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“They have social classes,” I said.
“Yes,” Ficino agreed.
“And money. And wealth and poverty.”
“They started with adults who knew those things,” [he] said. “That must have made it difficult.”
“Are they pursuing excellence?” I asked.

At that time Delos floated on the water, but afterward it was attached to the sea-bed like other lands—or this is the story recounted in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo. (Father says it’s poetically true, whatever that means.)

Here's one of life's little mysteries: aristocratic bloodlines seemed genetically incompatible with physical beauty. [He] would be the first to admit the rich were ugly; only great fortunes had made it possible for ugly blue bloods to continue reproducing themselves. [He] knew that [they] only stayed as long as there was dope and money.

I feel pretty good. I know what they came for, and I know they left without it. Which means I'm still at large, still slippery.

Whether or not this was a privilege of living above the fray in a grand hotel, as Lukács famously sneered, or an attitude that allowed Adorno to fill his mind with ever new and increasing awe and admiration for the stars the more frequently and continuously he reflected on them is, to paraphrase Kant’s famous conclusion to the Critique of Practical Reason, not for us to decide now.

Whether or not this was a privilege of living above the fray in a grand hotel, as Lukács famously sneered, or an attitude that allowed Adorno to fill his mind with ever new and increasing awe and admiration for the stars the more frequently and continuously he reflected on them is, to paraphrase Kant’s famous conclusion to the Critique of Practical Reason, not for us to decide now.

‘If rhetoric could harm it then it isn’t the Just City and it deserves it,’ she said.

Sokrates beamed at her like a proud father[.]

The white man had sprinkled holy water and had prayed for almost five hundred years in the Americas, and still the Christian God was absent. Now [he] understood why European philosophers had told their people God was dead: the white man’s god had died about the time the Europeans had started sailing around the world.

We were not encouraged to have erotic feelings towards the other children—indeed, the opposite, we were discouraged from ever thinking about sex or romantic love. Friendships were encouraged, and friendship was always held out to us as the highest and best of human relationships.

Herein lies the origins of Antonin Scalia’s originalism. Faced with an activist, liberal Supreme Court, conservatives considered their very limited options. Social conservatives couldn’t get a right to life amendment through Congress. Fiscal conservatives couldn’t get a balanced budget amendment through the House. Social and fiscal conservatives disagreed about holding a constitutional convention.

The Old South was one thing. The Middle Ages were another.

‘Isn’t it excruciating?’ [she] said. ‘They pile shit upon shit. It becomes an art form of its own. A pyramid of shit. An Uffizi Gallery of shit. The Museum of Modern Shit. Astonishing that we need these shit sabbaticals in order to become viable again.’

[His] strategy had always been better because it had broader application. It didn't succeed in overturning Brown, but [the originalist] argument, which was to present a single mode of constitutional interpretation as the only legitimate mode, had the important benefit of equipping opponents of the Warren Court's many other landmark decisions with an argument that could be against nearly all of them.

I was feeling practically drugged from all that French.

Progressives were in a pickle. To implement a federal income tax, they needed a constitutional amendment. To get a constitutional amendment, they had to get it through the Senate. To get an income tax amendment through the Senate, they needed a more accountable Senate. To get a more accountable Senate, they needed a constitutional amendment. They went back to the drawing board.

With a sick man, you don’t split hairs. You give a sick man the benefit of the doubt. He needs that leeway or he’s liable to crack. You don’t use logic or common sense on a sick man. There’s only one way to treat him—like a child. You let him have his way every time.

Looking back, the 1860s and '70s appear to have been as much a tragedy as a triumph, the sotry of three amendments that passed and yet somehow failed, too. Even the trial of Jefferson Davis was a chance for a kind of justice that never came.

This is the second straight chapter that ends with sex and intimate lighting. […] Not that there isn’t something right about a chapter that ends with sex. There is something right. Sex is the thing that nothing can follow. It asks for blank space. We wish for a silence that will last at least for the turning of a page.

Even ghosts disappear towards morning, but K. had remained there, hands in pockets, as if expecting that, since he did not go away, the whole passage with all the rooms and gentlemen would go away.

One of the most illuminating remarks Story ever made about the Constitution, one that casts light, too, on his rules for interpreting it, came when he said, ‘I once saw a book advertised, entitled, New Views on the Constitution. I was startled! What right has a man to start new views upon it?’

Women’s relations with the officials are, believe me, very hard or rather always very easy to judge. There’s no shortage of love here, not ever. There is no such thing, for officials, as unrequited love. In this respect it’s no compliment when they say of a girl […] that she gave herself to the official only because she loved him.

If the people had not retold the stories, or if the stories had somehow been lost, then the people were lost; the ancestors' spirits were summoned by the stories. This man Marx had understood that the stories or 'histories' are sacred; that within 'history' reside relentless forces, powerful spirits, vengeful, relentlessly seeking justice.

legislative malapportionment was a far greater factor in limiting the political power of opponents of the Constitution. [...] In [GA] and [SC], delegates representing barely more than 10 percent of the population controlled the ratifying conventions. In three states--[SC], [NY], and [RI]--delegates who voted for ratification represented a smaller portion of the population than delegates who voted against it.

power without restraint was represented as the tyranny of men over women and, in particular, as the act of rape. This was true in 17th cent. England and […] in 18th cent. America. The metaphor was both ubiquitous and elaborate. The act of revolution, an uprising against tyranny, was akin to defense against a rapist. Political consent was akin to sexual consent. A social contract was like a marriage contract.

K. shouted back, which had the unlooked-for side effect of showing the schoolmaster what happened when someone was strong enough not simply to give notice of dismissal but actually to carry it out.

[she] had never like to look at [his] face, which was pasty white and had no chin. His pale blue eyes had always had the shine of a true believer in the white race. Arizona had been overrun by poor whites like [him]. So while [she] avoided looking at his face, she always studied the rest of him, and of course the first thing her eyes caught was the .45 automatic.

This poem, published in March 1971 in Awami Awaz, landed Punjabi poet Ahmad Salim in jail. He was tried in a military court, sentenced to six months imprisonment, flogging and a fine of Rs 2000. The publisher of the bimonthly Awami Awaz, M.R. Hassan, was also arrested for publishing a poem ‘against the military operations in East Pakistan’. Subsequently, he was forced to stop publishing the newspaper.

Well, if someone is forced to take another person on and that other person allows himself to be taken on, then he’s the one doing the favour.

So what are you afraid of? You’re surely not afraid – to the ignorant, anything seems possible

Many other offices have the same photographs. I wonder what happens when it is the BNP, and not the Awami League, which is in power? I am told that textbooks are revised, as are airport names and currency bills, when the party in power changes.