In his autobiography Self-Consciousness, a “big-bellied Lutheran God” within the young John Updike looked on in contempt as he struggled to give up cigarettes. Many years later the older Updike, now giving up on alcohol, coffee, and salt, put into the mouth of that God the words of Frederick the Great excoriating his battle-shy soldiers—”Dogs, [...]
Archive for the ‘Quotations’ category
Ian McEwan on John Updike
February 26, 2009The Dead Tree Theory, Gail Collins in the NYTimes
February 26, 2009The Republicans can’t try to convince the country their ideas are better because of that intellectual bankruptcy problem. All they can do is make Barack Obama’s programs look feckless, plunging everyone into so much despair that by next summer the public will be ready to go live in caves and eat squirrel stew. The waste [...]
Darwin at 200
February 12, 2009On the occasion of Darwin’s 200th. Would that all our ideas bore such fruit. “Perhaps one day we will not call evolution “Darwinism.” After all, we do not call classical mechanics “Newtonism.” But that raises the question of whether a biological Einstein is possible, someone who demonstrates that Darwin’s theory is a limited case. What [...]
John Updike, 1932-2009
January 28, 2009And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic, which took a whole life to develop and market- …. (from the poem, Perfection Wasted)
Defeated Peoples
January 10, 2009“The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” (Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002)
On the importance of hard work
January 3, 2009“No one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich. (Malcolm Gladwell citing a Chinese aphorism in Outliers, 2008)
Teaching Magic
January 1, 2009“Belief in ‘a teaching magic’ relieves students of the burden of wanting to be taught.” (Jacques Barzun)
to help create wise citizens of a free community
December 28, 2008“Let me return to one of Dewey’s central themes, that the ultimate aim of production is not production of goods but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality. That includes, of course, education, which was a prime concern of his. The goal of education, to shift over to [...]
Factory Girls in China
December 27, 2008“I think Americans — and many urban Chinese, too — tend to see the factory workers as passive victims, motivated by poverty and desperation. Spending time with these young women taught me the opposite: They are resourceful and ambitious, full of plans to improve their lot and change their fates, willing to challenge their bosses [...]
‘unpredictability… a reason for hope’
December 20, 2008“Historically, Russia has often demonstrated an ability to take unexpected turns, whether for good or ill. Few people foresaw the collapse of the Soviet empire. Russia today has a glass-like quality to it: rigid and fragile at the same time, and liable to develop cracks in unforeseen places. The danger lies in its unpredictability. Yet [...]
