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“You cannot build a complete memory with a single memory tool any more than you can build a complete building with a single carpentry tool.”
― Your Memory : How It Works and How to Improve It
― Your Memory : How It Works and How to Improve It
“It was against this backdrop that the great fortunes were made, fortunes which allowed the first families to dominate the society of that era. Theodore Parker, a crusading minister in the 1840s, wrote of the Lowells and these other great families: “This class is the controlling one in politics. It mainly enacts the laws of this state and the nation; makes them serve its turn . . . It can manufacture governors, senators, judges to suit its purposes as easily as it can manufacture cotton cloth. This class owns the machinery of society . . . ships, factories, shops, water privileges.” They were also families which had a fine sense of protecting their own position, and they were notorious for giving large grants to Harvard College, which was their college, and just as notorious for doing very little for public education.”
― The Best and the Brightest
― The Best and the Brightest
“[David Riesman] had made a hobby of studying the American Civil War and he had always been disturbed by the passions which it had unleashed in the country, the tensions and angers just below the surface, the thin fabric of the society which held it all together, so easy to rend.”
― The Best and the Brightest
― The Best and the Brightest
“We have seen that there are two misconceptions involved in the myth that memory is a thing. One is that memory is a thing (a tangible structure rather than an abstract process) and the other is that memory is a thing (one memory rather than many memories).”
― Your Memory : How It Works and How to Improve It
― Your Memory : How It Works and How to Improve It
“an aristocracy come to power, convinced of its own disinterested quality, believing itself above both petty partisan interest and material greed. The suggestion that this also meant the holding and wielding of power was judged offensive by these same people, who preferred to view their role as service, though in fact this was typical of an era when many of the great rich families withdrew from the new restless grab for money of a modernizing America, and having already made their particular fortunes, turned to the public arena as a means of exercising power. They were viewed as reformers, though the reforms would be aimed more at the newer seekers of wealth than at those who already held it. (“First-generation millionaires,” Garry Wills wrote in Nixon Agonistes, “give us libraries, second-generation millionaires give us themselves.”)”
― The Best and the Brightest
― The Best and the Brightest
Epic Poetry and Prose
— 22 members
— last activity May 27, 2023 04:56AM
This group is dedicated to the discussion and promotion of ancient and contemporary epic poetry and prose. This group is dedicated to the idea that th ...more
Ahmed’s 2025 Year in Books
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