all! And me letting on to meself always. And lilting on all the time.”
“Neither our own passing nor the passing of an era is a tragedy, no matter how much we would like to think it is.”
“I think the "crime novel" has replaced the sociological novel of the 1930s. I think the progenitor of that tradition is James M. Cain, who in my view is the most neglected writer in American literature.”
“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”
“Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. ... Shall we always study to obtain more, and not sometimes be content with less?”
“Nature has many scenes to exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this part or that. She is constantly repainting the landscape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness; now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will surprise us with a mantle of snow. Some green she thinks so good for our eyes that, like blue, she never banishes it entirely from our eyes, but has created evergreens.”
“I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere,--for I have had a little experience in that business,--that there isa desire to hear what I think on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country,--and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as an audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent.”