The
Academical Village All Things Political
The Reading Room
"A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access
to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the
keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and
facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones." --
Abraham Lincoln,
September
30, 1859 - Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society
?-- Henry Moore, Hirschhorn Museum, Washington, D. C.
photo: gdg "One's mind, once
stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." -- Oliver
Wendell Holmes The
Official U. S. Time
"Those who fail to learn the lessons of history
are doomed to repeat them."-- George Santayana
Herein find reading and other media materials about
current affairs, politics, culture, and society.
Why Read?
"Read, every day, something no
one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do,
every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the
mind to continually be part of unanimity." -- Christopher
Morley
"...above
all I wanted to make political writing into an art" -- George Orwell
"We are not born with imagination. It has to be developed by teachers, by
parents. There was a time when imagination was very important because it was the
major source of entertainment" -- Kurt Vonnegut from 'A Man without a Country'
"Reading can change your life for the better." “To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by
multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable
of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted.”
—Alexander Hamilton
The Reading Room
contains reading and viewing materials regarding the political world.
Follow these links to the desired subject:
______________
"If a Nation
expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what
never was and never will be....If we are to guard against ignorance and remain
free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed." --
Thomas Jefferson
The 9/11 Commission Report
Political Comedy/Humor Studies reveal that young Americans get their news and political
information from the late night comics.
Source: U.S. News & World Report
Jay Leno: "Another 100 degree day here. I was sweating like John Kerry looking at my latest poll numbers. That's how hot it is."
Jay Leno: "It was so hot, I was sweating like President Bush trying to make up my mind on the war on terrorism."
Jay Leno: "On NBC, President Bush said about the war on terrorism, 'I don't think you can win it.' And yesterday he said at the rally, 'We will win it.' And of course, John Kerry's furious. Now Bush is beating him at flip-flopping."
Jay Leno: "Just before his appearance last night, he pumped himself up for the speech. Did you see that? Arnold Schwarzenegger bench pressed Michael Moore."
Jay Leno: "Republicans went from Arnold Schwarzenegger last night to Dick Cheney tonight. You know what this is like? Arnold's like the picture in the dating service ads, and Dick's the guy that shows up."
Jay Leno: "John Kerry keeping the low profile this week. He said he wanted to get away, he wanted to go somewhere where no one would ever expect to see him. So I guess he showed up at his old seat in the Senate."
Jay Leno: "Al Gore, got a speeding ticket in Oregon last week, cited for going nowhere fast."
David Letterman: "We're getting ready for our third hurricane, and John Kerry heard this and he says it is proof that George Bush is losing the war on weather."
David Letterman: "The Log Cabin Republicans were at the convention. ... They hate Hillary Clinton but they love what she's done with her hair."
Conan O'Brien: "Earlier this week, the Republican Party held a reception for black Republicans. Yeah, apparently, the reception was a big success. They both showed up."
Songs & Music of Note:
"The
blues are the roots; everything else is the fruits." -- Willie Dixon Songs &
Politics
Quiet and Freedom are
the greatest possessions.
Ruhe und Freiheit sind die grossten Guter.
La paix et la liberte sont les biens les plus precieux.
Paz e liberdade sao os majores bens.
-- Ludwig van Beethoven
Along the Shenandoah Trail --
gdg
Hosted by Bill Moyers and David Brancaccio, NOW has been called
"...one of the last bastions of serious journalism on
TV" by the Austin-American Statesmen and "...public television at its
best" by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Each week, the series sheds light on a
wide range of issues confronting the nation and explores American democracy and
culture through investigative reporting and interviews with major authors,
leading thinkers, and artists.
"We never care for the present moment. We are so
foolish that
we wander in times that are not ours, and never think of the only time
that belongs to us; we are so frivolous that we dream of the days that
are not, and thoughtlessly pass over the only one that exists. We never
live, but hope to live; and since we are always preparing to be happy it
is inevitable that we shall never be so."
--
Blaise Pascal (168, Pensees) Aaron Copeland,
Fanfare
for the Common Man, United States Marine Band
"Those who stay away from the election
think that one vote will do no good: 'Tis but one step more to think one
vote will do no harm." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The supreme irony of
life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive." --
Robert Heinlein "Our future is not in the stars but in our own
minds and hearts. Creative leadership and liberal education, which in fact go
together, are the first requirements for a hopeful future for
humankind..." -- J. William Fulbright 1905-1995
The Washington Monument,
Washington D. C. --
gdg
"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views
beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only
affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its
influence may be coextensive with the world, and stamp political
happiness or misery on ages yet unborn. --
George Washington
"I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents."
--
Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799.
The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it....
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me.
But Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar has wept.
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse.
Was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
And sure he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause.
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
--Antony, Wm. Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred On Oct. 25, 1854, the
''Charge of the Light
Brigade'' took place during the Crimean War as an English brigade of
more than 600 men, facing hopeless odds, charged the Russian army in the
Battle of Balaclava and suffered heavy losses. Click for the famous poem.
"Without doubt, a figure like Mozart will always remain an inexplicable
miracle."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We have a passion for: Learning, Service and Involvement,
Creativity and Innovation, Academic Excellence, Dignity and Respect, Integrity.
"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on
the things you have long taken for granted." -- Bertrand Russell
"It is almost a miracle that
modern teaching methods have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of
inquiry." —Albert Einstein
"If you pursue evil with pleasure, the
pleasure passes away and the evil remains; if you pursue good with labor, the
labor passes away but the good remains." —Cicero
"True courage is not the
brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason."
—Alfred North Whitehead
"The unforgivable crime is soft
hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly."
—Theodore Roosevelt
"
"The important thing is not to stop questioning."
-- Albert Einstein "Man is the artificer of his own
happiness."
- Henry David Thoreau
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who
mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the
power which knowledge gives."
--
James Madison
"To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by
permanent ideals—that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores
him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him." —Honore De Balzac
". . . the highest function of higher education . . .
is the teaching of
things in perspective,
toward the purposes of enriching the life of the
individual,
cultivating the free and inquiring mind,
and advancing the effort to
bring
reason, justice, and humanity into the relations of men and
nations."
--
Senator J. W. Fulbright,
Democrat of Arkansas
"To act with entire honesty and self-respect,
one should always live in a pure atmosphere, and the atmosphere of politics is
impure." -- Senator Silas Ratcliffe, Democracy
"Politics
is the
process and method of gaining or maintaining support for public or common
action.
Although it is generally applied to governments,
politics is also
observed in all human group interactions
including corporate, academic, and
religious. Political science is the study of political behavior
and examines
the acquisition and application of power,
i.e. the ability to impose one's
will on another.
One theorist, Harold Lasswell, has defined politics as 'who gets what, when, how.'" --
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics
"When you wake up, get
up, and when you get up, do something." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Titan, Saturn's Moon
-- NASA
"I shall be telling this with a sigh --
somewhere ages and ages hence; two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the
one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." -- - Robert Frost,
poet
"In this age, the mere example of
nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend
the knee to custom, is itself a service." ~John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist
(1806-1873)
"As flies to wanton boys we are to th' gods/They kill us for their sport"
(Lear.IV.i.41-42).
“Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give
them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so
by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments
rather depend upon men than men upon governments.” --
William Penn (1644–1718)
Georgia O"Keeffe
-- O'Keeffe Museum
"The search for truth is in one
way hard and in another way easy, for it is evident that no one can master it
fully or miss it wholly. But each adds a little to our knowledge of nature, and
from all the facts assembled there arises a certain grandeur." --
Aristotle
*Do we want to live in a free society or not?
Democracy is not a tea party where people sit around making polite conversation.
In democracies, people get extremely upset with each other.
They argue vehemently against each other's positions.
(But they don't shoot.)"
-- Salman Rushdie,
"Democracy
is no polite tea party,"Los Angeles Times, February
7, 2005.
"When you wake up, get up, and
when you get up, do something."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
-- O'Keeffe Museum
Georgia O"Keeffe
-- O'Keeffe
Museum
--
O'Keeffe Museum
Georgia O"Keeffe -- O'Keeffe Museum
"When written in Chinese, the word
'crisis' is composed of two characters.
One represents danger and the other represents opportunity." President John F. Kennedy
Georgia O"Keeffe
-- O'Keeffe Museum
Georgia O"Keeffe
-- O'Keeffe Museum "In every child who is born,
under no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the
potentiality of the human race is born again."--
James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Georgia O"Keeffe
-- O'Keeffe Museum
Earth -- Galileo NASA
Uranus
The Favorite Books of President Bill Clinton Source: William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou.
The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker.
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years
1954-63, Taylor Branch.
Living History, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Lincoln, David Herbert Donald.
Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot.
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison.
The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations
to the Eve of the Twenty-First Century, David Fromkin.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez.
The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes,
Seamus Heaney.
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed,Terror,and
Heroism in Colonial Africa,Adam Hochschild.
The Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis.
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius.
Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and
Politics, Reinhold Niebuhr.
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell.
The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to
Historical Analysis, Carroll Quigley.
The Confessions of Nat Turner, William Styron.
Politics as a Vocation, Max Weber.
You Can't Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe.
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Robert Wright.
The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, William Butler
Yeats.
The Political Significance of Ludwig van Beethoven
"A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song."
-- Chinese proverb
Rodin, The Burghers of
Calais Hirschhorn Museum, Washington
D.C.
gdg
The
Nasher Sculpture Center from
WFAA Channel 8 "I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our
cities, we, too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in
battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human
spirit." --
John F. Kennedy
Marsden Hartley
Above the Clouds, I 1962/63
-- O'Keeffe Museum "What do
you think of my world? Pretty wonderful, isn't it? I loved it
immediately. It's a handmade world."
–Georgia O'Keeffe
We
have a passion for: Learning, Service and Involvement, Creativity and
Innovation, Academic Excellence, Dignity and Respect, Integrity. Respect.
The
Academical Village All Things Political
Partisan
Someone had blunder'd:
