1992 Quotes

“In general people put too much faith in the rich, the famous, the politicians, and not enough faith in themselves.”
― Bono

“People change and their bodies change and their hair grows gray and falls out and their bodies decay and die… but there is something that doesn’t change about love and about the feelings we have for people. Marianne, the woman of So Long, Marianne, when I hear her voice on the telephone, I know something is completely intact even though our lives have separated and we’ve gone our very different paths. I feel that love never dies, and that when there is an emotion strong enough to gather a song around it, that there is something about that emotion that is indestructible…”
― Leonard Cohen

“During the 1992 election I concluded as early as my first visit to New Hampshire that Bill Clinton was hateful in his behavior to women, pathological as a liar, and deeply suspect when it came to money in politics. I have never had to take any of that back, whereas if you look up what most of my profession was then writing about the beefy, unscrupulous 'New Democrat,' you will be astonished at the quantity of sheer saccharine and drool. Anyway, I kept on about it even after most Republicans had consulted the opinion polls and decided it was a losing proposition, and if you look up the transcript of the eventual Senate trial of the president—only the second impeachment hearing in American history—you will see that the last order of business is a request (voted down) by the Senate majority leader to call Carol and me as witnesses. So I can dare to say that at least I saw it through.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, bombarded city by the incomparable John Burns, I experienced four near misses in all, three of them in the course of one day. I certainly thought that the Bosnian cause was worth fighting for and worth defending, but I could not take myself seriously enough to imagine that my own demise would have forwarded the cause. (I also discovered that a famous jaunty Churchillism had its limits: the old war-lover wrote in one of his more youthful reminiscences that there is nothing so exhilarating as being shot at without result. In my case, the experience of a whirring, whizzing horror just missing my ear was indeed briefly exciting, but on reflection made me want above all to get to the airport. Catching the plane out with a whole skin is the best part by far.) Or suppose I had been hit by that mortar that burst with an awful shriek so near to me, and turned into a Catherine wheel of body-parts and (even worse) body-ingredients? Once again, I was moved above all not by the thought that my death would 'count,' but that it would not count in the least.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Yet isn't it all—all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga—exactly like that? And isn't some of it a little bit more serious? For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her 'greatness' (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done. In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband's uncontainable sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part. In the Iowa caucuses of 2008, he returns the favor by telling a huge lie about his own record on the war in Iraq, falsely asserting that he was opposed to the intervention from the very start. This is thought of, and referred to in print, as purely a tactical mistake on his part: trying too hard to help the spouse. The happy couple has now united on an equally mendacious account of what they thought about Iraq and when they thought it. What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?”
― Christopher Hitchens

“The ethical aspect of the Law of Thelema is simple enough theoretically. "Do what thou wilt" does not mean "do what you please"; though this degree of emancipation is implied, that we can no longer say á priori that any given course of action is "wrong". Every man and and every woman has an absolute right to do his or her true will.

At the same time, to quote The Book of the Law, "... thou hast no right but to do thy will". So then, the new Law really announces a stricter bondage than any previous law and this in accordance with biological teaching. An organism progresses by self-imposed inhibitions.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Heart of the Master & Other Papers

“Outside the Bar Del Prado, night was coming on like a hopeless, drunken come-on, tequila on its breath, red neon signs and, outside the shops, strings of colored Christmas lights hung from the eaves like the sad, close-lipped smiles of boys who would lure you in with their loneliness, that melancholia you'd try and try to fix.”
― Michaela Carter, Further Out Than You Thought

“Eventually they [Sarunas Marciulionis and Don Nelson] got a call from a representative of the Grateful Dead, whose members had been inspired by Lithuania's struggle for independence. Nelson and Marciulionis showed up at the address they were given in San Francisco, which was a small, nondescript garage. 'I thought we were the victim of a practical joke until we opened the door and there was a state-of-the-art recording studio' says Nelson.

'I still remember the Dead were trying out Beatles covers, doing stuff like "Here Comes the Sun" and "Hey Jude"... but they were just kind of working through things and sounding kind of nasally and, well, maybe there was a little pot going on. So Sarunas pulls me aside and says 'Donnie, no way these guys are famous. They're terrible.' '.”
― Jack McCallum, Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever

“There were two kinds of cases before the Supreme Court. There were abortion cases—and there were all the others.

Abortion was (and is) the central legal issue before the Court. It defined the judicial philosophies of the justices. It dominated the nomination and confirmation process. It nearly delineated the difference between the national Democratic and Republican parties.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

“Feynman resented the polished myths of most scientific history, submerging the false steps and halting uncertainties under a surface of orderly intellectual progress, but he created a myth of his own.”
― James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

“John Correli: Did you kill Mr Boz, Miss Tramell?

Catherine: I'd have to be pretty stupid to write a book about killing and then kill him the way I described in my book. I'd be announcing myself as the killer. I'm not stupid.”
― Joe Eszterhas

“Faivre’s starting point is the observation of a “family resemblance” between various religious and philosophical currents in the history of Western culture. He assumes that this family resemblance is based on a common “form of thought” that one can call “esoteric” and that is distinct from other typical forms of Western thought, such as the theological or the scientific. He further claims that it is possible to identify a number of characteristics that are at the basis of the esoteric form of thought. He considers four of these characteristics to be fundamental, and two others to be secondary. The fundamental ones are correspondences, living nature, imagination/mediations, and transmutation; the two secondary ones are correlation and transmission. The four fundamental characteristics must all be present simultaneously to identify a current, a movement, an author, or a text as esoteric.”
― Marco Pasi, Esotericism Emergent: The Beginning of the Study of Esotericism in the Academy