#mirroring thomas’ own declaration to james

[saffrondawn]

#i gave him my copy of meditations to sign #and UNPROMPTED he decided to write ‘i’ll wait a day a month a year’ #as if that isn’t silver’s own declaration of love to madi AND flint #mirroring thomas’ own declaration to james #AND I DIDN’T EVEN ASK HIM TO #he said i’m rebuilding this fandom with my own two hands (via @astoryisqueer)

luke arnold woke up this morning with one thought and one thought only and that was the silverflint agenda happy fucking pride month

[handeaux]

For Poetry Month, We Salute 18 Renowned Cincinnati Poets From Days Gone By

Each April, the Academy of American Poets sponsors National Poetry Month. In recognition of Cincinnati’s extensive contributions to that genre, here is a collection of local poets who achieved distinction. If living poets were included, this list could easily triple in length.

A Careless Poet Soon Forgotten Among the earliest poets writing in Cincinnati was Charles A. Jones (1815-1851). He built a career publishing verse narratives about the Indians and outlaws of the western country. Between the years 1836 and 1839 he wrote frequently for the Cincinnati Mirror, and in 1840 contributed several poems to the Cincinnati Message, but paltry payments for these efforts led him to take up the law as his main career. A critic, William Turner Coggeshall, writing in 1860, admired Jones’ imagination and energy, but deplored his slapdash compositional habits and his aversion to revision: “The hasty production of an hour was sent to the press with all its sins upon its head.”

His Poem No Longer Memorized, Even The Plaque Is Gone Generations of American schoolchildren were compelled to read and memorize a Civil War poem by Thomas Buchanan Read (1822-1872) titled “Sheridan’s Ride.” The poem celebrated General Philip Sheridan’s rallying his soldiers to victory at the 1864 Battle of Cedar Creek in Virginia. It was so popular that newspapers often parodied it to skewer other topics. For many years, a plaque was mounted on the wall opposite the Public Library on Eighth Street commemorating the address at which Read wrote the famous poem. Read was popular and prolific; his poetry was collected in 1867 in a set of three volumes. In addition to poetry, Read was an accomplished painter. Several of his works, notably “The Harp of Erin” are displayed at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Lawyer By Trade, Hero By Aspiration Although William Haines Lytle (1826-1863) studied law, he preferred the life of a soldier and composed poetry to celebrate his own heroic exploits. Lytle came from an honored line of military heroes. He fought in the Mexican War as a captain and achieved the rank of brigadier general during the Civil War. His verses were popular on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. When a sniper’s bullet found him at Chickamauga in 1863, the rebel soldiers recognized Lytle and posted a guard around his body until it could be sent back to Cincinnati. As they stood watch, the Confederates quietly recited Lytle’s poems. Lytle Park in Cincinnati was his family’s estate.

An Inveterate Revisionist Coates Kinney (1826-1904) was not a Cincinnati native, but he relocated to the Queen City at an early age. Kinney served in the Union Army during the Civil War and in the Ohio General Assembly afterwards while also practicing law and working as a journalist. He was just 23 when he wrote his most famous poem, “Rain on the Roof,” which was reprinted, collected, set to music, pirated, misattributed and celebrated throughout his life. Much of the confusion derived from Kinney’s incessant tinkering with the poem. Over his lifetime, he declared at least three different versions to be definitive.

The Piatts Helped Save Harrison’s Tomb Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836-1919) and John James Piatt (1835-1917) were Cincinnati’s answer to England’s Brownings (Robert and Elizabeth Barrett). A married couple, each earned a reputation as a poet. James Piatt was a scion of the wealthy Piatt family, though he never had much money himself. Sarah, known as Sallie, was related to orator and politician William Jennings Bryan. The couple, who lived just outside North Bend when they weren’t posted to one of John’s political appointments in Washington or Ireland, worked to preserve the tomb of William Henry Harrison. In life, John’s reputation eclipsed his wife’s. In recent years, new critical appraisals agree that Sarah was, by far, the better and more innovative poet.

Newspapers Led Everard Appleton To Poetry Everard Jack Appleton (1872-1931) started out as a newspaperman, with stints at Cincinnati’s Tribune, Commercial Gazette and Times-Star, earning a slot as a columnist known for humorous items in verse and prose. He also contributed stories and poems to national publications. He left behind a half-dozen volumes of poetry of which the best-known is probably “The Quiet Courage.” Appleton lived on Forest Avenue in Avondale.

A National Reputation Based On Odes To Domesticity Bertye Young Williams (1877-1951) published as B.Y. Williams over a productive career that resulted in a half-dozen books of poetry and appearances in the New York Times, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Saturday Evening Post and other nationally distributed magazines. She founded a poetry magazine and publishing house, Talaria, with fellow poet Annette Patton Cornell. She was president of the Ohio Chapter of the League of American Pen Women and of the Cincinnati Women’s Press Club. A book she co-authored with Annette Patton Cornell, “Garland for a City,” was illustrated by Caroline Williams (no relation).

Cincinnati’s Unsung (But Prolific!) Poet, Horace Williamson Horace G. Williamson (1880-1943) was perhaps the most prolific poet in Cincinnati history. You won’t find him in English class these days, nor in any anthologies. Williamson wrote for money, not for art. In the early 1900s, Williamson built a profitable sideline writing poems for greeting card companies, sometimes ghost-writing love letters on spec. He had a lot of side hustles. While employed as social secretary of the YMCA, Williamson ran a talent agency and also performed in character as the Roman dictator Cincinnatus in quite a few civic celebrations.

Confined To Bed, Raymond Dandridge’s Spirit Soared Although he once achieved fame, Raymond Garfield Dandridge (1883-1930) is sadly forgotten today. His poetry fits comfortably between his predecessor Paul Laurence Dunbar (to whom Dandridge was often compared) and his successor, Langston Hughes, beacon of the Harlem Renaissance. Dandridge was almost totally paralyzed by polio when he was a young man. He spent his entire writing career confined to bed, supporting himself and his mother by taking orders for coal shipments. Eventually, Dandridge’s poetry was collected by his friends into three slim volumes, offered for sale to augment his income as a coal merchant.

George Elliston’s Poetic Legacy Lives On Eccentricity manifested itself in the person of George Elliston (1883-1946). She was a longtime Cincinnati newspaperwoman who lived like a derelict but cultivated a bohemian entourage. At her death, Elliston left behind a few slim volumes and an estate worth a quarter-million dollars, grubbed together over the years by living in cold-water apartments, wearing castoff clothing and mooching meals. She bequeathed all of this to the University of Cincinnati to establish a modern poetry collection. Some of the great poets of the English language, such as Denise Levertov and Robert Frost, have served as Elliston poets-in-residence.

Eloise Robinson Was A Rare Woman War Poet Few Cincinnatians knew that Mrs. Corda Muchmore, wife of a College Hill realtor, was, in fact, Eloise Robinson (1888-1958), one of the finest war poets of America. In 1918, she journeyed to France with the YMCA to hand out refreshments and recite poetry to support the American troops. Her poems inspired by her days at the front, such as “He Had Such Glory In His Closing Eyes” and “War” were published nationally and much admired. She taught verse writing to generations of Cincinnatians through UC’s Evening College.

Postmaster And Poet Samuel Schierloh (1889-1968) followed a colorful road to poetry. Born in Reading, Ohio, he served five years in the Navy during the days when it was known as Teddy Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet.” After a few years as an apprentice tailor in downtown Cincinnati, he joined the Post Office and eventually became postmaster in Mount Washington. In addition to penning poetry, he was a league bowler, golfer and an amateur painter. His poems mostly debuted in Cincinnati newspapers, but were collected in several volumes including “Down the Bright Seas” in 1958.

Cornell Declined Appointment As Ohio’s Poet Laureate In 1974, Annette Patton Cornell (1897-1986) was named the best Cincinnati writer of the past 50 years by the National Society of American Pen Women. Over a long career, she published five collections of her own poetry and promoted the work of others through a literary magazine, Talaria, she founded with fellow Cincinnati poet B.Y. Williams. Cornell had her own radio show devoted to poetry and other literary topics. An Ohio governor tried to recruit her as the state’s poet laureate, but she declined the invitation as a resident of Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. Her son, Si Cornell, had a long career at the Cincinnati Post.

Lawrence Welk Boosted The Career of Cincinnati’s Greeting Card Poet All of Helen Steiner Rice’s (1900-1981) best-selling books were published by Cincinnati’s Gibson Greeting Card Company. Rice was born in Lorain, Ohio and married a Dayton banker who committed suicide during the Great Depression. After working in publicity and inspirational speaking, she joined Gibson as an editor and worked there for more than 40 years. Her book sales skyrocketed in the 1960s when several of her poems were read on the Lawrence Welk television show.

X-ray Damage Launched A Poet’s Career While still a teenager, Anna M. Tansey (1906-1989) almost died when a doctor exposed her to a nearly fatal dose of X-rays. She lost one lung and part of another. Long an invalid, confined to bed, she devoured piles of books brought by her family from the library. When new antibiotics allowed her to leave her house, she embarked on a career as a poet and an advocate for ecumenical relations among religions. Her poems were often on spiritual themes, as the title of her best-selling poetry collection, “Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit” illustrates. As arthritis claimed her ability to type, she composed on a dictating machine and had her poems typed out by an assistant.

A Poet Of Great Influence Kenneth Koch (1925-2002) was born in Cincinnati to a fairly well-to-do family. His father sold office furniture and the family had a live-in maid. The family was frequently mentioned in Cincinnati newspaper society columns. After military service during World War II, Koch earned his doctorate and began a long career at Columbia University. Although he published dozens of books and was frequently anthologized, Koch is often remembered more today as a teacher than as a poet. His book on teaching children to write poetry, “Wishes, Lies and Dreams” (1970) was enormously influential.

One Small Poem For A Man . . . The oeuvre of Neil Armstrong (1930-2012), poet, is slight, consisting as it does of only two published stanzas, and that bit of doggerel clouded by controversy. In 1978, the Mini Page, a nationally syndicated children’s section carried in many newspapers, including the Cincinnati Post, asked Armstrong to provide a quote or first-person account of his moon landing. Rather than jotting a few lines of prose, Armstrong, then a professor at the University of Cincinnati, penned eight lines of poetry, clearly aimed at a juvenile audience. Unfortunately, through an editing error, the Mini Page deleted two words from Armstrong’s final line. Armstrong was not happy.

[kingedwardvi]

“When Somerset had been taken back into the Privy Chamber, in May 1550, Edward Lord Clinton, John Dudley's nephew, also entered the king's private apartments at the head of two hundred armed yeomen. The counsel for the estate, however, reflected the more settled rhythm of the exercise of monarchical authority. Royal governance rested on contact and communication, and nothing was more natural than for a king to be surrounded by the men who supported his governance of the realm. 

The Dudley years were still years of minority, but a middle-teenage minority quite different in its political dynamics from the earlier years of Edward's reign. The important age for Edward, both conceptually and practically, was fourteen. In 1526 his cousin, the fourteen-year-old James V of Scotland, had been declared to be of an age to exercise his royal authority personally. 

For Edward the change was less formal but still significant. In January 1552, three months after his own fourteenth birthday, Edward drafted 'Ceirtein pointes of waighty matters to be immediatly concluded on by my counsell', to which his principal secretary William Cecil added a note that ‘These remembrances within written wer delyvered by the kynges Majestic to his privee Counsell' in the inner Privy Chamber at Greenwich, and handed to Lord Treasurer Winchester in the presence of the officers of state and the officers of the royal household.

These were matters of business Edward symbolically delivered to his Privy Council in his Privy Chamber, once again blurring the distinctions between the formal and the informal.The weeks leading up to the death of Edward in July 1553 were similarly expressive of the power of personal monarchy in binding to gether the political establishment at court, in Privy Council, and in Privy Chamber. 

Edward was at the centre of the plan to divert the royal succession away from his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth, and to leave the crown to (in the words of Diarmaid MacCulloch) 'a reliable evangel ical dynasty'. This dynasty was at best notional. It lay in the Suffolk line, through the heirs male of Frances, the daughter of Henry VIII's younger sister Mary, and then the heirs male of Frances' daughters Jane, Catherine, and Mary Grey. 

'My devise for the succession' was drafted by Edward, and in it the king wrote Jane herself into the royal succession (and her mother out of it) by skilful editing. The line which gave the crown 'To the L[ady] Fraunceses heires masles' and then 'For lakke of such issu to the L[ady] Janes heires masles' read, after correction, ‘To the Lady] Fraunceses heires masles, if she have any such issu befor my death to the Lady] Jane and her heires masles'. 

The crown simply went to Jane by default. For centuries this has been read as the supreme example of Dudley cunning, because John Dudley's son, Lord Guildford, married Jane Grey on 21 May 1553. But although Dudley enforced the king's will, it was Edward himself who set out to preserve his godly legacy and, implicitly, his political establishment. 

It is likely that Edward took fairly wide counsel from the men around him--men like Thomas Wroth and Henry Sidney of the Privy Chamber, John Cheke, and perhaps William Petre. Petre drafted part of Edward's will, which perhaps reflected Cheke's relationship with the king by making significant provision for Cheke's old Cambridge college, St John's, and exhorted the king's executors to 'travayle to cause godly ecclesiasticall lawes to be made and sett forthe' after his death. 

Of the twenty-four men who signed the engagement to maintain the succession as limited by Edward, fifteen were counsel lors for the estate (sixteen if the name of John Gosnold is counted) and one (Cheke) was the king's tutor. Two of the signatories (Edward Griffith as solicitor and John Lucas as master of requests) had been called into commission to work with privy councillors and gentlemen of the king's Privy Chamber just over a year earlier. Corporate identity and solidarity underpinned their commitment to ensuring that the will of the king was enforced.

Also built into 'My devise for the succession' is a key to how Edward, in the final weeks of his life, understood (and arguably experienced himself) the gradual emergence of adult kingship out of minority. The first part of the 'devise' established the order of the royal succession after Edward's death. In the second half (much of it deleted, but still extremely signifi cant) Edward explored forms of governance for a future Suffolk king. If over the age of eighteen at accession, full power and authority was his. But in providing for a royal minority, Edward divided governance between the king's mother and a council of twenty.

This 'gouvernres' could do nothing without the 'th'advise and agrement' of six members of the council. If she died before her son reached the age of eighteen, the governance of the realm would be directed by this council. But the crucial age (again mirroring Edward's own experience) was fourteen, because he wrote in the provision that ‘after he be 14 yere al great matters of importaunce [should] be opened to him'. 

In a deleted paragraph, Edward offered a mechanism for the election of councillors. If four councillors died during the female regency, a gathering of the council, assembled on the authority of the governess ‘letters patent, would choose four more 'wherin she shal have thre voices'. But if the governess was dead, 'the 16 shal chose emong themselfes', until the king was fourteen years old (changed from eighteen) and then he by ther advice shal chose them.

The 'devise' suggests that Edward imagined for a male successor under the age of eighteen a minority of two stages. The first-like his own-would be governance on the king's behalf, but by his mother rather than a protector, supported but at the same time limited by the council estab lished by Edward's will. The second stage necessarily involved the king not only in the business of governance but in the choice of the minority council. 

The clause survived in Edward's letters patent of 21 June 1553, and it was mixed governance at its best. But it was also, interestingly, a mark of the possibility of emerging operational kingship after the age of fourteen. The great irony of 1553 is that without Edward, the boy-king, the regime crumbled.

Without the person of the king - the practical focus of authority and legitimacy - the body politic was headless, and a political establishment marked by a sophisticated coherence in the final years of the reign collapsed. The corporate consensus of the signatories of Edward's letters patent cracked in the difficult days of the summer of 1553, and it did so because of mixed and conflicting loyalties. 

In the traumatic weeks of July 1553 the boundaries between the lawful and the unlawful-and the dynastically and politically acceptable and unaccept able-blurred. The power of dynastic succession of the long shadow cast by Henry VIII's will, complemented by the surprising energy of Mary Tudor's mobilization of the localities triumphed over the attempt to preserve the Edwardian political and ecclesiastical establishment[...].”

Alford, Stephen. “Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI”

Fan cast: Charlotte Hope as Lady Jane Grey; Ed Speleers as King Edward VI.

[aelin-queen-of-terrasen]

𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐭 | 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 - 𝐓𝐰𝐨

full masterlist - fic masterlist

After her successful debut into the ton, Celaena Sardothein was much in demand.

The Hamel townhouse saw a constant stream of callers; many a gentlemen fawned over the charming, eligible heiress and many a visiting lady came with the intention of recruiting this new addition to their circles as a prospective bride to their own brothers and sons. Despite her determination to laugh off compliments and insults alike - or perhaps because of it - it was not long before she was declared at par with the most eligible debutantes of the season. How this distinction pleased the lady herself could not be discerned but regardless of whether or not she liked it, she was the talk of the season and invitations to exclusive events poured in. When she accepted an invite ti the Stanhope's dinner party, the rumor mill worked and it was not long before word reached Lord Fenrys Ashryver.

"This is all pointless," muttered James Galathynius to his cousin with a pinched expression on his face.

Lord Fenrys stared at him through the mirror, sprawled as he was on James' bed.

"Really, Fen," the incensed man tried, "I know how you miss my sister—we all do but I wish you would not raise your hopes again. It is simply not possible—"

"I know the last time we found a lead, it turned out to be a dead end," said Fenrys sharply, "but it's different now. I saw her. I am not so far gone in my grief that I won't recognise the girl whose portrait I see in your father's study every day, even if she has grown up quite a bit."

"She died in the fire."

"How do you know?" The familiar arguement from last week rose to the surface. "It could have been anyone! The anklet we retrieved from the little girl's body was the only evidence of her identity."

"The anklet, a man's body beside the girl's, the warehouse's distance from our estate, it was all too coincidental."

"I think our parents might have been wrong, Jem - it could have been a misunderstanding for all we know," he tried patiently, attempting to keep the frustration with his cousin out of his voice or expression. "There can be no harm in meeting her anyway, she still is the Hamel heir after all and I know you wanted an introduction; once you see her, you will know why I am so sure."

"If you insist, I will meet her," said James. "I fear you are setting yourself up for disappointment."

"I think you will be pleasantly surprised."

James regarded his cousin. "I hate to say this, Fen—"

"Then don't."

"—but it could be an impostor too. My sister had a significant inheritance, and father recently changed his will. Aelin's assets—"

"Aelin's assets, whatever they are, can be nothing compared to the Hamel fortune."

James frowned, knowing he was backed into a corner. "If we are, I should like to inquire into her background as evidence."

Evidence.

Fenrys wondered if he meant evidence against his claims or to support them but he readily agreed that it was the wisest course. Promptly, a note was sent to his solicitor to make discreet inquires about the Hamel business, the owner and his adoptive daughter. The solicitor, Mr Stone, was a competent man and it took less than two hours to provide the basic information: the Hamel's townhouse address, their rumoured income, her dowry and the stories around Miss Sardothein's 'adoption.'

"She isn't Arobynn's adoptive daughter like everyone assumed then?"

Mr Stone said, "Arobynn did adopt her, to be sure, but only on papers. Arobynn found her in the slums of London when she was but five, and persuaded the Rhunns—who have long been his dearest friends and loyal clients—to take her in. By all accounts, it looks like he took an active interest in her education but it was the Rhunns who raised her until Arobynn amassed for himself a big enough fortune, bought an estate or two in the countryside and took her in."

"How old is she now, do you know?"

"The young lady is eighteen or around, sir, though no one can be sure."

Fenrys shot a look at his cousin.

"And what can you tell us about the Rhunns, Mr Stone?" asked James.

"Nothing good, sir."

The cousins shared a look.

"Thomas Rhunn was a country gentleman until he lost his estate in gambling and like. He has been the Hamel Corporations' prime investor since it was founded some twenty years ago—that's where his fortune comes from," said he. "You will be interested in the bank records, sir, I think—he, uh, he gets an yearly sum of five thousand pounds every year from an anonymous account since 1798."

"The year they adopted Miss Sardothein?"

Neither cousin mentioned it was also the year Aelin had 'died.'

Mr Stone went on. "It is my belief, sir, that the money was for raising the young lady - the timing certainly matches - but it is not one of Arobynn's shell accounts."

"So you think someone else is paying the Rhunns to raise her?"

"I am."

"Their financial situation," James wondered how he should broach this, "Do you think they might employ deceit to secure wealth or position?"

Fenrys gave him an annoyed look.

Mr Stone, thoughtfully said, "Thomas Rhunn is a clever sort of man, sir, but too lazy for something so devious and his wife—a more insipid, unintelligent creature doesn't exist. The daughter, though, she is an ambitious one like her godfather." He hesitated, but the gentlemen looked so interested, he continued. "But I—I think, from what I heard, she is devoted to her trade and quote adept at it. I could not believe her capable of deception to achieve that."

The gentlemen sincerely thanked him for the information and he departed.

Fenrys turned to him. "So?"

"So?"

"So did you see the many proofs?"

"I didn't see any proofs, Fen. So she's the same age as our Aelin and she was adopted."

"The same year as Aelin disappeared!"

James frowned. "That doesn't mean—"

"Yes, it does." Fenrys huffed, more hopeful than ever. "To quote your own words, 'tis too much of a coincidence.'"

He fell silent, eyes shut and took a deep breath. "It's too much. If she is—If she didn't die, you know what it means? Edward has been a shell of himself all these years, my father—he is, he is on his deathbed and Aedion joined the army—he is on the continent somewhere and we might never see him! All those years we lost grieving, and she might never have been dead. None of us even thought to look! If we had, If I had... perhaps she would have been found sooner? But no, I wish to see her first. I will not worry about all that until I am sure."

Fenrys placed a hand on his shoulder.

"I know it will be hard and I am sorry for the years you wasted," said he with a calm, reassuring smile, "but all is not lost. If tis really her, your father could see her and know she is alive before he passes, Edward could finally let go of his guilt and have his sister back—he might even die of happiness—and we will call Aedion back; he will come once he hears she is back. Tis not too late to fix everything and save the years we all still have left."

"If it is her."

"I hope, that is, I really hope that it's her."

"Indeed." James nodded. "I hope so too."

"You said she is here?" Lady Perrington looked faintly scandalized.

James rolled his eyes as the crowd turned to look at the doors where a tall, blonde woman stood on the arm of a red-haired man. The room broke into furious whispers.

Beside him, a lady—Mrs Evans, perhaps?—tittered with a companion. "My George said she is not even legally adopted, you know? You don't stand that close to your godfather." This was meant to be a whisper but her voice was too nasally, the words carried over the room and people shared alarmed looks as the object of this conversation walked towards them. The woman kept talking, entirely unaware, "I could never countenance the very thought that she is to inherit a trade empire. All of her dowry will not find her a suitor if she acts like a man."

Miss Sardothein stopped in front of them. "My dear Mrs Evans! I am so grateful for your concern for my marriage prospects." Both ladies tilted his head curiously. She pressed on. "You of all people will understand the importance of caution, I am certain." Her back was towards him but he heard the smile on her face as she spoke. "Is dear Mr Evans' gout any better now?"

James choked on his drink and sputtered. Fenrys winked at him from across the room.

Mrs Evans' face turned red.

Lady Perrington jumped to her friend's rescue. "Miss Sardothein, why, it is such a surprise to see you here! Lady Stanhope has certainly been," here, she pursed her lips and then, commented in a suggestive tone, "liberal in her choice of guests. Your godfather," she nodded towards that gentleman, "is in trade, I hear. Pray, what kind of trade, can you tell?" The guests had all abandoned their own conversations in favour of eavesdropping on this one. Lord Stanhope looked torn between amusement and alarm while his wife openly and unattractively gaped at the spectacle.

Miss Sardothein lifted a hand to dismiss the enquiry. "Oh, I can never talk business on social events but you may ask your husband at your leisure. Lord Perrington regularly invests in many of our ventures." Though the lady's back was turned to him, her voice was fierce.

"Such a devious creature," a familiar voice remarked.

Rowan greeted his cousin with a nod before fixing his eyes back on the drama unfolding in front of them.

Lady Perrington was looking around in search of allies among the onlookers but when no one stepped forward, she inclined her head, her face colored. "Indeed, I shall," she said and hastily excused herself.

Mrs Evans followed suit, eyes firmly on the floor and James almost felt sorry for them. Almost.

Before his apparent sister—how he scoffed at that notion—could turn, Rowan approached at her side. It was rare indeed that the dour man approached anyone first and never so readily. The novelty of that alone occupied his attention.

"Miss Sardothein." He bowed.

She curtsied with a smile. "Mr Whitethorn." Another man approached with a lady on his arm. "Lord Fenrys! I did not know you would be in attendance."

Lord Fenrys bowed over her hand. "I came as soon as I heard you were attending." She laughed at the gallantry—a sweet, tinkling laugh that caught his attention and he again ignored his heart's nagging— and he turned to introduce his companion. "Allow me to introduce my cousin, Mr Rowan Whitethorn of Harcomb, Doranelle and his wife, Mrs Lyria Whitethorn." Fenrys' dark eyes glinted and he smiled charmingly, letting a loose lock of hair fall on his forehead.

"I have already met Mr Whitethorn." Celaena smiled at the woman, then with a less pleasant expression towards the woman. "Mrs Whitethorn, it's a pleasure to meet you."

James had met Mrs Whitethorn barely once or twice in his life and only in passing. He had expected a genial creature, if perhaps a little reserved like her husband but she looked like a simpleton.

Though the fabric of her clothes was expensive and the stitching perfect, but the colour was dull and did no favours to her sallow complexion. Her neck remained unadorned and she wore no necklaces, bracelets or earrings, a fact made more pronounced by the tight modest bun she wore her dark hair in. By her appearance, she seemed more suited to a nunnery than to a fancy dinner party as the wife of a gentleman of rank. She exchanged curtsies and shared greetings but otherwise showed no inclination to converse and hastily excused herself as soon as was polite.

Rowan stood where he was, brooding, stiff as a board when the tradesman's daughter addressed him. "I thought you would be happy here, at least, for you detest balls but you are scowling still."

Rowan said stiffly, "I detest social events."

"Even when you don't have to dance?"

"Even then."

"I should like to hear why."

"I doubt you would understand."

"Come now, sir," said she smilingly, "Do not insult my intelligence by assuming that. Tell me and I might."

"It is not that. I—I do not—you will laugh but I hardly ever know what to say and often give offense where it is not intended." He turned to her. "You cannot have any such problem."

She arched an eyebrow in question.

He said, "You are too lively and charming, you could not possibly manage it."

"And people are too apt to forgive a pretty face in general," she agreed.

His lips twitched. "You claimed you were not a fan of convention earlier but I see you have no love for modesty either."

"For false modesty, I do not. I freely acknowledge vanity to be my chief sin." Then, she paused, "Your wife is, she is terribly shy, I think, but I hope you will not trouble yourself so much on her manner."

"I would say she is more unwilling than shy," said he with uncharacteristic openness. "I hope you were not offended."

"Oh, not at all—"

"Dear cousin," an enthusiastic voice cut through the din of polite conversation in the room, "You must stop monopolizing the lady's time. There is someone I should like to introduce her to—James. James, man, she's here, look. Allow me to present my favourite cousin, Mr James Galathynius of Graceview, Orynth."

James turned to them and bowed politely as she turned.

Then his face paled.

"Aelin." He forced a smile. "Forgive me, that is, you look exceedingly like—"

"Like five-year-old Miss Galathynius? So I've been told before," said she good humoredly.

James blinked disbelievingly. His vision blurred. Blonde hair. Ashryver eyes—that damning feature he thought Fenrys had been exaggerating about and the button nose that both, Aunt Evalin and his mother had shared. His cousin, noticing his preoccupation, engaged Miss Sardothein—nay, Aelin—into animated conversation as one thought after another crashed into his mind.

Thirteen years.

Thirteen years lost in grief and regret.

Thirteen years of seperation when they should have been searching for her.

Aelin grinned triumphantly from atop the maple tree down at her brothers, cousins and friends, dress torn and muddied. Her expression had the tiniest hint of pride as she placed herself on a sturdy branch.

"You shall fall down hurt yourself if you do not climb down, Aelin!" exclaimed Elide fretfully, twisting her muslin dress in evident distress. "And then what will we do?"

"No, no, I never shall," she insisted with a pout. "I can make this my home and you may visit me whenever you would like."

"But you cannot stay up there forever! You would feel hungry," reasoned the ever-responsible Chaol, biting his lip. Barely nine-years-old, he was the first to tattle on his friends when mishaps occured between children as they often do.

"James can bring me food," she declared haughtily, pushing one braid over her shoulder.

James grinned. "And whyever should I? You never do anything for me. I will let you starve a little perhaps. It may teach you a lesson."

"May the devil take you!"

Edward, ever the polite elder brother, reprimanded, "Aelin! That is not the language we may use." He was alarmed when her eyes teared up. "I am sorry, Aelin, love, will you not please come down?"

Aelin sniffed. "You are being mean and I will never talk to you."

"But will you not calm down before our father sees you? You would be punished." He frowned when the little rascal stuck her tongue out. He added, "If you come down, I will convince father to give Mrs Norris a leave for today."

"You promise?"

Edward nodded. "A gentleman's word."

She nodded uncertainly, then looked down and whimpered. "I can't."

Edward groaned, prompting the others to snicker at his expense. He extended his hands towards the tree.

"Climb down," he said, "James or I will catch you if you fall."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "How do I know he won't let me fall?"

"You are our little sister, Aelin," Edward said resolutely, extending his hands further as James did the same. "He will never let you hurt, I promise."

"A gentleman's word?" This time, her bright eye were trained on James.

He nodded. "A gentleman's word."

But had he not broken his promise? She ended up in a tradesman's family so far from home while everyone thought her dead. A five-year-old alone in the streets of London with no family whatsoever, thought he with growing unease. How terrified she must have been! He turned towards her now.

Her eyes had always been bright and her disposition lively but it was all tempered with a quiet dignified sort of grace. She looked beautiful now, the roundness in her face gone and her sharp features accentuating that inner fire.

His little sister.

As impulsive and easy to provoke as ever and every inch the little terror he remembered, down to the sneaky smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. He blinked the tears back into his eyes.

"You would not object, would you, James?" asked Fenrys.

He startled. "Huh?"

"Miss Sardothein here expressed her interest in chess and I thought to invite her for her a game tomorrow in your house." He raised an eyebroe. "Unless you have any prior obligations?"

He did have prior obligations but he would cancel them all. "I would be pleased to have you there."

Rowan frowned, looking between the three of them as if he was missing something. "Is that not... nevermind, but perhaps you should consider bringing your mother along, Miss Sardothein, for propriety's sake?" James cursed the man for his caution. A private visit would be an ideal time to reveal all to her but not if she brought someone along.

Thankfully, she dismissed the idea herself. "I will see if I can get papa to come along but I am a tradesman's daughter, far too involved in the business myself. I am certain my reputation will not suffer for it, unless you mind." Both he and Fenrys assured her that they would not mind at all and James reiterated how sincerely pleased he would be to have her there.

"We will see how pleased you are when I make you eat your dust, Mr Galathynius," she teased with a grin.

James grinned back. "I wouldn't be so sure."

Dear Edward,

I know we are not in the habit of exchanging correspondence as brothers ought but I hope you will forgive me for the presumption. Certain events of note have taken place here recently, such that it necessitated that you be informed immediately. I have a shocking good news to impart:

Our dearest Aelin did not die in the warehouse fire. She is very much alive and well.

By some stroke of luck, cousin Fenrys came across her at a ball and you will be shocked to hear she is the sole heir to the Arobynn Hamel, currently known as Miss Sardothein. He insisted she was our cousin since his first meeting, though I refused to believe him but I met her today and there can be no doubt to her identity. Fenrys invited her to a chess match in the evening tomorrow, where we plan to disclose everything to her. Father has not been informed yet.

Make haste to London, brother.

Yours,

James

Edward Galathynius, the Viscount Milton sat in his armchair, stunned.

He had been the last person to see Aelin. He had stupidly left her alone on the estate grounds that awful day. He remembered his father's panic, his mother's disinterest and his little brother's distress. He had been thirteen years old, back home from Eton for the duration of the summer. He envied James who could look at their childhood—her childhood—with the rose-coloured veil of forgetfulness. James was four when she was born. He would not remember her first steps, her first words, the nights she spent in his bed when she escaped the nursery, her favourite haunts and mischiefs. James would be able to look at their time together without being wrecked with agony because of his grief, the guilt for his blunder, the irrational desire to have her back. James would not dream up variations of that cursed day repeatedly over the years.

"Aelin! Aelin, love, slow down, no, not there, yes, gods, Aelin!" Edward shouted behind her. "Your frock! You look wild—no, stop that, Mrs Norris will faint of horror if you are any more muddied."

Aelin stepped into one mud puddle after another. She sent dirt flying back at her proper, dignified elder brother who pinched his nose in distaste. "Now we are both muddied," said she, grinning over her shoulder. "You can tell her that we didn't see the mud and both slipped."

"And lie to her?" He looked horrified.

Aelin tilted her head, fussing over her hair matted with mud. "Is it a lie if we do it for the greater good?"

"The greater good?"

Aelin nodded, pleased with herself. "Of not letting her faint. She is so thin, I sometimes fear a strong gust of wind will blow her away."

She ran further, bursting into giggles every few minutes and by now, had both of them looking no less than two street urchins. He tried to be stern with her but it was awfully hard to remain angry at someone so determined not to pay attention to a word. He knew better than to scold her, lest she summon her tears. That never failed to make him comply with whatever she asked.

"Aelin, there's a hole there, be careful. Stop running, will you—Aelin!" It was too late.

Her right hand gripped her ankle while the other was on her mouth in a poor attempt to stifle her sob.

Edward frowned as she whimpered in pain. "I told you not to run, no, no, don't cry, darling, it will be fine. I shall call for someone." They had been out on the grounds for a while now and the manor house was far away. She was too heavy for him to carry so far and he did not want to hurt her further.

He patted her cheek affectionately. "There, now, you are a brave girl, and I need you to wait right here. I will run back to the manor and bring help, yes?"

She promised she would not and he hurried back to the house.

The rest of the day remained hazy in his memories. He had arrived back at the spot with his father, a growing sense of dread in the pit of his stomach to find her gone. Search parties were organised and the merchants, locals and servants were all on alert for the beloved little spitfire. Day faded into night, then night into dawn when an express rider came with a letter from the magistrate and his father left the house in haste. He had chanced a look at his father's letter, his concern for her too great to worry about the impropriety of reading another's letter without permission. The contents read:

Dear sir,

I am afraid I have sad tidings to depart. One of the warehouses outside the town had caught fire the previous night and two lives were lost as far as we can determine. The first—a grown man, in his thirties or forties, has been determined as a local thief—and the second, a little girl, perhaps five or six years old. Her identity has not been confirmed but we retrieved a silver anklet among the remains. I beg for your assistance in identifying the girl's family. Do come as soon as you can.

Yours

Sir Arthur Renard

His heart pounded too loud in his ears. He felt hot and cold at once. He knew why only one ankle was retrieved from the corpse, because he had the other. It had fallen off her leg earlier that day and he had retrieved it with the intention to fix the loose lock on it.

His knees buckled.

"What happened?" James asked.

Edward shook his head, about to tell him not to worry. His words choked up in his throat and he excused himself from company, pale and ashen, his head throbbing. He ran up the stairs to his room, dismissed his valet for the night and slumped onto bed. The same bed he had shared with her on nights when she was spooked by thunder or some horror story Fenrys had related to her earlier that day.

Edward had left her there alone.

He buried his face in the pillow and wept.

Rhoe withdrew into himself after the funeral. Edward found comfort back at university, where no one or nothing would remind him of his loss, where he could avoid his guilt and pain.

Then mother died.

The summer visits to family became rarer and rarer. Father never insisted, retiring into his library, the one place where her presence was most patent and he was all too happy to remain where he was. The distance increased after he left university. His father preferred James' company, who was lively and good-humored and as James preferred the society to be found in London, they made the townhouse their home while Edward ran their country estates.

But now,

She is very much alive and well. His heart would not be satisfied.

He ordered for his horse to be saddled and riding gear prepared. The best of the family suites were to be prepared and aired out. She was alive and well, and soon, she would be back home.

Feeling happier than he had in months, Edward Galathynius spurred his horse onwards, fast as he could, to London.

I know I was supposed to update Cinders first but my brain insisted on rebelling and this is what happened. I will update that one soon tho, and I think you'll like it. 💖

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[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

3rd May >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on John 14:6-14 for the Feast of Saint Philip and James, Apostles: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’.

Feast of Saint Philip and James, Apostles

Gospel (Except USA)

John 14:6-14

To have seen me is to have seen the father.

Jesus said to Thomas:

‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me. If you know me, you know my Father too. From this moment you know him and have seen him.’

Philip said, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied.’    ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip,’ said Jesus to him ‘and you still do not know me?

‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father, so how can you say, “Let us see the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak as from myself: it is the Father, living in me, who is doing this work. You must believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; believe it on the evidence of this work, if for no other reason. I tell you most solemnly, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, he will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask for in my name I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask for anything in my name, I will do it.’

Gospel (USA)

John 14:6-14

Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me?

Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”

Reflections (5)

(i) Feast of Saint Philip and James, Apostles

Today we celebrate the feast of two of the twelve apostles, Philip and James. According to the fourth gospel, Philip was from the same town as Andrew and Peter, Bethsaida on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. James is identified as the brother or cousin of Jesus. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, he became the leading member of the church in Jerusalem. In today’s first reading from the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul lists James as one of those to whom the risen Lord appeared. In today’s gospel reading, Philip makes a request of Jesus, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. He recognizes in that request that only God can satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart. We will never be fully satisfied until we see God. We look forward in hope to seeing God face to face beyond this earthly life. It is only then that the deepest hungers and thirsts of our hearts will be completely satisfied. Earlier in that first letter to the Corinthians, Paul had said, ‘now we see in a mirror, dimly; but then we will see face to face’. For the moment, we have to make do with seeing in a mirror dimly, a poorer form of seeing to that which awaits us in eternity, the seeing face to face. Yet, even this seeing in a mirror dimply is potentially a very rich form of seeing. In the gospel reading, Jesus says to Philip, ‘to have seen me, is to have seen the Father’. There is a very real sense in which we see Jesus, the risen Lord, in this earthly life, and through him see God. We him the Lord as he comes to us in his word and in the Eucharist, the breaking of bread. We see him in each other, in particular, the broken and vulnerable. We see him in creation. It was James Mary Plunkett who wrote, ‘I see his blood upon the rose and in the stars the glory of his eyes; His body gleams amid eternal snows.

His tears fall from the skies’. If our eyes were opened, we would see the Lord in his many guises and we would begin to experience in the here and now something of that rest and peace which is the fruit of seeing God face to face in eternity.

And/Or

(ii) Feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles

The words of Philip to Jesus in this morning’s gospel, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and we shall be satisfied’, might well resonate with us. Perhaps we too sense that we will really only be satisfied when we see God, or, in other words, when we are in heaven. Yet Jesus replies to Philip that God the Father whom he longs to see he already sees in Jesus, ‘to have seen me is to have seen the Father’. In those words, Jesus is letting us all know that he has already begun to satisfy our deepest longings, our longing for God. Jesus has shown us the face of God in himself, in his life, death and resurrection. As we grow in our relationship with Jesus we will already begin to see the face of God and the heaven for which we long will become a present reality, to some extent. Jesus is reminding Philip and all of us that we have already been given a great deal. What we need to do is to appreciate what we have been given, to experience the presence of God in the person of Jesus who is with us always until the end of time; he is with us in his word, in the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and in each other.

 And/Or

(iii) Feast of Saint Philip and James, Apostles

Today we celebrate the feast of two of the twelve apostles, Philip and James. It is Philip who features in this morning’s gospel reading. His request to Jesus perhaps resonates with us, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. Philip understood that if he could see and know God as Jesus saw and knew him then he would be satisfied. All his longings would be fulfilled. We believe that when we see God in eternity we shall be completely satisfied, completely at peace. In reply to Philip’s request Jesus says ‘to have seen me is to have seen the Father’. Jesus was saying to Philip that he was the human face of God. Jesus’ unique relationship with God means that to see Jesus is to see God. Even on this side of eternity we can see God in the person of Jesus. A great deal awaits us beyond this life, but we have already been given a great deal in the person of Jesus. He has brought heaven to earth, and in and through our relationship with him we draw close to God. With the eyes of faith we see Jesus in his word, in the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and in our neighbour. This seeing Jesus in faith in this life is a prelude to our seeing God face to face beyond this life. As we see Jesus with the eyes of faith, we will hear his call to keep on taking him as our way, our truth and our life.

 And/Or

(iv) Feast of Saint Philip and James, Apostles

We celebrate the feast of two of the twelve, Philip and James the son of Alphaeus. We know a little bit more about Philip than we do about James from the gospels. The first chapter of John’s gospel tells us that Philip was from Bethsaida, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, the same town that Peter and Andrew were from. According to that first chapter of John it was Philip who went to Nathanael to declare, ‘We have found him about whom Moses... and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth’. He met with very little enthusiasm from Nathanael, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Yet, Philip wasn’t put off by this rather brusque response; he simply replied to Nathanael, ‘Come and see’. Nathanael eventually came and saw and stayed. Philip encourages us not to be too easily thrown when our enthusiasm for our faith is not shared by others. In today’s gospel, Philip makes a request of Jesus, ‘let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. He had yet to learn that, as Jesus said in reply, ‘to have seen me is to have seen the Father’. Philip was full of faith when he went to Nathanael and his witness was very effective. Yet, it is clear that he was only at the beginning of his own faith journey; he had only begun to see. He had a great deal more to learn from Jesus. Philip reminds us that we don’t have to know it all to be effective witnesses for the Lord. We are called to share the Lord with each other while we are still on the way.

 And/Or

(v) Feast of Saint Philip and James, Apostles 

Philip and James have shared a feast from ancient times. James features in the first reading and Philip in the gospel reading. Paul lists James as one of those to whom the risen Lord appeared, ‘then he appeared to James, and then to all the Apostles’. James would become a leading member of the church in Jerusalem. In the opening chapter of John’s gospel, Philip is said to be from Bethsaida in Galilee. He responded to Jesus’ call to ‘Follow me’ and then brings a somewhat sceptical Nathanael to Jesus. Later in the gospel, along with Andrew, he brings some Greeks to Jesus who had requested him, ‘We wish to see Jesus’. In the gospel reading, Philip, in response to Jesus’ speaking about his Father, petitions Jesus, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. Philip wanted a share in Jesus’ intimate relationship with God the Father, and he sensed that if his request was answered he would want for nothing more, he would be satisfied. Jesus informs Philip that his request has already been granted, if only he realized it, ‘to have seen me is to have seen the Father’. Because Jesus is ‘in’ the Father and the Father is ‘in’ Jesus, to see Jesus is to see the Father. According to the Jewish Scriptures, no one can see the face of God and live. Yet, we have seen the face of God in Jesus. Because Jesus is God in human form, the enfleshed Word, it is Jesus alone who can truly satisfy us. He alone can satisfy our deepest longings. As the Way, he brings us to God, as the Truth, he brings God to us, as the Life, he shares God’s life with us. Philip was good at bringing people to Jesus. In today’s gospel he learns that in bringing people to Jesus, he is bringing them to God. We are all learning to appreciate more fully that Jesus is the human face of God.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[wardensantoineandevka]

As I was watching Black Sails for the first time last month, there was a point relatively early in season four where I felt, “Thomas has to be alive. The only way for how Flint framed his future with The Odyssey, and the series’ thematic on hope, works out is if Thomas is alive.”

Why, and why specifically Flint’s anecdote about Odysseus? Because it becomes increasingly apparent that Thomas is Penelope.

[This post is also available on Medium, if you prefer to read it on that platform. See it here.]

There’s many other indications that Thomas is alive throughout the series since season two, but this is one of the subtler ones and my personal favorite. In the second episode, Flint speaks to Eleanor and Mr. Scott about the future of Nassau, of his own future. He illustrates it with an episode from The Odyssey:

“Odysseus, on his journey home to Ithaca, was visited by a ghost. The ghost tells him that once he reaches his home, once he slays all his enemies and sets his house in order, he must do one last thing before he can rest.

“The ghost tells him to pick up an oar and walk inland, and keep walking until somebody mistakes that oar for a shovel for that would be the place that no man had ever been troubled by the sea. And that's where he'd find peace.

“In the end, that's all I want.”

Flint, like many characters, frames his life through narrative. Especially he, Jack, Rogers, Silver tie their senses of self and their concepts of identity through the stories they shape around and about themselves, and they and much of the rest of the cast shape their world through story. It's a major thematic and structural pillar of the series.

Unlike the others, however, Flint additionally uses narrative as a framework for his life and identity by repeatedly using famed literature from the classical Western canon to frame his life, help him understand it, and represent stages or concepts within it. He shares this with one character: Miranda, “who shares his love of books”.

He brings her novels from the libraries of ships he raids, and they express to each other through books. Miranda, ten years ago, wryly tells Flint he'll understand the quixotic Thomas if he reads Cervantes’ Don Quixote. She tells Guthrie he'll understand Flint by reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Meditations also signifies to her and to Flint their lives and relationships with Thomas. After they argue over his decision to keep pursuing these fights rather than accept a peace and live quietly, an argument that implicitly is about his then-unrevealed relationship with Thomas and their shared situation, Flint apologizes to her with Cervantes’ thematically appropriate La Galatea. Miranda attempts to prompt Flint into self-reflection upon why he fights and appeals to his better side, to the values and virtues he had in common with Thomas, with his copy of Meditations from Thomas.

It's fascinating the specific titles they exchange and attach meaning to, but that’s another discussion entirely. The point I’m making here with all that is: in addition to the series’ thread on stories and to Flint’s own methods of storytelling to craft his public image, as a channel for his charisma, and to control and influence others, Flint spends a lot of energy navigating and unbundling for himself his emotions, identity, relationships, hopes by framing them with literature.

So, The Odyssey. He communicates his dream of Nassau as a nation free by relaying this specific episode from literature. In doing so, he casts himself as Odysseus and casts Nassau as his Ithaca, the home he's struggled to journey toward all these years. This is how he understands his hopes for the future, with this specific narrative reference.

As the series continues on, as Flint wages war to make Nassau the Ithaca he wants it to be and struggles to achieve such, as the show approaches endgame—the question arises (at least to me): if Flint is Odysseus, then who is Penelope? After all, the story of Odysseus is not just about his journey to Ithaca, it’s also about the journey to reunite with his wife.

Now, it’s a bit of a cheat because I posed question to myself in season four, where what would be the seemingly easier conclusion to arrive at is already eliminated. Miranda—the woman he fled England with, deeply loves, and leaves ashore while he goes raiding ships—is killed at the end of season two.

However, even before the events in Carolina, Miranda cannot be Flint’s Penelope.

Penelope, within The Odyssey, is left behind at home in Ithaca when Odysseus sails away to fight a war. She is at home, waiting across twenty years for his return—and keeping faith that Odysseus still lives. When Flint left home in England for Nassau to war against empire ten years ago, Miranda went with him. Even now, as she expresses to Flint en route to Carolina, she still feels she is in exile, that after all that time spent in Nassau she still considers England to be her home. Though she stays ashore in Nassau whenever Flint raises his sails, Miranda is not being left behind at home.

Even though her efforts during the series largely focus on pulling Flint away from fighting and toward seeking peace for themselves, she too had a stake and a hand in his crusade against the world. She knowingly steered him toward violence on the Maria Aleyne. She calls for Ashe to die and Charles Town to burn. She declares the war that Flint wages through seasons three and four.

She cannot be Penelope because Miranda went to war with Odysseus.

(And, well, nobody who left Ithaca with Odysseus survived to accompany him home.)

So, if it isn’t Miranda because she too sailed from home to war, then who remains to be Flint’s Penelope? The answer is simply: who did Flint, and Miranda, leave behind at home in England when they sailed to crusade in Nassau?

Thomas.

It’s an easy answer, now that the finale has proven it. But, from the perspective of before the finale when Thomas was stated to be dead, the answer is clear and the implication that Thomas is alive certain because this is the only way that the usage of The Odyssey as a framing device for Flint’s future works properly in conjunction with the series’ stubborn narrative belief in hope, presentation of love as best of all things, and both as best healer of deep wounds.

For Flint as Odysseus, this isn’t actually about Ithaca. This is about Penelope.

The show is immensely clear about this in how it lays out Flint’s relationship to Nassau, this war against England for control of it, and how Thomas’ apparent death relates to and pushes Flint to seek these things. It repeatedly states in no uncertain terms that Flint’s exile for loving Thomas and Thomas’ apparent death is what comprises a large portion of his motivation to war over Nassau.

Flint cannot bear his grief nor can he move past it. Even as he finds a steadying and mitigating force in his relationship to Silver, this gaping wound still bleeds and that pain continues to spur him to raise armies and wage wars in attempt to take from England enough of something to fill the gap left by what it stole and separated from him. But if Flint is to feel whole again and be alleviated of his violent grief, if his journey here is understood by him through analogue to The Odyssey, then he must be allowed to complete his own odyssey and reunite with his Penelope. Ergo, it is apparent thematically much earlier that Thomas must be still alive.

As the finale completes the arc into Flint’s ultimate fate, it does so by mirroring the episode from The Odyssey with which Flint frames his future in 1.02:

Odysseus takes an oar ashore, carrying it inland until it “becomes” a shovel. There, he attains a peace that ends his struggle and allows him to return home, to return to Penelope.

Flint takes a shovel ashore, carrying it inland toward his buried cache. Instead of unburying it to continue his struggle, he is given a means to end his pain and return to Thomas.

Just as at the beginning Flint outlines his future in terms of The Odyssey, the series crafts him an ending that speaks in the same language of that anecdote he uses to understand his own future and dreams, even if he doesn’t understand at the start where that framework will take him. With that mirroring, he completes his own journey through war and strife in reunion with his truest love Thomas after (give or take, rhetorically) ten years.

And Thomas says in England, years ago, after James returns to him from a long journey overseas, “Three months. Feels like twice as long.”

Ten years, twice as long, is twenty.

Twenty years is the length of time Odysseus was separated from Penelope.

[viaquotesapp-blog]

15 Great Business Motivational Quotes for Entrepreneurs

Starting a business is not an easy task at all!! It requires a lot of inspiration, encouragement, and motivation. Once in a while, you just need a push to get started over.

So here is a list of powerful short business quotes to boost your energy!! Don’t just read but also try to think about how each one applies to your business.

Let’s get to it…

“If you can serve everyone who visits you, you must be doing well in business.” ~ Ahmet Davutoglu

“I have been blessed with working with the best in the business.” ~ Al Roker

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” ~ Steve Jobs

“In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.” ~ Warren Buffett

“I believe fundamental honesty is the keystone of business.” ~ Harvey S. Firestone

“The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and to influence their actions.” ~ John Hancock

“A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” ~ Michael LeBoeuf

“Punctuality is the soul of business.” ~ Thomas Chandler Haliburton

“Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.” ~ Milan Kundera

“The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.” ~ Aristotle Onassis

“Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.” ~ Mark Twain

“The keystone of successful business is cooperation. Friction retards progress.” ~ James Cash Penney

“The way to write is well, and how is your own business.” ~ A. J. Liebling

“You can’t be successful in business without taking risks. It’s really that simple.” ~ Adena Friedman

“The best defence against mafia business is full declaration of assets and incomes.” ~ Milos Zeman

You can choose some of these quotes as part of your approach or strategy. Motivation through quotes will help you in your personal and professional growth. All the best for your journey!!

Check out the best quotes app for Android !! Download the app and get daily motivational and inspirational quotes!!

Have any more ideas?? Please feel free to share in the comment section.

[orientalistart]

Ludwig Deutsch (Austrian, 1855-1935)

Early morning, Id el-fitr

signed, inscribed and dated 'L. Deutsch Le Caire 1902' (lower left)

Despite the startling clarity of his pictures, the details of Ludwig Deutsch's life remain elusive and vague. Brought up in Vienna, he studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste before moving to Paris in 1878. There he befriended several Orientalist artists, including Arthur von Ferraris, Jean Discart, and his lifelong friend Rudolf Ernst. It is likely that he studied with the French history painter Jean-Paul Laurens prior to his participation in the Société des Artistes Français from 1879 to 1925; his other instructors and mentors, however, are unknown. (Deutsch's first Orientalist works appeared in 1881, well before his inaugural trip to Egypt and the Middle East. It is possible that he was influenced early on in Paris by the widely circulating pictures of Jean-Léon Gérôme.) In 1898, Deutsch earned an honorable mention at the Société's annual Salon, and, in 1900, just two years before the present work was painted, he was awarded a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle. Later, having established himself as the center of an entire school of Austrian Orientalist painting, he would receive the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. In 1919, Deutsch gained French citizenship and, after a brief absence, began exhibiting again under the name "Louis Deutsch." (It is assumed that Deutsch left France during the First World War due to the official hostilities between France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He may also have ventured to North Africa at this time.) In an effort to stay current and revive what was now a waning genre, Deutsch's technique in the years after 1910 began to change; his late pictures hovered between the highly detailed, polished surfaces for which he – and several other Orientalist painters – had become renowned, and the looser brushwork and more highly keyed palette of Post-Impressionism.

Throughout this long and varied career, Deutsch consciously avoided the picturesque and anecdotal qualities that marked so many contemporary Orientalist works, and chose instead a far broader and more modern approach. Drawing from all aspects of Middle Eastern life – especially Egyptian – and isolating and scrutinizing particular moments in time, Deutsch's paintings are today seen as verging on the cinematic, with all the spectacular and static qualities of a promotional film still. (Deutsch's process may again have been partially indebted to the works of Gérôme, whose own paintings were often marked by both high drama and a chilling frigidity.) His intensely detailed series of guard or sentinel pictures (one of which, The Nubian Guard [private collection], was completed in this same year), bazaar scenes, and images of the local literati were facilitated by an enormous collection of photographs amassed in Cairo, many of them purchased from the well-known studio of G. Lékégian. (Deutsch also acquired hundreds of decorative objets while abroad, which furnished both his Paris studio at 11 rue Navarin and the Orientalist pictures he produced there. The tombak, or ewer, in the present work, for example, placed in a basket atop the woman's head, was a favorite and oft-repeated souvenir.)

The subject of Early Morning, 'Id el-fitr, though less common in Deutsch's oeuvre, was a familiar one in the nineteenth century, in both literature and art.1. Writing in 1885, Thomas Patrick Hughes offered the following description of the events that took place on this religious holiday, including the rituals that Deutsch refers to here:

On one or more days of this festival [" 'Idu 'L-Fitr"], some or all of the members of most families, but chiefly the women, visit the tombs of their relatives. This they also do on the occasion of the other grand festival. ["Idu 'l-Azha"] The visitors, or their servants, carry palm branches2, and sometimes sweet basil, to lay upon the tomb which they go to visit. The palm-branch is broken into several pieces, and these, or the leaves only, are placed on the tomb. Numerous groups of women are seen on these occasions, bearing palm-branches, on their way to the cemeteries in the neighborhood of the metropolis. They are also provided, according to their circumstances, with cakes, bread, dates, or some other kind of food, to distribute to the poor who resort to the burial-ground on these days. Sometimes tents are pitched for them; the tents surround the tombs which is the object of the visit.3

In addition to Hughes' concise account, Deutsch would have had many other sources from which to draw. His personal library included several volumes detailing the intricacies of Egyptian culture, many of them illustrated by his compatriots and peers. Indeed, the drawings by Leopold Carl Müller (1834-1892) in Georg Ebers' Egypt: Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque, published in German in 1878 and translated into English a few years after, may have inspired aspects of Deutsch's composition4. So too, contemporary photographs and popular illustrated newspapers – often used by Deutsch as references for his paintings - may have aided the artist in the creation of this image, either directly or in mood 5 (Fig. 1). Unique to Deutsch, however, are the brilliant color scheme (note how the red of the young girl's dress is mirrored by the close-fitting caps of the seated men and the rose petals strewn along the ground) and the subtle symbolism of the scene. The fragility of the flowers (a common adornment for tombs during special ceremonies) may be meant as a reminder of the brevity of life and, in the juxtaposition of Arab children and well-worn tombstones, the continuity of Egyptian culture and the circle of life are pointedly suggested. Deutsch's interest in the distinctive form of the Arab tomb and tombstone may be gauged by the repetition of the motif in another important painting of the period. The enduring popularity of such subjects among his contemporaries, moreover, extended far beyond Deutsch's adopted Parisian home; the present work was acquired in Cairo more than a decade after it was painted, perhaps during Deutsch's return to the region during World War I.

We are grateful to Emily M. Weeks, Ph.D., for writing this cataloguing note.

1 'Id el-fitr, or "feast to break the fast," is an important annual Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan. On this festive day, a celebratory meal is had, ending the month-long period of fasting. The sheer number of cemetery (Arabic, maqbara) scenes in Orientalist art is striking: Jean-Léon Gérôme, Carl Haag (1820-1915), William James Müller (1812-1845), and Amedeo Preziosi (1816-1882) were just a few of the many artists who tackled this subject. In these works, Shaykh's tombs are often prominently featured, the domed silhouettes of which provide much architectural interest. Though not made the focus of the composition, in the middle of Deutsch's picture, in the distant background, the dome of one such structure may be discerned. 2 Palm branches were richly significant in Islamic culture; in ancient Egypt they symbolized immortality. Their presence in this exotic image would have brought a sense of familiarity to European Christian viewers, for whom palms also held special meaning. 3 Thomas Patrick Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam, London, 1885, p. 196. 4 Ebers (1837-1898) was a German archaeologist and novelist. Müller would contribute several illustrations to various editions of his book beginning in 1878. Perhaps the most influential publications for Orientalist artists during the nineteenth century were Edward William Lane's An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London, 1836) and Owen Jones's The Grammar of Ornament (London, 1856). Deutsch is known to have referenced both of these in the details and subjects of his compositions. (In Lane's volume, an image of an Arab tomb and tombstone is included [p. 524], along with a detailed description of its structure and use [p. 522].) 5 There were numerous cemeteries in and around Cairo which Deutsch may have visited or known and referenced here. Among the most widely photographed and illustrated were the Arab cemetery near the Bâb en-Naṣr and the "Southern Cemetery," or Qarafa, extending south of the Citadel near the mosque of Ibn Tulun. The sobriety of Deutsch's composition would have been shared by members of the Orientalist community at this time: 1902 saw the deaths of James Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836-1902) and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (1845-1902), and Frederick Goodall (1822-1904) declared bankruptcy in this year.

[iwt-v]

It was a small matter, he knew.

As Thomas ran his fingers over his cleanly shaved face and looked at himself in the dingy mirror he wasn’t certain he believed that thought.

The face staring back at him was the same of course, yet somehow without a beard he noticed all the lines and wrinkles now, the ones that had crept up on him during last decade and that had not been there when James’s bright gray-green eyes had first met his own.

Yet he knew they had been there since their reunion; whether or not he had facial hair should not have mattered at all.

Thomas put away his shaving cream and razor and went outside to where James was finishing feeding the horses. It had been a casual request from James that he shave when Thomas had kept complaining the Savannah heat made his beard itch. He’d put up with it at Oglethorpe’s simply because he hadn’t cared then.

Now, as James emerged from the stable Thomas felt anxiety creep up on him like all those lines and wrinkles had.

“Well the deed is done,” he announced.

James looked up, brows drawing up as he saw Thomas’s face. He flashed a quick smile before closing the stable doors, looking away.

“So it is,” he said. “It looks…good.”

Thomas caught the hesitation.

“Does it? It feels strange. Perhaps I look better with the beard after all.”

James fell into step beside him, glancing at Thomas’s face again. His expression revealed nothing to Thomas.

“It’s fine,” he said.

Thomas didn’t reply. They went inside and washed up, done for the day. James chatted about needing new sandpaper for a new order of tables the Martins wanted, then talked about how the small pack of wolves they’d noticed their first year here had returned to this side of their territory. Thomas listened but felt less and less at ease.

James had practically ignored his shave. Surely he’d noticed how drastically different he look without the beard? Did James truly not like his face smooth again?

That seemed impossible given the past. Thomas considered that he was simply blowing it all out of proportion. It was, after all, just a small matter.

After dinner they each took to a book while the cabin and the surrounding land grew quiet, save for the crickets and tree frogs.

Thomas waited for James to look up, to say something else about his face but James appeared fixated on his pages.

With a noise of dismay Thomas closed his book.

“Haven’t you anything else to say about it?” he demanded in a small voice.

James looked up in mild surprise.

“I must have stared at myself for ten minutes in the mirror,” continued Thomas. “Just stared. I don’t know why it was so startling. I’ve spent most my life without a beard, and God knows I probably don’t look nearly as dashing as you do with one, but I just thought…I thought...”

His words slipped off his tongue as James rose and stood in front of him, gently pulling him to his feet, hands on Thomas’s shoulders and a soft smile playing on his lips.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I think it startled me just as much, seeing you the way I had always remembered you.”

Now James’s eyes roamed intently over his face, fingers stroking down his smooth cheek with nothing but adoration. Thomas’s worries instantly began to melt away.

“You look young,” James said, a shadow of sadness passing over his face. “I remember the first time I touched your face. It was the first time I had ever touched any man’s face. It made me ache warmly for you.”

Thomas leaned his face into James’s touch in response. James sealed his lips over Thomas’s, eliciting a hum from the blonde.

Thomas savored his taste, but pulled away, uncertain again.

“You like it, but it makes you melancholy,” he said.

“Of course I like it, you goose,” replied James gently. “It’s your face. It brought back memories, that is all. Good memories,” he added in earnest.

He took hold of Thomas’s waist with both hands and pulled him closer for emphasis. And suddenly Thomas chuckled.

“What?”

“Hearing you say ‘you goose’ is, well, it’s like that time Miranda called my father a fucking bastard out loud.”

James gave a throaty chuckle with him. It grew until he gave a toothy smile.

“What would I do without you, old man?” he teased.

“Pfft! A year’s age difference hardly makes me an old man. And I’m not the only one with gray hairs now.”

“Rubbish!” declared James. “Where have you seen gray hairs on me?”

Thomas’s gaze flickered down pointedly to James’s crotch, devilish grin on his lips.

“Wouldn’t you like to know? They are quite lovely against all the ginger ones.”

[nyc-uws]

These 75 Iconic Photos Will Define The 21st Century So Far. Everyone Needs To See This.

Mark Pygas 

This is how future generations will remember us as people of the early 21st century. Take a moment with me to reflect on the conflicts, triumphs, and world changing moments all of us have witnessed together in the past 14 years. We chose this list of 100 photos to capture the most iconic moments so far.

The world welcomes in the new millennium. [2000]

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Source: Wikimedia

Zanjeer the bomb dog is laid to rest with full military honours for saving thousands of lives. [2000]

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Source: Pune Mirror

Steve Jobs introduces the first iPod [2001]

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Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

President Bush's reaction to news of a second plane striking the Twin Towers. He was reading to children at a Florida elementary school. [2001]

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Source: LIFE

Firefighters raise the American flag on the ruins on the World Trade Centers [2001]

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Source: Thomas Franklin

Archaeologists discover some of the oldest artworks known to man in Dordogne, France - over 12,000 years old. [2001]

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A young Afghan woman shows her face in public for the first time after 5 years of Taliban Sharia law. [2001]

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Source: Reuters

People gather water from a huge well in the village of Natwarghad in the western Indian state of Gujarat. More than 1 billion people still lack access to clean drinking water. [2003]

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Source: Amit Dave

Ballerinas practice with medical masks during the SARS outbreak. [2003]

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New York City is plunged into darkness after a power failure [2003]

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A month and a half after the invasion began, U.S. Marine Kirk Dalrymple watches as a statue of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein falls in central Baghdad. [2003]

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Source: Reuters

U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman HM1 Richard Barnett, assigned to the 1st Marine Division, holds a child after she was separated from her family during a firefight [2003]

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Source: Damir Sagolj

President Bush addresses sailors in the famous "Mission Accomplished" speech, declaring the end of major combat in Iraq. [2003]

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Source: Unknown Photographer

The Columbia Space Shuttle breaks apart during re entry [2003]

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Source: Unknown Photographer

The first waves of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, which killed over 200,000 people, hit the shore.

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Source: Unknown Photographer

A Ukrainian woman places carnations into shields of anti-riot policemen standing outside the presidential office in Kiev. Ukraine, during the 2004 Orange Revolution. [2004]

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Source: Vasily Fedosenko

Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moscovitz in 2004, after they had just lauched FaceBook.

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Source: Daily Finance

The Hubble Telescope takes a picture of what the universe looked like 13 billion years ago [2004]

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Source: NASA

A Russian police officer carries a released baby from the school seized by heavily armed masked men and women in the town of Beslan. [2004]

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Source: Victor Korotayev

The Christian world mourns the passing of Pope John Paul II [2005]

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Source: Unknown Photographer

A heart-wrenching picture of a mother and child at an an emergency feeding centre in in Tahoua, Niger. [2005]

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Source: Finbarr O'Reilly

Isabelle Dinoire after receiving the world's first partial face transplant [2005]

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Source: AP

Kevin Berthia is talked out of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge by police officers. He has since become an advocate for suicide prevention and has started a family. [2005]

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Source: John Storey / San Francisco Chronicle

Pearl Harbor survivor Houston James of Dallas embraces Marine Staff Sgt. Mark Graunke Jr. who lost a hand, leg, and eye while defusing a bomb in Iraq. [2005]

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Source: Dallas Morning News

Tanisha Blevin, 5, holds the hand of fellow Hurricane Katrina victim Nita LaGarde, 105, as they are evacuated from the convention center in New Orleans. [2005]

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Source: Eric Gay

The Cassini spacecraft takes a picture of Saturn from deep space. The tiny speck of light circled in red is Earth. [2006]

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Source: NASA

The Tribute in Lights shines on the skyline of lower Manhattan in New York. [2006]

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Source: The Atlantic

Terri Gurrola is reunited with her daughter after serving in Iraq for 7 months. [2007]

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Source: BuzzFeed

Thousands gather to mourn after the Virginia Tech shooting [2007]

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An indigenous woman holds her child while trying to resist the advance of Amazonas state policemen in Manaus who have been sent to evict natives. [2008]

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Source: Luiz Vasconcelos

Michael Phelps celebrates after winning his 14th gold medal, setting the all-time record for most Olympic gold medals. [2008]

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Wall Street on the midst of the Global Financial Crisis [2008]

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Barack Obama wins the 2008 election, becoming the first African American President.

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Hhaing The Yu, 29, holds his face in his hand as rain falls on the decimated remains of his home after a cyclone stroke Myanmar’s capital of Yangon. [2008]

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Source: Brian Sokol

Four of the last seven Northern White Rhinos in the world are airlifted from a zoo in the Czech Republic to a park in Africa in an attempt to save their entire species. [2009]

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Source: National Geographic

US Airways Flight 1549 floats on the Hudson river after crash landing, miraculously, everyone survived [2009]

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Source: Unknown Photographer

 fireman rescues a koala during Australian bushfires. [2009]

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Source: Unknown Photographer

Kiki, age 7, is pulled from the ruins left by the Haiti earthquake and into the arms of his mother. [2010]

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Source: Polaris / eyevine

Elite runner Jaqueline Kiplimo helps a disabled Chinese athlete drink during the 2010 Zheng-Kai marathon. She stayed with him for several miles, costing her the 1st place finish and the $10000 prize. [2010]

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Tracy Caldwell looks down on Earth from the International Space Station [2010]

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Source: NASA

Smoke billows from a controlled burn of spilled oil off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico coast line. [2010]

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Live images of the Chilean miners trapped in a mine for 21 days. [2010]

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Source: Unkown Photographer

Phyllis Siegel, 76, and Connie Kopelov, 84, are finally able to get married in New York. In the past decade, 17 US States, alongside 15 countries have legalized gay marriage. [2011]

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Source: AFP/Getty Images

A couple kisses on the pavement during the Vancouver Riot [2011]

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Source: Rich Lam/Getty images

Christians protect Muslims in prayer at Tahrir Square during the Egyptian Revolution [2011]

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Source: Nevin Zaki

Robert Peraza, who lost his son, mourns 10 years after the 9/11 terror attacks [2011]

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Source: New York Post

A dog soaks in an adoring crowd in Mexico by following the Pope [2011]

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Source: Yuri Cortez

An Egyptian woman kisses a policeman, who had refused to fire on protestors, during the revolution against the Mubarak Government [2011]

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A police officer pepper-sprays Occupy protesters at the University of California [2011]

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Source: Unknown Photographer

Barack Obama and Government staff watch as commandos conduct a raid, which ends with the killing of Osama bin Laden [2011]

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Source: Unknown Photographer

New York firefighters, many of whom lost friends in the 9/11 attacks, learn of Osama bin Laden's death [2011]

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Source: Unknown Photographer

Norwegian citizens hold a flower march after terrorist attacks by Anders Breivik killed 77. [2011]

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Source: Unknown Photographer

Capt. Michael Potoczniak marries his partner Todd Saunders, in a ceremony in San Francisco. [2011]

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Source: AP

Billy Stinson comforts his daughter on the steps where their cottage once stood before it was destroyed by Hurricane Irene [2011]

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Source: Scott Olson / Getty Images

A 4-month-old baby girl is rescued from the rubble four days after the Japanese tsunami. [2011]

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Source: Reuters

The US rover, Curiosity, takes a selfie on Mars [2012]

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Source: NASA

Meghan Vogel, a high school runner, helps her exhausted rival cross the finish line. [2012]

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Source: AP

The Middle East sees snow for the first time in over 100 years [2012]

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Three young women from the New York Fashion Week pose next to a homeless man. [2012]

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Source: Spiegel

A mother comforts her daughter after the Sandy Hook shootings [2012]

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Source: Reuters

Greg Cook hugs his dog Coco after finding her inside his destroyed home in Alabama following the Tornado. [2012]

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Source: The Decatur Daily

Pakistani Muslims form a human chain to protect Christians during Mass [2013]

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Source: The Express Tribune

Dzhokar Tsarnaev, one of the brothers behind the Boston Marathon bombing, on the boat where he was eventually caught, with sniper lasers on his forehead. [2013]

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Source: Unknown Photographer

The anti-government Syrian town of Kafr Anbel sends a message to Boston after the marathon bombing. [2013]

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Boston replied with their own message. [2013]

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A child runs to safety as armed police hunt gunmen who went on a shooting spree at Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi. [2013]

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Source: Reuters

San Francisco comes together to help batkid save the city - and to grant the wish of an ill child. [2013]

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Source: Raphael Kluzniok

Carlos Arredondo helps Jeff Bauman after the Boston Marathon bombings. The two are now best friends. [2013]

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Source: AP

Pope Francis embraces Vinicio Riva, a man scarred by a genetic disease. This was one of many progressive acts that the new leader of the Church made. [2013]

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Source: EPA

A woman is peper-sprayed at Turkey's Gezi Park protest. [2013]

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Source: Reuters

The world says goodbye to Nelson Mandela [2013]

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Source: Peter Dejong

Lesleigh Coyer, 25, of Saginaw, Michigan, lies down in front of the grave of her brother, Ryan, who served with the U.S. Army in both Iraq and Afghanistan [2013]

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Source: Reuters

Kiev's Independence Square before and after the revolution [2014]

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Source: reddit.com

Afghan women turn out to vote in the first democratic transfer of power the country has ever seen. [2014]

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Source: Anja Niedringhaus

Markiyan Matsekh plays piano for police during the Ukranian revoloution. [2014]

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Source: Markiyan Matsekh

It's hard to believe we still have 86 years of history left to write. As I created this list, I was reminded that regardless of our differences in ideology, we're all people of the 21st century together. When students in the future look back, they will see us as one unified generation who overcame incredible obstacles and made swift social progress, despite little certainty of what lies ahead. 

I hope you enjoyed, and please share these powerful photos with others.

[awesomeadventuresoflulu-blog]

Hello! This is my first post, so exciting! Anyway, here is my submission for the Shipwrecked Comedy Fig and Ford fanfic competition. 

Title: On Set 

Wilhelmina Vanderjetski was, to put it simply, no stranger to film sets. Though through the years she had found herself journeying through a variety of genres – be it a distressing drama, lush historical romp, or swashbuckling fantasy – they all had the same familiar layout. Her driver would pick her up bright and early, and (begrudgingly) she would roll out of bed, her hair unwashed and face bare, ready for the makeup artists to transform her into a romantic heiress or comical sidekick. They would then exchange pleasantries, commenting on the warm weather or recounting a funny anecdote from the night before. Eventually, Wilhelmina would find herself driving through the studio’s grand, imposing entryway, which was always topped off with a large overhead sign that made sure there was absolutely no question regarding whose place it was. Afterwards she would head into her particular set, where the costume girls were always armed, without fail, with that day’s outfit and a heaping of crew gossip, (the latter of which Wilhelmina particularly enjoyed.) And after that? It was time to forget “Ms. Vanderjetski” and dive deep into the mindset of her character.

           Of course, this film was no different.

           That day Wilhelmina found herself sitting in her brightly lit dressing room, which was overflowing with stylish pictures of her and her costars, and random discarded costumes that the designers had declared ‘all wrong’ for the scenes. At the moment, a few of the crew members were hanging up a poster for the film she was currently working on, entitled In the City – a screwball comedy that critics were eagerly awaiting, since it was helmed by a well known director, and starred two bright young stars: experienced leading man, James Willis and *gulp* Wilhelmina herself.

           “There, perfect.” The crew member, whose name Wilhelmina remembered to be Jonathon, announced after finishing hanging up the frame. Wilhelmina leaned back in her vanity chair in order to see the poster, which featured a picture of her and James looking at each other adoringly on a brightly colored background. Over the picture a swirling font decreed the movie’s title, and underneath that sat the names of the stars, including her own, which she noted looked comically long in comparison to the others. “Alright, five minutes till we start shooting, Miss Vanderjetski.” Jonathon added as he and the other crew member left the room.

           Wilhelmina nodded gratefully in response before turning her attention back to her mirror, in which she surveyed her makeup and went over her lines in her head. She hadn’t told anyone, but she was especially excited for this film and wanted to do it justice...which would probably be easiest if she didn’t forget her lines on the third day of shooting.

---

           A while later Wilhelmina had arrived to the set, which was bustling with people. Makeup artists fluttered from actor to actor touching up their blush or lipstick like benevolent beauty fairies, the stage manger was leading an army of crew members on a search for a particular prop that had gone missing, and the camera operators were making sure each of their various wires were properly connected and set. In the center of the large room was a group of bright lights, which shined onto a smaller set designed to look like a hotel lobby, complete with an elevator and spiraling staircase. 

           Wilhelmina looked at it all with a satisfied smile, ready to dive into her role as Virginia Thomas, a wealthy heiress who finds herself living with her great aunt in the big city after her father leaves on an extended business trip to Europe. From across the room she could spot her costar, who flashed her a small smile before the director’s voice came booming in.

           “Alright everyone! PLACES!”

           And with that, Wilhelmina walked over to her place on the hotel set, fixing her hair as she did so. The stage manager did a silent countdown, and she got ready to recite her lines. 

           The scene began with Virginia excitedly talking to her aunt about their trip to a popular jazz club, “Oh, Great Aunt Elizabeth, tonight is going to be a riot! I’ve been ever so keen to get out of that stuffy apartment since father left on the business trip. Not that I’ve been lonely, of course – don’t you worry Lizzie – I’ve been quite busy, actually. I went out to a party with some of the girls the other night, and I’ve had oh so any suitors. Most of them are aces, but there’s one...I think his name is Fred Cooper? Anyway, he came over with Emily yesterday and acted like such a hotshot. He was going on and on about his travels across the world. As if I would ever believe he actually dined with the Queen! Such silliness.”

            Great Aunt Elizabeth, who was played by film legend Olive Parker, hobbled over, a glamorously bedazzled cane and smartly tailored navy coat in hand. She was playing a comical, older role, and had some of the best parts of the film. “Please Virginia, I’m sure he’s just a bit of an oddball.” She then gestured towards the elevator with her cane. “Now, dear, the club is up a few level and these old bones are not going to make it up those stairs on their own,” She paused and surveyed ‘Virginia’ with a critical eye, “and, well, I’m not sure you’ll be much help either. Be a sweetheart, and go up and get someone to help me.”

            Wilhelmina smiled knowingly, “You know Aunt, you could use the elevator as well.”

           She scoffed, “Only a fool would ride in one of those death traps,” and took a seat on a nearby velvet couch while pointing to the elevator. “Now...run along.”

            ‘Virginia’ ignored the insult and smiled as she entered the elevator, where another camera was already rolling.

           “What floor, Miss?” The actor playing the operator asked.

           “The third, thank you.” She replied. After this line, Wilhelmina turned on her heel to see James Willis, who, in character as Fred Cooper, was standing in the other corner of the elevator.

            “Oh, Virginia! I wasn’t expecting to see you here.” ‘Fred’ exclaimed excitedly. In the film, Fred had a hopeless crush on Virginia, who wouldn’t realize her own feelings for him until later, after the two end up spending the night at the club and around the city together, (thanks to some meddling by Great Aunt Elizabeth.)

            “Yes...good to see you Fred. Great Aunt Elizabeth and I decided that it would be a nice evening to come out and hear something from this singer everyone has been raving about.” She said this line politely.

            “Oh, yes, I’ve heard great things about them. And I must say, you are looking lovely this evening. I hope you’ll dance with me.”

           Wilhelmina blushed and made a small smile, showing that Virginia perhaps wasn’t as cold towards Fred as she appeared. “Why, thank you Fred. And I suppose we could dance. I have been busy practicing.”

           “Sounds great! And afterwards, I could tell you more about my lunch with the Queen!” At this, Wilhelmina’s face comically fell, and the two stood awkwardly in the elevator for a moment or two.

           “CUT!” The director eventually yelled. Both Wilhelmina and James broke character, letting out small laughs. They would have to film the scene at least another three times, but Wilhelmina couldn’t help but be pleased with the result. 

           She had a feeling that this would be her biggest hit yet.

---

And be sure to go and help them out on kickstarter:  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1029702011/the-case-of-the-gilded-lily

[gravitascivics]

UNLOCKING LOCKE’S VIEW

This blog has often described the national disagreement between those who lean toward republican values and those who lean toward liberalist values.  And here begins a problem with language.  One might think, from these “titles” that republicanism refers to the beliefs of the Republican Party, and liberalism favors the Democratic Party.  

But as the terms are being used in this posting, and in the related literature, the opposite is true.  Here, liberalism does not refer to left-of-center political thought, but actually reflects the natural rights view.  And republicanism, of which federalism is one form, refers to communal biases as expressed by a representative governmental arrangement.  With that, this posting can report on a debate among scholars who study the history of American political thought.

And this debate centers on how at the time of the colonial years and through the beginning of the nation the Enlightenment affected American leaders and the constitutional model they hit upon to establish the nation’s governance. Those who favor liberalism argue that the Enlightenment led the founders toward a polity that put in place the arguments of John Locke.  

Often cited is Thomas Jefferson’s phraseology of the rights of the individual: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  

This mirrored, so the claim states, Locke’s natural rights of life, liberty, and property.  And for the bulk of the years this debate has been carried forth, those who favor liberalism cite this bias,[1] but roughly since 1960s, led by such historians as J. G. A. Pocock, that republican ideas were at least just as important as liberal ideas.[2]  

There are other scholars who support the republican bias, and this blogger leans toward the political scientist, Daniel J. Elazar, who this blog often cites for his contributions to explaining this history.[3]  Another historian this blog has cited is Gordon Wood along with his work on the founding generation.[4]  

This is how this blog described Wood’s account of the founders,

Gordon Wood argues that in the years surrounding the writing of the Declaration of Independence there was an especially strong popular commitment to federalist ideals. Particularly, the political group of that time, known as the Commonwealthmen or Whigs (not to be confused with the nineteenth century Whig Party), demonstrated an inordinate level of support for republicanism which can be described as a type of political beliefs that include federalist thought.  

The Whigs are credited with leading popular support for independence from Britain.  They emphasized citizen participation, – especially at the local level – representative government, liberty, equality, and public virtue.  In other words, citizens bound to this cultural view lived their social lives [in the 1830s] as Tocqueville described them [in an earlier posting].[5]  

 So disposed, a lot of the colonists’ thought took on a reactive mode to changes in British rule as the 1700s progressed.  That is, they began to see the British as corrupt since they were instituting policies that flew in the face of colonials’ biases.  That particularly targeted British taxing policies, their interference with American politics, and their on again-off again promotion of Anglican religion seemed contrary to what Americans were judging to be good governance.  

What the colonists began to emphasize – both as result of the Enlightenment but also due to their Puritanical background – was that a person’s value, in intrinsic terms as well as in his/her financial standing, was based on property[6] (and its entailed rights), but that value also included his/her communal sense of citizenship.  

Beyond these sensitivities, they saw governmental corruption by means of faction, patronage, standing armies, an established church, and excessive support of monied interests as growing under their colonial existence and attributed to British influence or policies.  Summarily, one can classify these growing concerns as those of republicanism.  

These feelings were not limited to the elites but made their way across the American colonial population.  And this grew as Britain attempted to exert its presence within the colonies and as the 1700s wore on.  Most Americans can readily remember their school lessons of British taxation and Americans’ call for “no taxation without representation.”

As for Jefferson’s phrase, such writers as Gary Will credits not John Locke (Will argues that Jefferson did not even own Locke’s work from which the famous phrase was credited), but was much more influenced by common sense philosophers, such as Thomas Reid.  Others attribute the actual Declaration quote to William Wollaston.  

In Wollaston’s 1722 book, The Religion of Nature Delineated, he provides “the pursuit of happiness” phrase and attributes its prudence to reason and truth.[7]  Yet others look to Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England.[8]  So the Locke source – which in his Two Treatises of Government is “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions” – does not turn out to be a “slam dunk” source of Jefferson’s phrase.  

As a matter of fact, when one reviews Locke’s position on natural rights, he is reigned in by something called natural law.  Steven Forde makes an important related distinction between Locke and Thomas Hobbes – who should be the philosopher cited by natural rights advocates. Forde writes,

Locke’s claim is that individual have a duty to respect the rights of others, even in the state of nature [that state that exists before a people organize a polity]. The source of this duty, he says, is natural law.

��        The difference with Hobbes is clearest in Locke’s argument about property.  Hobbes and Locke agree that individuals have a right to property in the state of nature, but Hobbes denies that individuals have any duty to respect the property of others.  This makes property more or less useless in Hobbes’s state of nature.  Locke says individuals have a duty to respect the property (and lives and liberties) of others even in the state of nature, a duty he traces to natural law.  Natural law and natural rights coexist, but natural law is primary, commanding respect for the rights of others.[9]

Forde goes on to clarify this a bit further.  He claims that an individual’s rights are in the context of this duty, in that that duty is always present with the exception when one’s life is in jeopardy.

         This posting will, of course, not end this debate, but this blogger wishes to take this opportunity to explicitly state an underlying message this blog has tried to communicate.  Most of American history, not only the years surrounding the birth the nation, was guided more so by the republican train of thought. More specifically, that being the form of republicanism Americans followed, federalism.

Everyone knows that that bias determined the structural makeup of the national and state governments.  But beyond that, Americans had held as almost sacred to federalism’s processes.  That included a reliance that the nation saw, at least as a basic espoused value, the worth of its population being federated within themselves.  At least to the degree that a sense of communality, collaboration, and cooperation by those who were accepted as part of the national partnership served to establish what was right in terms of governance and politics.

Its only shortcoming – and it was and has been an immoral and unjust shortcoming – was the exclusion of nonwhites.  That is why federation theory, what this blogger promotes, is not this earlier version, parochial/traditional federalism, but a newer version.  That is liberated federalism, which is inclusive of all Americans.  

As for what today holds in regard to the allegiance of most Americans, that would be the natural rights view.  Some hold onto the ideals of Locke, but too many are holding onto Hobbes’s dystopian vision – a social existence without any sense of duty or obligation.  With that insight, one can begin to understand the sorry state of the polity today.

[1] See Isaac Kramnick, “John Locke and Liberal Constitutionalism,” in Major Problems in American Constitutional History, Volume I:  The Colonial Era Through Reconstruction, edited by Kermit L. Hall (Lexington, MA:  D. C. Heath and Company, 1992), 97-114.  Ironically, a value this blogger cites making up what one can call republicanism – or more specifically federalism – is civic humanism.  In making his argument, Kramnick admits that up until the development of the founding documents – the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights – American elites tended to rely on republican values such as civic humanism.  Civic humanism, as Kramnick describes it, is a political being realizing his/her fulfilment through participation in public life and a concern with public good above selfish ends.  This is a republican value.  

[2] J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1975).

[3] Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States, (New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966) and Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa, AL:  The University of Alabama Press, 1987).

[4] Gordon S. Wood, Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1969/1968).

[5] Robert Gutierrez, “What Was the Original Intent?”, Gravitas:  A Voice for Social Studies – a blog (May 30, 2017).

[6] Life was considered an element of one’s property.

[7] James W. Ely, Main Themes in the Debate over Property Rights (Milton Park, England: Routledge, 1997).

[8] Paul Sayre (ed.), Interpretations of Modern Legal Philosophies:  Essays in Honor of Roscoe Pond (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1947).

[9] Steven Forde, “John Locke and the Natural Law and Natural Rights Tradition,” Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism (n.d.), accessed June 3, 2021, http://www.nlnrac.org/earlymodern/locke .

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

3rd May >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections / Homilies on John 14: 6-14 for the Feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’.

Feast of Saint Philip and James, Apostles

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

John 14:6-14

To have seen me is to have seen the father

Jesus said to Thomas:

‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.

No one can come to the Father except through me.

If you know me, you know my Father too.

From this moment you know him and have seen him.’

Philip said, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied.’

‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip,’ said Jesus to him ‘and you still do not know me?

‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father,

so how can you say, “Let us see the Father”?

Do you not believe

that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?

The words I say to you I do not speak as from myself:

it is the Father, living in me, who is doing this work.

You must believe me when I say

that I am in the Father and the Father is in me;

believe it on the evidence of this work, if for no other reason.

I tell you most solemnly,

whoever believes in me

will perform the same works as I do myself,

he will perform even greater works,

because I am going to the Father.

Whatever you ask for in my name I will do,

so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

If you ask for anything in my name,

I will do it.’

Gospel (USA)

John 14:6-14

Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me?

Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”

Reflections (4)

(i) Feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles

Today we celebrate the feast of two of the twelve apostles, Philip and James. According to the fourth gospel, Philip was from the same town as Andrew and Peter, Bethsaida on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. James is identified as the brother or cousin of Jesus. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, he became the leading member of the church in Jerusalem. In today’s first reading from the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul lists James as one of those to whom the risen Lord appeared. In today’s gospel reading, Philip makes a request of Jesus, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. He recognizes in that request that only God can satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart. We will never be fully satisfied until we see God. We look forward in hope to seeing God face to face beyond this earthly life. It is only then that the deepest hungers and thirsts of our hearts will be completely satisfied. Earlier in that first letter to the Corinthians, Paul had said, ‘now we see in a mirror, dimly; but then we will see face to face’. For the moment, we have to make do with seeing in a mirror dimly, a poorer form of seeing to that which awaits us in eternity, the seeing face to face. Yet, even this seeing in a mirror dimply is potentially a very rich form of seeing. In the gospel reading, Jesus says to Philip, ‘to have seen me, is to have seen the Father’. There is a very real sense in which we see Jesus, the risen Lord, in this earthly life, and through him see God. We him the Lord as he comes to us in his word and in the Eucharist, the breaking of bread. We see him in each other, in particular, the broken and vulnerable. We see him in creation. It was James Mary Plunkett who wrote, ‘I see his blood upon the rose and in the stars the glory of his eyes; His body gleams amid eternal snows,

His tears fall from the skies’. If our eyes were opened, we would see the Lord in his many guises and we would begin to experience in the here and now something of that rest and peace which is the fruit of seeing God face to face in eternity.

And/Or

(ii) Feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles

The words of Philip to Jesus in this morning’s gospel, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and we shall be satisfied’, might well resonate with us. Perhaps we too sense that we will really only be satisfied when we see God, or, in other words, when we are in heaven. Yet Jesus replies to Philip that God the Father whom he longs to see he already sees in Jesus, ‘to have seen me is to have seen the Father’. In those words, Jesus is letting us all know that he has already begun to satisfy our deepest longings, our longing for God. Jesus has shown us the face of God in himself, in his life, death and resurrection. As we grow in our relationship with Jesus we will already begin to see the face of God and the heaven for which we long will become a present reality, to some extent. Jesus is reminding Philip and all of us that we have already been given a great deal. What we need to do is to appreciate what we have been given, to experience the presence of God in the person of Jesus who is with us always until the end of time; he is with us in his word, in the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and in each other.

And/Or

(iii) Feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles

Today we celebrate the feast of two of the twelve apostles, Philip and James. It is Philip who features in this morning’s gospel reading. His request to Jesus perhaps resonates with us, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. Philip understood that if he could see and know God as Jesus saw and knew him then he would be satisfied. All his longings would be fulfilled. We believe that when we see God in eternity we shall be completely satisfied, completely at peace. In reply to Philip’s request Jesus says ‘to have seen me is to have seen the Father’. Jesus was saying to Philip that he was the human face of God. Jesus’ unique relationship with God means that to see Jesus is to see God. Even on this side of eternity we can see God in the person of Jesus. A great deal awaits us beyond this life, but we have already been given a great deal in the person of Jesus. He has brought heaven to earth, and in and through our relationship with him we draw close to God. With the eyes of faith we see Jesus in his word, in the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and in our neighbour. This seeing Jesus in faith in this life is a prelude to our seeing God face to face beyond this life. As we see Jesus with the eyes of faith, we will hear his call to keep on taking him as our way, our truth and our life.

And/Or

(iv) Feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles

We celebrate the feast of two of the twelve, Philip and James the son of Alphaeus. We know a little bit more about Philip than we do about James from the gospels. The first chapter of John’s gospel tells us that Philip was from Bethsaida, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, the same town that Peter and Andrew were from. According to that first chapter of John it was Philip who went to Nathanael to declare, ‘We have found him about whom Moses... and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth’. He met with very little enthusiasm from Nathaneal, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Yet, Philip wasn’t put off by this rather brusque response; he simply replied to Nathaneal, ‘Come and see’. Nathaneal eventually came and saw and stayed. Philip encourages us not to be too easily thrown when our enthusiasm for our faith is not shared by others. In this morning’s gospel, Philip makes a request of Jesus, ‘let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. He had yet to learn that, as Jesus said in reply, ‘to have seen me is to have seen the Father’. Philip was full of faith when he went to Nathaneal and his witness was very effective. Yet, it is clear that he was only at the beginning of his own faith journey; he had only begun to see. He had a great deal more to learn from Jesus. Philip reminds us that we don’t have to know it all to be effective witnesses for the Lord. We are called to share the Lord with each other while we are still on the way.

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: sjtbclontarf@eircom.net or  frmartinhogan@gmail.com

Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie  Please join us via our webcam.

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.

Facebook: St John the Baptist RC Parish, Clontarf.

Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.

[mcdouglecompany-blog]

Mexican Cartels- The World’s Deadliest Terrorists, Government Surveillance, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, Victor Davis Hansen, Chuck Yeager…WWII, Air Combat.

Mexican Cartels- The World’s Deadliest Terrorists, Government Surveillance, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, Victor Davis Hansen, Chuck Yeager…WWII, Air Combat.

Mexican Cartels- The World’s Deadliest Terrorists.

Government Surveillance: HACKING, SPYING on Computers of American Journalists.

Victor Davis Hansen World War II Course Playlist.

Chuck Yeager on Air Combat.

    Newt's World. Mexican Cartels- The World’s Deadliest Terrorists

The opioid crisis is not only about drug addiction and life expectancy, it's also about our national security. Newt talks to journalist Sara Carter.

    Government Surveillance: HACKING, SPYING on Computers of American Journalists, says Sharyl Attkisson

https://youtu.be/ggbHTDeJ0q4

Glenn Beck

Forget Chinese surveillance...it's happening here at home, too. Emmy award winning investigative reporter and former correspondent for CBS News, Sharyl Attkisson, details to Glenn the evidence she has proving government agents hacked into her computer and altered files relating to an investigation into the Fast and Furious scandal under the Obama administration. And Attkisson says her team now has an important witness to back their case -- a former government agent who admits to similar wrongdoing. Attkisson says the government has software they use to not only hack devices, but they can use Skype to listen to conversations as well. But, the Department of Justice will never want to investigate ITSELF for these crimes, so nothing will change UNTIL there's enough public pressure for real action and change. ► Click HERE to subscribe to Glenn Beck https://bit.ly/2UVLqhL ►Click HERE to subscribe to BlazeTV: https://www.blazetv.com/glenn Connect with Glenn on Social Media: http://twitter.com/glennbeck http://instagram.com/glennbeck http://facebook.com/glennbeck

    Victor Davis Hansen  World War II Course Playlist.

Hillsdale College

Get the rest of the course at https://bit.ly/2WjSmBW World War II, the greatest armed conflict in human history, encompassed global fighting in unprecedented ways. This course analyzes Allied and Axis investments and strategies that led one side to win and the other to lose. It also considers how the war’s diverse theaters, belligerents, and ways of fighting came eventually to define a single war.

    Chuck Yeager on Air Combat.

https://youtu.be/Yh_mKBVzpA8

Mark Thibault

Chuck Yeager discussing air combat through WW2, Korea and Vietnam. This footage came on VHS with the deluxe edition of Chuck Yeager's Air Combat flight simulation game in 1991.

Hillsdale College is an independent institution of higher learning founded in 1844 by men and women “grateful to God for the inestimable blessings” resulting from civil and religious liberty and “believing that the diffusion of learning is essential to the perpetuity of these blessings.” It pursues the stated object of the founders: “to furnish all persons who wish, irrespective of nation, color, or sex, a literary, scientific, [and] theological education” outstanding among American colleges “and to combine with this such moral and social instruction as will best develop the minds and improve the hearts of its pupils.” As a nonsectarian Christian institution, Hillsdale College maintains “by precept and example” the immemorial teachings and practices of the Christian faith. The College also considers itself a trustee of our Western philosophical and theological inheritance tracing to Athens and Jerusalem, a heritage finding its clearest expression in the American experiment of self-government under law. By training the young in the liberal arts, Hillsdale College prepares students to become leaders worthy of that legacy. By encouraging the scholarship of its faculty, it contributes to the preservation of that legacy for future generations. By publicly defending that legacy, it enlists the aid of other friends of free civilization and thus secures the conditions of its own survival and independence.

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Hillsdale College Free Course Catalog

https://online.hillsdale.edu/dashboard/courses

  Course Catalog

Questions about the Courses? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions page.

  Introduction to the Constitution—Available Now!

This twelve-lesson course explains the principles underlying the American founding as set forth in the Declaration of Independence and secured by the Constitution. The Founders believed that the principles in these documents were not simply preferences for their own day, but were truths that the sovereign and moral people of America could always rely on as guides in their pursuit of happiness through ordered liberty.

  Theology 101: The Western Theological Tradition

The Western theological tradition stretches back thousands of years to the time of the ancient Hebrews. This tradition has had a profound impact on the development of Western Civilization as a whole. This course will consider the origins and development of Western religious theology from the Old Testament through the twentieth century.

American Heritage—From Colonial Settlement to the Current Day

On July 4, 1776, America—acting under the authority of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”—declared its independence from Great Britain. The new nation, founded on the principle that “all Men are created equal,” eventually grew to become the most prosperous and powerful nation in the world. This course will consider the history of America from the colonial era to the present, including major challenges to the Founders’ principles.

  The U.S. Supreme Court

Article III of the U.S. Constitution vests the judicial power “in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” According to Federalist 78, the judicial branch “will always be the least dangerous” to the liberty of the American people. Yet, judicial decisions have done much to advance a Progressive agenda that poses a fundamental threat to liberty. This course will consider several landmark Supreme Court cases in relation to the Founders’ Constitution.

  Shakespeare: Hamlet and The Tempest

One of the world’s greatest poets, William Shakespeare is the author of plays that have been read and performed for more than 400 years. A close study of his works reveals timeless lessons about human nature, which offer a mirror for examining one’s own character. In Hamlet and The Tempest, Shakespeare considers those virtues and vices that make self-government and statesmanship possible or impossible to achieve.

  Public Policy from a Constitutional Viewpoint

The American Founders wrote a Constitution that established a government limited in size and scope, whose central purpose was to secure the natural rights of all Americans. By contrast, early Progressives rejected the notion of fixed limits on government, and their political descendants continue today to seek an ever-larger role for the federal bureaucracy in American life. In light of this fundamental and ongoing disagreement over the purpose of government, this course will consider contemporary public policy issues from a constitutional viewpoint.

  Athens and Sparta

A study of the ancient Greek cities of Athens and Sparta is essential for understanding the beginning of the story of Western Civilization. Moreover, such a study reveals timeless truths about the human condition that are applicable in any age. This course will consider life and government in Athens and Sparta, examine their respective roles in the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, and offer some conclusions regarding their continuing relevance.

  An Introduction to C.S. Lewis: Writings and Significance

C.S. Lewis was the greatest Christian apologist of the twentieth century. He was also the author of works of fiction, including the Chronicles of Narnia, and of philosophy, including The Abolition of Man. This course will consider Lewis’s apologetics and his fiction, as well as his philosophical and literary writings, and their continuing significance today.

Winston Churchill and Statesmanship

Winston Churchill was the greatest statesman of the 20th century, and one of the greatest in all of history. From a young age, Churchill understood the unique dangers of modern warfare, and he worked to respond to them. Though best known for his leadership during World War II, he was also a great defender of constitutionalism. A close study of Churchill’s words and deeds offers timeless lessons about the virtues, especially prudence, required for great statesmanship.

  The Federalist Papers

Written between October 1787 and August 1788, The Federalist Papers is a collection of newspaper essays written in defense of the Constitution. Writing under the penname Publius, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay explain the merits of the proposed Constitution, while confronting objections raised by its opponents. Thomas Jefferson described the work as “the best commentary on the principles of government, which ever was written.” This course will explore major themes of The Federalist Papers, such as the problem of majority faction, separation of powers, and the three branches of government.

  A Proper Understanding of K-12 Education: Theory and Practice

The American Founders recognized the central importance of education for the inculcation of the kind of knowledge and character that is essential to the maintenance of free government. For example, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 states, “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” This course will consider the older understanding of the purpose of education, the more recent Progressive approach that has become dominant today, and some essential elements of K-12 education.

The Presidency and the Constitution

This free, 10-week, not-for-credit course, taught by the Hillsdale College politics faculty, will help you understand the structure and function of executive power in the American constitutional order. The course begins with the place of the president in the constitutionalism of the Founding Fathers and examines how that role has changed with the rise of the modern Progressive administrative state.

Great Books 102: Renaissance to Modern

This 11-week, not-for-credit course, taught by Hillsdale College faculty, will introduce you to great books from the Renaissance through the modern era. You will explore the writings of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Austen, Twain, and more. This course will challenge you to seek timeless lessons regarding human nature, virtue, self-government, and liberty in the pages of the great books. 

Constitution 101: The Meaning & History of the Constitution

Taught by the Hillsdale College Politics faculty, this course will introduce you to the meaning and history of the United States Constitution. The course will examine a number of original source documents from the Founding period, including especially the Declaration of Independence and The Federalist Papers. The course will also consider two significant challenges to the Founders’ Constitution: the institution of slavery and the rise of Progressivism.

Great Books 101: Ancient to Medieval

This 11-week, not-for-credit course, taught by Hillsdale College faculty, will introduce you to great books from antiquity to the medieval period. You will explore the writings of Homer, St. Augustine, Dante, and more. This course will challenge you to seek timeless lessons regarding human nature, virtue, self-government, and liberty in the pages of the great books. 

Economics 101: The Principles of Free Market Economics

  This is a free, ten-week, not-for-credit online course offered by Hillsdale College. With introductory and concluding lectures by Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn, the eight lectures at its core—taught by Gary Wolfram, the William E. Simon Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Hillsdale College—will focus on the foundational principles of the free market. Topics will include the relationship of supply and demand, the “information problem” behind the failure of central planning, the rise of macroeconomics under the influence of John Maynard Keynes, and the 2008 financial crisis.

History 101: Western Heritage, From the Book of Genesis to John Locke

This is a free, ten-week, not-for-credit online course offered by Hillsdale College. With an introductory lecture by Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn, the nine lectures—by members of Hillsdale College's history department faculty—will focus on key aspects of the beginning of Western civilization and its Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian heritage.

Constitution 201: The Progressive Rejection of the Founding & the Rise of Bureaucratic Despotism

This is a free, ten-week, not-for-credit online course offered by Hillsdale College. With introductory and concluding lectures by Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn, the nine lectures—taught by members of Hillsdale College's politics department faculty—are a continuation of Constitution 101 (2012): The Meaning & History of the Constitution. These lectures will focus on the importance of the principles of the American Founding and the current assault on them by the Progressives.

Other Lectures and Programs

Hillsdale Dialogues: A Survey of Great Books, Great Men, and Great Ideas Weekly series featuring Hillsdale President Larry Arnn, national radio host Hugh Hewitt, and members of the Hillsdale College faculty.

Kirby Center Lectures Archive Hillsdale College's Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C.

Hillsdale College on YouTube

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Imprimis is the free monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College.  The content of Imprimis is drawn from speeches delivered to Hillsdale College-hosted events. First published in 1972, Imprimis is one of the most widely circulated opinion publications in the nation with over 3.6 million subscribers.

Visit- https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/

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States Quotes

Official Website: States Quotes

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• A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi… has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It’s not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for. – Thurgood Marshall • A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States. – James Madison • A State would be happy where philosophers were kings, or kings philosophers. – Plato • After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States would enter, in a formal way, what had been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus Garvey’s prophecy about the European scramble to maintain dominance over the whole world was now a reality. – John Henrik Clarke • All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State. – Albert Camus • And before our current legislature adjourns, we intend to become the first state of full and true choice by saying to every low and middle-income Hoosier family, if you think a non-government school is the right one for your child, you’re as entitled to that option as any wealthy family; here’s a voucher, go sign up. – Mitch Daniels • And I just think that we’re at a point in our economic life here in our state – and – and, candidly, across the country, where increased taxes is just the wrong way to go. The people of our state are not convinced that state government, county government, local government has done all they can with the money we already give them, rather than the money that we have… – Chris Christie • And I think musicians can better run this state than politicians. And, hell, beauticians can better run the state than politicians. – Kinky Friedman • Arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence. Not a pretty cocktail of personality traits in the best of situations. No sirree. Not a pretty cocktail in an office-mate and not a pretty cocktail in a head of state. In fact, in a leader, it’s a lethal cocktail. – Graydon Carter • As a state we are so uniquely positioned in so many ways. Our geography, our placement in the country, and our history positions us to be the state that propels energy efficiency as an industry. – Jennifer Granholm • As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states – no more, no less. – Noam Chomsky • As Commander in Chief of the United States Military, I will never send our sons and daughters and our brothers and sisters to die in a foreign land without telling the truth about why they’re going there. – Howard Dean • As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. – Arthur Conan Doyle • As most New Yorkers have done, I have given serious and generous thought to the state of my apartment should I get killed during the day. – Sloane Crosley • As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there. – John Donne • As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, – as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, – and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. – John Adams

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'State', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_state').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_state img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State. – Thomas Jefferson • Bravo can’t be responsible for the mental state of every single person that comes onto their network. – Bethenny Frankel • But I contend that if we’re providing total medical coverage for every man, woman, and child in Iraq, shouldn’t we at least be doing the same thing for every man, woman, and child in the United States? – Tony Campolo • But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state. – John le Carre • Canada and the United States are also working at the World Trade Organization and in our own hemisphere with negotiations for a Trade Area of the Americas to try to help countries create a positive climate for investment and trade. – Paul Cellucci • Character is the only secure foundation of the state. – Calvin Coolidge • Childhood, after all, is not an ending, but rather a state full of potent curiosity. – Rachel Cusk • Children today will grow up taking for granted that an African-American or a woman can, yes, become the president of the United States. – Hillary Clinton • Church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact – religion and politics should not be mingled. – Millard Fillmore • Close alliances with despots are never safe for free states. – Demosthenes • Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. – Winston Churchill • Cuba is like going to a whole other planet. It’s so different but it’s so similar to the United States, to Miami. It’s like a doppelgaenger. It’s the mirror image. And I have no doubt, that once Cuba becomes democratic, that it will be the favorite tourist destination for Americans. – Henry Louis Gates • Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable. – Marcus Tullius Cicero • Decency must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep. – Quentin Crisp • Deep down, the Iraqi people want the United States out. And their self-determination should be respected. – Peter Camejo • Delaware State has established itself as an institution of excellence in its own right and attracts a diversity of students from various races, socio-economic status and locations. – Michael N. Castle • Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus’ psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state. – Umberto Eco • During my travels in Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Europe and all over the United States, I have seen and heard the voices of people who want change. They want the stabilization of the economy, education and healthcare for all, renewable energy and an environmental vision with an eye on generations to come. – Michael Franti • Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion. – Thomas Jefferson • Even when I’m in quite a happy state of mind, I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do. – Ellie Goulding • Ever since Israel has been a nation the United States has provided the leadership. Every president down to the ages has done this in a fairly balanced way, including George Bush senior, Gerald Ford, and others including myself and Bill Clinton. – Jimmy Carter • Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn’t. – Arthur Eddington • Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents. – Thomas Jefferson • Far less wealthy industrialized countries have committed to end child poverty, while the United States is sliding backwards. We can do better. We must demand that our leaders do better. – Marian Wright Edelman • Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be “old-time gospel preaching.” This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states. – Tony Campolo • For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium. – Albert Camus • For people who have no critical acumen, a state is a mythical entity, for those who think critically it is a rational fiction, created by man in order to facilitate human coexistence. – Friedrich Durrenmatt • For ‘Power of 10,’ you can look at the methodology at CBS.com, it’s a company called Rasmussen Reports. We poll thousands and thousands of people for each question, a real cross section of the United States. – Drew Carey • Forty percent of the United States drains into the Mississippi. It’s agriculture. It’s golf courses. It’s domestic runoff from our lawns and roads. Ultimately, where does it go? Downstream into the gulf. – Sylvia Earle • I am Al Gore, and I used to be the next president of the United States of America. – Al Gore • I am an opponent of Saddam Hussein, but an opponent also, of the sanctions that have killed a million Iraqi children and an opponent of the United States’ apparent desire to plunge the Middle East into a new and devastating war. – George Galloway • I am neither frustrated nor planning anything other than being the best Secretary of State I could be. – Hillary Clinton • I am tolerant of all creeds. Yet if any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled. – Millard Fillmore • I beg you to speak of Woman as you do of the Negro, speak of her as a human being, as a citizen of the United States, as a half of the people in whose hands lies the destiny of this Nation. – Susan B. Anthony • I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute – where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote – where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference – and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him. – John F. Kennedy • I believe in the absolute separation of church and state and in the strict enforcement of the Constitution that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. – Al Smith • I believe in the American tradition of separation of church and state which is expressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution. By my office – and by personal conviction – I am sworn to uphold that tradition. – Lyndon B. Johnson • I believe in the separation of church and state and would not use my authority to violate this principle in any way. – Jimmy Carter • I believed what my father taught me about the separation of church and state, so when I was President I never invited Billy Graham to have services in the White House because I didn’t think that was appropriate. He was injured a little bit, until I explained it to him. – Jimmy Carter • I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. – Barack Obama • I contend that Bush would be a lot more moderate if there weren’t some fundamentalists breathing down his neck every time he wants to establish the state of Israel, every time he wants to do justice for the Palestinian people. – Tony Campolo • I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli. – George H. W. Bush • I do think voters do take into consideration – particularly early state voters – take into consideration a wide range of factors, including electability, and they know that part of electability is the total package that you’re presenting. – Elizabeth Edwards • I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. – Rick Santorum • I don’t have any affirmations, I don’t have any of that stuff. My natural state is to look at things as possibilities and as opportunities. – Michael J. Fox • I don’t think anyone really is interested in reading about my emotional state. It’s not even interesting to me. – Larry David • I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti. – Henry Louis Gates • I grew up in Danville, Illinois, right in the middle of the state. – Dick Van Dyke • I grew up in the southern United States in a city which at that time during the late ’40’s and early ’50’s was the most segregated city in the country, and in a sense learning how to oppose the status quo was a question of survival. – Angela Davis • I have lived in the United States for half of my life, my entire adult life. – Sheena Easton • I have pushed the boat out as far as I should in terms of taking on too many things. I’m getting older and I just could not take it any more. I am now monitoring myself very closely and I’m just trying not to get into that sort of state again. – Stephen Fry • I have walked majestically with kings and queens and presidents and other heads of states. – John Henrik Clarke • I mean, what’s great about touring is that’s what you do. You’re in a constant state of motion and then you stop to do a show and you move onto the next city. All you have to do is do the show. That’s the only responsibility that you have. – Margaret Cho • I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief. – Fidel Castro • I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection… and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacifick temper of the mind, which were the characteristicks of the divine Author of our blessed religion ; without an humble imitation of whose example, in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation. – George Washington • I said we are going to balance an $11 billion budget deficit in a $29 billion budget, so by percentage, the largest budget deficit in America, by percentage, larger than California, larger than New York, larger than Illinois. And we’re going to balance that without raising taxes on the people of the state of New Jersey. – Chris Christie • I started this charity, Fashion for Relief, in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina happened. New Orleans was actually the first place I visited in the United States. It was one of my first big jobs, a shoot for British Elle. It was April 14, 1986. – Naomi Campbell • I think Hell exists on Earth. It’s a psychological state, or it can be a physical state. People who have severe mental illness are in Hell. People who have lost a loved one are in Hell. I think there are all kinds of different hells. It’s not a place you go to after you die. – Al Franken • I think it’s fair to say that diplomacy today requires much more of that if you’re the United States of America than it did 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. – Hillary Clinton • I think the time has come for the United States to do even-handed justice. – Tony Campolo • I think the United States and the secretary of State should be concerned about the poverty in this country – people without health insurance. The United States should stop being the empire and be concerned about other countries. You’ve got to be more worried about your own people. – Hugo Chavez • I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths. – Jimmy Carter • I want to make it clear that the black race did not come to the United States culturally empty-handed. The role and importance of ethnic history is in how well it teaches a people to use their own talents, take pride in their own history and love their own memories. – John Henrik Clarke • I wish Obama would focus on governing the United States and would forget his country’s imperialist pretensions. – Hugo Chavez • If anybody ran a business like that they would be out of business quickly, and Barack Obama’s leadership is driving this business, the United States of America, toward a fiscal cliff. – Chris Christie • If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice. – Alan Dershowitz • Illegal immigration continues to be a major problem in the United States. We have people waiting to come here legally. And we should not be rewarding people who have come here illegally. – John Barrasso • I’m in charge of the State Department’s 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts. – Hillary Clinton • I’m President of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli! – George H. W. Bush • In 1988, as an unknown candidate, totally unknown, I won Iowa, came in second in New Hampshire, won South Dakota. I was ahead in every Super Tuesday state the day after South Dakota. The only problem was I didn’t have enough money. I had a million dollars left, and Al Gore had three and Michael Dukakis had three and it was lights out. – Dick Gephardt • In fact, looking at the darkest sides of the United States has only made me appreciate the things that we do right, the things that we do beautifully. We are, for all of our mistakes and all of our crimes, a remarkable place. – Junot Diaz • In his years in Washington, Senator Kerry has been one vote of a hundred in the United States Senate – and fortunately on matters of national security, he was very often in the minority. – Dick Cheney • In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. – Noam Chomsky • In short, it is the position of the people of the United States, as expressed by their representatives in Congress, that Israel’s fight is our fight. And so shall it be until the last terrorist on earth is in a cell or a cemetery. – Tom DeLay • In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497. – Warren Buffett • In the late 1990s, some of the worst terrorist atrocities in the world were what the Turkish government itself called state terror, namely massive atrocities, 80 percent of the arms coming from the United States, millions of refugees, tens of thousands of people killed, hideous repression, that’s international terror, and we can go on and on. – Noam Chomsky • In the United States, the government is bailing out banks, intervening in the economy, yet in Latin America, the Right continues to talk about ‘free markets.’ It’s totally outdated; they don’t have arguments; they don’t have any sense. – Hugo Chavez • In the United States, the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954, outlawing segregation in school systems, was greeted with mixed feelings of hope and skepticism by African-Americans. – John Henrik Clarke • In the United States, there is a restaurant called The Outback Steakhouse, and I could survive in there for several weeks at least, sustaining myself on bloomin’ onions and, I’m sure, their legitimate and very Australian cuisine. In the real Outback? I give myself about 14 minutes. – Steve Carell • In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes. – John Kenneth Galbraith • Isil poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East – including American citizens, personnel and facilities. If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States. – Barack Obama • It is not a question of religion, or of creed, or of party; it is a question of declaring and maintaining the great American principle of eternal separation between Church and State. – Elihu Root • It is not differences of opinion; it is geographical lines, rivers, and mountains which divide State from State, and make different nations of mankind. – Jefferson Davis • It used to be you needed to have a very large sophisticated state before you could even have a nuclear weapon… Now the technology is widespread enough. It doesn’t take very many people to be able to cobble together a devastating attack, and all it takes is one. – Dick Cheney • It was one of the compromises of the Constitution that the slave property in the Southern States should be recognized as property throughout the United States. – Jefferson Davis • It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state. – John Kenneth Galbraith • It’s sort of well-known that anytime any catastrophe happens anywhere in the world, they can count on the United States for help. – Morgan Freeman • It’s time for the people of the Empire State to strike back. – Andrew Cuomo • I’ve been on every interstate highway in the lower forty-eight states by now and I never get tired of the view. – Steve Earle • I’ve been to all 50 states, and traveled this whole country, and 90 percent of the people are good folks. The rest of them take after the other side of the family. – Jeff Foxworthy • I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth. – Jimmy Carter • I’ve written important articles on prevention, on the concept of the preventive state, how the law is moving much more in an area of trying to prevent wrongs than trying to deal with them after they occur. That will be my academic/intellectual legacy. – Alan Dershowitz • I’ve, we have in this state, like many other states, we’re experiencing an enormous budget deficit that we’re trying to grapple with. But we will have progress despite the deficits. – Jennifer Granholm • Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate. – Ulysses S. Grant • Let us not say that we will decide on a political basis at the national level that no State is competent to regulate the practice of medicine in that State if they decide to allow a doctor to prescribe marijuana, because that is what we are talking about. – Barney Frank • Let’s make two things clear: Isil is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of Isil’s victims have been Muslim. And Isil is certainly not a state. – Barack Obama • Marriage is the most natural state of man, and therefore the state in which one is most likely to find solid happiness. – Benjamin Franklin • Marriage should be viewed as an institution ordained by God and should be out of the control of the state. – Tony Campolo • May peace rule the universe, may peace rule in kingdoms and empires, may peace rule in states and in the lands of the potentates, may peace rule in the house of friends and may peace also rule in the house of enemies. – Virchand Gandhi • Most governments in the United States in a hundred years have not respected the peoples of Latin America. They have sponsored coup d’etats, assassinations. – Hugo Chavez • Most of the ancestors that I can trace were born here in the United States of America. And then it goes back to slavery. And I’m sure my ancestors go all the way back to Africa, but I feel more of an affinity for America than I do for Africa. I’m a black man in America. – Herman Cain • My experiences in film and theatre in the States have been much more rigorous-in England there’s an environment of, Let’s try this. – Kim Cattrall • My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn’t work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious. – Fidel Castro • My name became known because I was, one might say accidentally the target of state repression and because so many people throughout the country and other parts of the world organized around the demand for my freedom. – Angela Davis • Nevada’s one of the most conservative states in the Union, but you can do what you want in Vegas and nobody judges you. – Drew Carey • Never underestimate the power of the State to act out its own massive fantasies. – Don DeLillo • New Jersey is to New York what Santo Domingo is to the United States. I always felt that those two landscapes, not only just the landscapes themselves but their relationships to what we would call ‘a center’ or ‘the center of the universe,’ has in some ways defined my artistic and critical vision. – Junot Diaz • New York State is upside down and backwards; high taxes and low performance. The New York State government was at one time a national model. Now, unfortunately, it’s a national disgrace. Sometimes, the corruption in Albany could even make Boss Tweed blush. – Andrew Cuomo • No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith. – Anton Chekhov • No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. – James Madison • Now, in New Jersey, we have more government workers per square mile than any state in America. But since I’ve been governor we now have fewer people on the state payroll at any time since Christie Whitman left office in January 2001. That’s the right direction, Mr. President, not the wrong direction. – Chris Christie • Once you get to the Enlightenment, the way that powers get to be hyperpowers isn’t just by conquest. It’s through commerce and innovation. Societies like the Dutch Republic and the United States used tolerance to become a magnet for enterprising immigrants. – Amy Chua • One doesn’t become a soldier in a week – it takes training, study and discipline. There is no question that the finest Army in the world is found in the United States. – Daniel Inouye • One of my goals upon becoming Secretary of State was to take diplomacy out of capitals, out of government offices, into the media, into the streets of countries. – Hillary Clinton • One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies. – Terry Eagleton • One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits – a total of $3.8m on a $120,000 investment. – Chris Christie • Our brave soldiers and support personnel are engaged in a battle as important as any the United States has ever before waged, for the success of democracy in Iraq is a crucial test of the ideals this Nation was founded upon. – Virginia Foxx • Our educational results lag behind other states, and other nations, but worse still, behind the potential of the kids and the devoted teachers in our classrooms. – Mitch Daniels • Our forces saved the remnants of the Jewish people of Europe for a new life and a new hope in the reborn land of Israel. Along with all men of good will, I salute the young state and wish it well. – Dwight D. Eisenhower • Our state is in crisis. Our people are hurting. Now is the time when we all must resist the traditional, selfish call to protect your own turf at the cost of our state. It is time to leave the corner, join the sacrifice, come to the center of the room and be part of the solution. – Chris Christie • Raising the debt ceiling is not additional spending. It is simply saying, you, the United States of America, can continue to borrow the money you need to pay the bills you have already rung up. – Jay Carney • Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image. – Charles Dickens • Slavery existed before the formation of this Union. It derived from the Constitution that recognition which it would not have enjoyed without the confederation. If the States had not united together, there would have been no obligation on adjoining States to regard any species of property unknown to themselves. – Jefferson Davis • Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. – William Shakespeare • State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome. – Noam Chomsky • States are not moral agents. – Noam Chomsky • Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history. – James Madison • Surveillance technologies now available – including the monitoring of virtually all digital information – have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place. – Al Gore • Thank God, under our Constitution there was no connection between church and state. – James K. Polk • Thank God, under our Constitution there was no connection between Church and State, and that in my action as President of the United States I recognized no distinction of creeds in my appointments office. – James K. Polk • The “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. – Hugo Black • The ‘anti-globalisation movement’ is the most significant proponent of globalisation – but in the interests of people, not concentrations of state-private power. – Noam Chomsky • The civil Government, though bereft of every thing like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success; whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State. – James Madison • The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms. – Samuel Adams • The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity. – Henry Clay • The Declaration of Independence says when government fails, the people have the right to replace it. Well, New York State government has failed and the people have the right, indeed the people have the the people have the obligation, to act. – Andrew Cuomo • The divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community. – James A. Garfield • The divorce between church and state should be absolute. – James A. Garfield • The Drafters of the Constitution were intent on avoiding more than 100 years of religious intolerance and persecution in American colonial history and an even longer heritage of church-state problems in Europe. – John M Swomley • The entire North Polar ice cap is disappearing before our very eyes. It’s been the size of the continental United States for the last 3 million years and now 40 percent is gone and the rest of it is going. – Al Gore • The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is. – Dick Cheney • The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state. – John Kenneth Galbraith • The Israeli military plays more than a critical role in defending the citizens of the Jewish state. It also plays an important social, scientific and psychological role in preparing its young citizens for the challenging task of being Israelis in a difficult world. – Alan Dershowitz • The most powerful recent innovation in government is when states aggressively use community colleges for retraining. In Michigan, where large numbers of workers were displaced from the manufacturing industry, we created a wildly successful program: No Worker Left Behind. – Jennifer Granholm • The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state. – James Madison • The only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because a man I admire, Barack Obama, is president of the United States, is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again. – Henry Louis Gates • The only tactic liberals have is to try to intimidate people into thinking that the Tea Party is racist. The Tea Party is not a racist movement, period! If it were, why would the straw polls keep showing that the black guy is winning? That’s a rhetorical question. Let me state it: The black guy keeps winning. – Herman Cain • The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer…form the great body of the people of the United States they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws. – Andrew Jackson • The political system is broken, the economy is broken and so is society. That is why people are so depressed about the state of our country. – David Cameron • The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that’s not equity, it’s just creating a society where you can’t ask anything of people. – Jacques Delors • The problem with touring isn’t the traveling and the shows, it’s the vegetal state you get into. – Julian Casablancas • The question is what will Mitt Romney do as president if his policy is simply to be hands off and let the government be made so small it can be drowned in a bathtub. In the 21st century global economy, no state alone has the ability to compete against China. – Jennifer Granholm • The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion. – Jonathan Swift • The separation of church and state is extremely important to any of us who holds to the original traditions of our nation. . . . To change these traditions . . . would be harmful to our whole attitude of tolerance in the religious area. If we look at situations which have arisen in the past in Europe and other world areas, I think we will see the reason why it is wise to hold to our early traditions. – Eleanor Roosevelt • The Sierra Club in the United States has now really come out for population control and reduction. – Susan George • The time has come to return integrity, performance and dignity to New York and make it the Empire State once again. – Andrew Cuomo • The Union next to our liberties the most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the benefits and burdens of the Union. – John C. Calhoun • The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we – in a less final, less heroic way – be willing to give of ourselves. – Ronald Reagan • The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written. – Franklin D. Roosevelt • The United States has written the white history of the United States. It now needs to write the black, Latino, Indian, Asian and Caribbean history of the United States. – Carlos Fuentes • The United States needed a civil war to unite properly. – Umberto Eco • The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes. – Dick Cheney • The way I see it, I’m not going to Washington to be the 60th Democratic senator. I’m going to Washington to be the second senator from the state of Minnesota. – Al Franken • There are 10,000 local governments in the state of New York. Ten thousand! Town, village, lighting district, water district, sewer district, a special district to count the other districts in case you missed a district. – Andrew Cuomo • There is a hunger for the United States to be present again. – Hillary Clinton • There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America. – Otto von Bismarck • There’s every reason to believe there will be further attacks attempted against the United States. For us to spend so much time patting ourselves on the back because we got bin Laden that we miss the next attack would be a terrible tragedy. – Dick Cheney • There’s no doubt that the Christian right has gone to bed with the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. And there’s been a melding in their goals when it comes to the separation of church and state. I’ve always believed in the separation of church and state. – Jimmy Carter • There’s something depressing about a young couple helplessly in love. Their state is so perfect, it must be doomed. They project such qualities on their lover that only disappointment can follow. – Roger Ebert • To deny women directors, as I suspect is happening in the States, is to deny the feminine vision. – Jane Campion • To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students, I say, you too can be president of the United States. – George W. Bush • Today’s difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal. – Friedrich Durrenmatt • Unfenced by law, the unmarried lover can quit a bad relationship at any time. But you – the legally married person who wants to escape doomed love – may soon discover that a significant portion of your marriage contract belongs to the State, and that it sometimes takes a very long while for the State to grant you your leave. – Elizabeth Gilbert • War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means. – Carl von Clausewitz • We believe in a flexible union of free member states who share treaties and institutions and pursue together the ideal of co-operation. To represent and promote the values of European civilisation in the world. To advance our shared interests by using our collective power to open markets. And to build a strong economic base across the whole of Europe. – David Cameron • We don’t have an Official Secrets Act in the United States, as other countries do. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association are more important than protecting secrets. – Alan Dershowitz • We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States. – George Washington • We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we ‘cling’ to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual – we spend less money than we take in. – Mitch Daniels • We in the United States should be all the more thankful for the freedom and religious tolerance we enjoy. And we should always remember the lessons learned from the Holocaust, in hopes we stay vigilant against such inhumanity now and in the future. – Charlie Dent • We must make it clear that a platform of ‘I hate gay men and women’ is not a way to become president of the United States. – Jimmy Carter • We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. – Gouverneur Morris • We were trying to get all of the planes down out of the sky. And we watched as the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed – something no one expected and anticipated. And you could sit there and see and be aware that thousands of people were at that moment being killed as a result of the terrorist attacks that struck the United States. – Dick Cheney • We’ve gotten a long way on missile defense. We know how to do it. We know how to take down incoming warheads, but we need to do a lot more work in order to be – to deploy a system that’ll defend the United States against those kinds of limited strikes that might be possible by a nuclear armed North Korea or Iran. – Dick Cheney • What I found when I became Secretary of State was a lot of doubts and a lot of concerns and fears from friends, allies, around the world. – Hillary Clinton • What the United States has to do is send a clear message to Iran that they will not be able to develop nuclear weapons. Why endure the difficulty of sanctions if they are not going to be able to develop nuclear weapons anyway? – Alan Dershowitz • When a population saves a lot, the funds are invested outside the country as well as inside. If the Japanese invest in the United States, it pushes their exchange rate down and makes their manufacturing more competitive. – Evan Davis • When I decide who to vote for as President, I ask myself who will be best for America and for the world. An important component of my answer involves my assessment of the candidate’s willingness and ability to protect Israel’s security, since I strongly believe that a strong Israel serves the interests of the United States and of world peace. – Alan Dershowitz • When Marcus Garvey died in 1940, the role of the British Empire was already being challenged by India and the rising expectations of her African colonies. Marcus Garvey’s avocation of African redemption and the restoration of the African state’s sovereign political entity in world affairs was still a dream without fulfillment. – John Henrik Clarke • When you listen to Christian radio stations – and there are thousands of them now in the United States – and when you listen to Christian television networks – and there are thousands of Christian television shows across the country – they are all politically right. – Tony Campolo • Why should a city be mandated to do something by the federal government or state government without the money to do it? – Richard M. Daley • Yesterday, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan… We will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God. – Franklin D. Roosevelt • You can go into neighborhoods in the United States where people dress a certain way because they don’t want to be out of touch, where boys wear pants down to their knees, which nobody has compelled them to do but they pick up the cultural norms, or where girls are improperly dressed by my eyes, but that’s what they see in the media. – Hillary Clinton • You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life. – Bob Dylan • You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too. – John Kenneth Galbraith [clickbank-storefront-bestselling]

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[equitiesstocks]

States Quotes

Official Website: States Quotes

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• A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi… has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It’s not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for. – Thurgood Marshall • A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States. – James Madison • A State would be happy where philosophers were kings, or kings philosophers. – Plato • After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States would enter, in a formal way, what had been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus Garvey’s prophecy about the European scramble to maintain dominance over the whole world was now a reality. – John Henrik Clarke • All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State. – Albert Camus • And before our current legislature adjourns, we intend to become the first state of full and true choice by saying to every low and middle-income Hoosier family, if you think a non-government school is the right one for your child, you’re as entitled to that option as any wealthy family; here’s a voucher, go sign up. – Mitch Daniels • And I just think that we’re at a point in our economic life here in our state – and – and, candidly, across the country, where increased taxes is just the wrong way to go. The people of our state are not convinced that state government, county government, local government has done all they can with the money we already give them, rather than the money that we have… – Chris Christie • And I think musicians can better run this state than politicians. And, hell, beauticians can better run the state than politicians. – Kinky Friedman • Arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence. Not a pretty cocktail of personality traits in the best of situations. No sirree. Not a pretty cocktail in an office-mate and not a pretty cocktail in a head of state. In fact, in a leader, it’s a lethal cocktail. – Graydon Carter • As a state we are so uniquely positioned in so many ways. Our geography, our placement in the country, and our history positions us to be the state that propels energy efficiency as an industry. – Jennifer Granholm • As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states – no more, no less. – Noam Chomsky • As Commander in Chief of the United States Military, I will never send our sons and daughters and our brothers and sisters to die in a foreign land without telling the truth about why they’re going there. – Howard Dean • As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. – Arthur Conan Doyle • As most New Yorkers have done, I have given serious and generous thought to the state of my apartment should I get killed during the day. – Sloane Crosley • As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there. – John Donne • As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, – as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, – and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. – John Adams

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'State', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_state').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_state img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State. – Thomas Jefferson • Bravo can’t be responsible for the mental state of every single person that comes onto their network. – Bethenny Frankel • But I contend that if we’re providing total medical coverage for every man, woman, and child in Iraq, shouldn’t we at least be doing the same thing for every man, woman, and child in the United States? – Tony Campolo • But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state. – John le Carre • Canada and the United States are also working at the World Trade Organization and in our own hemisphere with negotiations for a Trade Area of the Americas to try to help countries create a positive climate for investment and trade. – Paul Cellucci • Character is the only secure foundation of the state. – Calvin Coolidge • Childhood, after all, is not an ending, but rather a state full of potent curiosity. – Rachel Cusk • Children today will grow up taking for granted that an African-American or a woman can, yes, become the president of the United States. – Hillary Clinton • Church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact – religion and politics should not be mingled. – Millard Fillmore • Close alliances with despots are never safe for free states. – Demosthenes • Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. – Winston Churchill • Cuba is like going to a whole other planet. It’s so different but it’s so similar to the United States, to Miami. It’s like a doppelgaenger. It’s the mirror image. And I have no doubt, that once Cuba becomes democratic, that it will be the favorite tourist destination for Americans. – Henry Louis Gates • Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable. – Marcus Tullius Cicero • Decency must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep. – Quentin Crisp • Deep down, the Iraqi people want the United States out. And their self-determination should be respected. – Peter Camejo • Delaware State has established itself as an institution of excellence in its own right and attracts a diversity of students from various races, socio-economic status and locations. – Michael N. Castle • Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus’ psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state. – Umberto Eco • During my travels in Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Europe and all over the United States, I have seen and heard the voices of people who want change. They want the stabilization of the economy, education and healthcare for all, renewable energy and an environmental vision with an eye on generations to come. – Michael Franti • Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion. – Thomas Jefferson • Even when I’m in quite a happy state of mind, I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do. – Ellie Goulding • Ever since Israel has been a nation the United States has provided the leadership. Every president down to the ages has done this in a fairly balanced way, including George Bush senior, Gerald Ford, and others including myself and Bill Clinton. – Jimmy Carter • Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn’t. – Arthur Eddington • Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents. – Thomas Jefferson • Far less wealthy industrialized countries have committed to end child poverty, while the United States is sliding backwards. We can do better. We must demand that our leaders do better. – Marian Wright Edelman • Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be “old-time gospel preaching.” This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states. – Tony Campolo • For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium. – Albert Camus • For people who have no critical acumen, a state is a mythical entity, for those who think critically it is a rational fiction, created by man in order to facilitate human coexistence. – Friedrich Durrenmatt • For ‘Power of 10,’ you can look at the methodology at CBS.com, it’s a company called Rasmussen Reports. We poll thousands and thousands of people for each question, a real cross section of the United States. – Drew Carey • Forty percent of the United States drains into the Mississippi. It’s agriculture. It’s golf courses. It’s domestic runoff from our lawns and roads. Ultimately, where does it go? Downstream into the gulf. – Sylvia Earle • I am Al Gore, and I used to be the next president of the United States of America. – Al Gore • I am an opponent of Saddam Hussein, but an opponent also, of the sanctions that have killed a million Iraqi children and an opponent of the United States’ apparent desire to plunge the Middle East into a new and devastating war. – George Galloway • I am neither frustrated nor planning anything other than being the best Secretary of State I could be. – Hillary Clinton • I am tolerant of all creeds. Yet if any sect suffered itself to be used for political objects I would meet it by political opposition. In my view church and state should be separate, not only in form, but fact. Religion and politics should not be mingled. – Millard Fillmore • I beg you to speak of Woman as you do of the Negro, speak of her as a human being, as a citizen of the United States, as a half of the people in whose hands lies the destiny of this Nation. – Susan B. Anthony • I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute – where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote – where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference – and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him. – John F. Kennedy • I believe in the absolute separation of church and state and in the strict enforcement of the Constitution that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. – Al Smith • I believe in the American tradition of separation of church and state which is expressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution. By my office – and by personal conviction – I am sworn to uphold that tradition. – Lyndon B. Johnson • I believe in the separation of church and state and would not use my authority to violate this principle in any way. – Jimmy Carter • I believed what my father taught me about the separation of church and state, so when I was President I never invited Billy Graham to have services in the White House because I didn’t think that was appropriate. He was injured a little bit, until I explained it to him. – Jimmy Carter • I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. – Barack Obama • I contend that Bush would be a lot more moderate if there weren’t some fundamentalists breathing down his neck every time he wants to establish the state of Israel, every time he wants to do justice for the Palestinian people. – Tony Campolo • I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli. – George H. W. Bush • I do think voters do take into consideration – particularly early state voters – take into consideration a wide range of factors, including electability, and they know that part of electability is the total package that you’re presenting. – Elizabeth Edwards • I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. – Rick Santorum • I don’t have any affirmations, I don’t have any of that stuff. My natural state is to look at things as possibilities and as opportunities. – Michael J. Fox • I don’t think anyone really is interested in reading about my emotional state. It’s not even interesting to me. – Larry David • I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti. – Henry Louis Gates • I grew up in Danville, Illinois, right in the middle of the state. – Dick Van Dyke • I grew up in the southern United States in a city which at that time during the late ’40’s and early ’50’s was the most segregated city in the country, and in a sense learning how to oppose the status quo was a question of survival. – Angela Davis • I have lived in the United States for half of my life, my entire adult life. – Sheena Easton • I have pushed the boat out as far as I should in terms of taking on too many things. I’m getting older and I just could not take it any more. I am now monitoring myself very closely and I’m just trying not to get into that sort of state again. – Stephen Fry • I have walked majestically with kings and queens and presidents and other heads of states. – John Henrik Clarke • I mean, what’s great about touring is that’s what you do. You’re in a constant state of motion and then you stop to do a show and you move onto the next city. All you have to do is do the show. That’s the only responsibility that you have. – Margaret Cho • I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief. – Fidel Castro • I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection… and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacifick temper of the mind, which were the characteristicks of the divine Author of our blessed religion ; without an humble imitation of whose example, in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation. – George Washington • I said we are going to balance an $11 billion budget deficit in a $29 billion budget, so by percentage, the largest budget deficit in America, by percentage, larger than California, larger than New York, larger than Illinois. And we’re going to balance that without raising taxes on the people of the state of New Jersey. – Chris Christie • I started this charity, Fashion for Relief, in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina happened. New Orleans was actually the first place I visited in the United States. It was one of my first big jobs, a shoot for British Elle. It was April 14, 1986. – Naomi Campbell • I think Hell exists on Earth. It’s a psychological state, or it can be a physical state. People who have severe mental illness are in Hell. People who have lost a loved one are in Hell. I think there are all kinds of different hells. It’s not a place you go to after you die. – Al Franken • I think it’s fair to say that diplomacy today requires much more of that if you’re the United States of America than it did 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. – Hillary Clinton • I think the time has come for the United States to do even-handed justice. – Tony Campolo • I think the United States and the secretary of State should be concerned about the poverty in this country – people without health insurance. The United States should stop being the empire and be concerned about other countries. You’ve got to be more worried about your own people. – Hugo Chavez • I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths. – Jimmy Carter • I want to make it clear that the black race did not come to the United States culturally empty-handed. The role and importance of ethnic history is in how well it teaches a people to use their own talents, take pride in their own history and love their own memories. – John Henrik Clarke • I wish Obama would focus on governing the United States and would forget his country’s imperialist pretensions. – Hugo Chavez • If anybody ran a business like that they would be out of business quickly, and Barack Obama’s leadership is driving this business, the United States of America, toward a fiscal cliff. – Chris Christie • If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice. – Alan Dershowitz • Illegal immigration continues to be a major problem in the United States. We have people waiting to come here legally. And we should not be rewarding people who have come here illegally. – John Barrasso • I’m in charge of the State Department’s 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts. – Hillary Clinton • I’m President of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli! – George H. W. Bush • In 1988, as an unknown candidate, totally unknown, I won Iowa, came in second in New Hampshire, won South Dakota. I was ahead in every Super Tuesday state the day after South Dakota. The only problem was I didn’t have enough money. I had a million dollars left, and Al Gore had three and Michael Dukakis had three and it was lights out. – Dick Gephardt • In fact, looking at the darkest sides of the United States has only made me appreciate the things that we do right, the things that we do beautifully. We are, for all of our mistakes and all of our crimes, a remarkable place. – Junot Diaz • In his years in Washington, Senator Kerry has been one vote of a hundred in the United States Senate – and fortunately on matters of national security, he was very often in the minority. – Dick Cheney • In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. – Noam Chomsky • In short, it is the position of the people of the United States, as expressed by their representatives in Congress, that Israel’s fight is our fight. And so shall it be until the last terrorist on earth is in a cell or a cemetery. – Tom DeLay • In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497. – Warren Buffett • In the late 1990s, some of the worst terrorist atrocities in the world were what the Turkish government itself called state terror, namely massive atrocities, 80 percent of the arms coming from the United States, millions of refugees, tens of thousands of people killed, hideous repression, that’s international terror, and we can go on and on. – Noam Chomsky • In the United States, the government is bailing out banks, intervening in the economy, yet in Latin America, the Right continues to talk about ‘free markets.’ It’s totally outdated; they don’t have arguments; they don’t have any sense. – Hugo Chavez • In the United States, the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954, outlawing segregation in school systems, was greeted with mixed feelings of hope and skepticism by African-Americans. – John Henrik Clarke • In the United States, there is a restaurant called The Outback Steakhouse, and I could survive in there for several weeks at least, sustaining myself on bloomin’ onions and, I’m sure, their legitimate and very Australian cuisine. In the real Outback? I give myself about 14 minutes. – Steve Carell • In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes. – John Kenneth Galbraith • Isil poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East – including American citizens, personnel and facilities. If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region, including to the United States. – Barack Obama • It is not a question of religion, or of creed, or of party; it is a question of declaring and maintaining the great American principle of eternal separation between Church and State. – Elihu Root • It is not differences of opinion; it is geographical lines, rivers, and mountains which divide State from State, and make different nations of mankind. – Jefferson Davis • It used to be you needed to have a very large sophisticated state before you could even have a nuclear weapon… Now the technology is widespread enough. It doesn’t take very many people to be able to cobble together a devastating attack, and all it takes is one. – Dick Cheney • It was one of the compromises of the Constitution that the slave property in the Southern States should be recognized as property throughout the United States. – Jefferson Davis • It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state. – John Kenneth Galbraith • It’s sort of well-known that anytime any catastrophe happens anywhere in the world, they can count on the United States for help. – Morgan Freeman • It’s time for the people of the Empire State to strike back. – Andrew Cuomo • I’ve been on every interstate highway in the lower forty-eight states by now and I never get tired of the view. – Steve Earle • I’ve been to all 50 states, and traveled this whole country, and 90 percent of the people are good folks. The rest of them take after the other side of the family. – Jeff Foxworthy • I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth. – Jimmy Carter • I’ve written important articles on prevention, on the concept of the preventive state, how the law is moving much more in an area of trying to prevent wrongs than trying to deal with them after they occur. That will be my academic/intellectual legacy. – Alan Dershowitz • I’ve, we have in this state, like many other states, we’re experiencing an enormous budget deficit that we’re trying to grapple with. But we will have progress despite the deficits. – Jennifer Granholm • Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate. – Ulysses S. Grant • Let us not say that we will decide on a political basis at the national level that no State is competent to regulate the practice of medicine in that State if they decide to allow a doctor to prescribe marijuana, because that is what we are talking about. – Barney Frank • Let’s make two things clear: Isil is not “Islamic.” No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of Isil’s victims have been Muslim. And Isil is certainly not a state. – Barack Obama • Marriage is the most natural state of man, and therefore the state in which one is most likely to find solid happiness. – Benjamin Franklin • Marriage should be viewed as an institution ordained by God and should be out of the control of the state. – Tony Campolo • May peace rule the universe, may peace rule in kingdoms and empires, may peace rule in states and in the lands of the potentates, may peace rule in the house of friends and may peace also rule in the house of enemies. – Virchand Gandhi • Most governments in the United States in a hundred years have not respected the peoples of Latin America. They have sponsored coup d’etats, assassinations. – Hugo Chavez • Most of the ancestors that I can trace were born here in the United States of America. And then it goes back to slavery. And I’m sure my ancestors go all the way back to Africa, but I feel more of an affinity for America than I do for Africa. I’m a black man in America. – Herman Cain • My experiences in film and theatre in the States have been much more rigorous-in England there’s an environment of, Let’s try this. – Kim Cattrall • My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn’t work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious. – Fidel Castro • My name became known because I was, one might say accidentally the target of state repression and because so many people throughout the country and other parts of the world organized around the demand for my freedom. – Angela Davis • Nevada’s one of the most conservative states in the Union, but you can do what you want in Vegas and nobody judges you. – Drew Carey • Never underestimate the power of the State to act out its own massive fantasies. – Don DeLillo • New Jersey is to New York what Santo Domingo is to the United States. I always felt that those two landscapes, not only just the landscapes themselves but their relationships to what we would call ‘a center’ or ‘the center of the universe,’ has in some ways defined my artistic and critical vision. – Junot Diaz • New York State is upside down and backwards; high taxes and low performance. The New York State government was at one time a national model. Now, unfortunately, it’s a national disgrace. Sometimes, the corruption in Albany could even make Boss Tweed blush. – Andrew Cuomo • No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith. – Anton Chekhov • No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. – James Madison • Now, in New Jersey, we have more government workers per square mile than any state in America. But since I’ve been governor we now have fewer people on the state payroll at any time since Christie Whitman left office in January 2001. That’s the right direction, Mr. President, not the wrong direction. – Chris Christie • Once you get to the Enlightenment, the way that powers get to be hyperpowers isn’t just by conquest. It’s through commerce and innovation. Societies like the Dutch Republic and the United States used tolerance to become a magnet for enterprising immigrants. – Amy Chua • One doesn’t become a soldier in a week – it takes training, study and discipline. There is no question that the finest Army in the world is found in the United States. – Daniel Inouye • One of my goals upon becoming Secretary of State was to take diplomacy out of capitals, out of government offices, into the media, into the streets of countries. – Hillary Clinton • One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies. – Terry Eagleton • One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits – a total of $3.8m on a $120,000 investment. – Chris Christie • Our brave soldiers and support personnel are engaged in a battle as important as any the United States has ever before waged, for the success of democracy in Iraq is a crucial test of the ideals this Nation was founded upon. – Virginia Foxx • Our educational results lag behind other states, and other nations, but worse still, behind the potential of the kids and the devoted teachers in our classrooms. – Mitch Daniels • Our forces saved the remnants of the Jewish people of Europe for a new life and a new hope in the reborn land of Israel. Along with all men of good will, I salute the young state and wish it well. – Dwight D. Eisenhower • Our state is in crisis. Our people are hurting. Now is the time when we all must resist the traditional, selfish call to protect your own turf at the cost of our state. It is time to leave the corner, join the sacrifice, come to the center of the room and be part of the solution. – Chris Christie • Raising the debt ceiling is not additional spending. It is simply saying, you, the United States of America, can continue to borrow the money you need to pay the bills you have already rung up. – Jay Carney • Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image. – Charles Dickens • Slavery existed before the formation of this Union. It derived from the Constitution that recognition which it would not have enjoyed without the confederation. If the States had not united together, there would have been no obligation on adjoining States to regard any species of property unknown to themselves. – Jefferson Davis • Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. – William Shakespeare • State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome. – Noam Chomsky • States are not moral agents. – Noam Chomsky • Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history. – James Madison • Surveillance technologies now available – including the monitoring of virtually all digital information – have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place. – Al Gore • Thank God, under our Constitution there was no connection between church and state. – James K. Polk • Thank God, under our Constitution there was no connection between Church and State, and that in my action as President of the United States I recognized no distinction of creeds in my appointments office. – James K. Polk • The “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. – Hugo Black • The ‘anti-globalisation movement’ is the most significant proponent of globalisation – but in the interests of people, not concentrations of state-private power. – Noam Chomsky • The civil Government, though bereft of every thing like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success; whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State. – James Madison • The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms. – Samuel Adams • The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity. – Henry Clay • The Declaration of Independence says when government fails, the people have the right to replace it. Well, New York State government has failed and the people have the right, indeed the people have the the people have the obligation, to act. – Andrew Cuomo • The divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community. – James A. Garfield • The divorce between church and state should be absolute. – James A. Garfield • The Drafters of the Constitution were intent on avoiding more than 100 years of religious intolerance and persecution in American colonial history and an even longer heritage of church-state problems in Europe. – John M Swomley • The entire North Polar ice cap is disappearing before our very eyes. It’s been the size of the continental United States for the last 3 million years and now 40 percent is gone and the rest of it is going. – Al Gore • The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is. – Dick Cheney • The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state. – John Kenneth Galbraith • The Israeli military plays more than a critical role in defending the citizens of the Jewish state. It also plays an important social, scientific and psychological role in preparing its young citizens for the challenging task of being Israelis in a difficult world. – Alan Dershowitz • The most powerful recent innovation in government is when states aggressively use community colleges for retraining. In Michigan, where large numbers of workers were displaced from the manufacturing industry, we created a wildly successful program: No Worker Left Behind. – Jennifer Granholm • The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state. – James Madison • The only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because a man I admire, Barack Obama, is president of the United States, is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again. – Henry Louis Gates • The only tactic liberals have is to try to intimidate people into thinking that the Tea Party is racist. The Tea Party is not a racist movement, period! If it were, why would the straw polls keep showing that the black guy is winning? That’s a rhetorical question. Let me state it: The black guy keeps winning. – Herman Cain • The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer…form the great body of the people of the United States they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws. – Andrew Jackson • The political system is broken, the economy is broken and so is society. That is why people are so depressed about the state of our country. – David Cameron • The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that’s not equity, it’s just creating a society where you can’t ask anything of people. – Jacques Delors • The problem with touring isn’t the traveling and the shows, it’s the vegetal state you get into. – Julian Casablancas • The question is what will Mitt Romney do as president if his policy is simply to be hands off and let the government be made so small it can be drowned in a bathtub. In the 21st century global economy, no state alone has the ability to compete against China. – Jennifer Granholm • The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion. – Jonathan Swift • The separation of church and state is extremely important to any of us who holds to the original traditions of our nation. . . . To change these traditions . . . would be harmful to our whole attitude of tolerance in the religious area. If we look at situations which have arisen in the past in Europe and other world areas, I think we will see the reason why it is wise to hold to our early traditions. – Eleanor Roosevelt • The Sierra Club in the United States has now really come out for population control and reduction. – Susan George • The time has come to return integrity, performance and dignity to New York and make it the Empire State once again. – Andrew Cuomo • The Union next to our liberties the most dear. May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the benefits and burdens of the Union. – John C. Calhoun • The United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we – in a less final, less heroic way – be willing to give of ourselves. – Ronald Reagan • The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written. – Franklin D. Roosevelt • The United States has written the white history of the United States. It now needs to write the black, Latino, Indian, Asian and Caribbean history of the United States. – Carlos Fuentes • The United States needed a civil war to unite properly. – Umberto Eco • The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I’m not at all sure that that’s what the Obama administration believes. – Dick Cheney • The way I see it, I’m not going to Washington to be the 60th Democratic senator. I’m going to Washington to be the second senator from the state of Minnesota. – Al Franken • There are 10,000 local governments in the state of New York. Ten thousand! Town, village, lighting district, water district, sewer district, a special district to count the other districts in case you missed a district. – Andrew Cuomo • There is a hunger for the United States to be present again. – Hillary Clinton • There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America. – Otto von Bismarck • There’s every reason to believe there will be further attacks attempted against the United States. For us to spend so much time patting ourselves on the back because we got bin Laden that we miss the next attack would be a terrible tragedy. – Dick Cheney • There’s no doubt that the Christian right has gone to bed with the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. And there’s been a melding in their goals when it comes to the separation of church and state. I’ve always believed in the separation of church and state. – Jimmy Carter • There’s something depressing about a young couple helplessly in love. Their state is so perfect, it must be doomed. They project such qualities on their lover that only disappointment can follow. – Roger Ebert • To deny women directors, as I suspect is happening in the States, is to deny the feminine vision. – Jane Campion • To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students, I say, you too can be president of the United States. – George W. Bush • Today’s difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal. – Friedrich Durrenmatt • Unfenced by law, the unmarried lover can quit a bad relationship at any time. But you – the legally married person who wants to escape doomed love – may soon discover that a significant portion of your marriage contract belongs to the State, and that it sometimes takes a very long while for the State to grant you your leave. – Elizabeth Gilbert • War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means. – Carl von Clausewitz • We believe in a flexible union of free member states who share treaties and institutions and pursue together the ideal of co-operation. To represent and promote the values of European civilisation in the world. To advance our shared interests by using our collective power to open markets. And to build a strong economic base across the whole of Europe. – David Cameron • We don’t have an Official Secrets Act in the United States, as other countries do. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association are more important than protecting secrets. – Alan Dershowitz • We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States. – George Washington • We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we ‘cling’ to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual – we spend less money than we take in. – Mitch Daniels • We in the United States should be all the more thankful for the freedom and religious tolerance we enjoy. And we should always remember the lessons learned from the Holocaust, in hopes we stay vigilant against such inhumanity now and in the future. – Charlie Dent • We must make it clear that a platform of ‘I hate gay men and women’ is not a way to become president of the United States. – Jimmy Carter • We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. – Gouverneur Morris • We were trying to get all of the planes down out of the sky. And we watched as the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed – something no one expected and anticipated. And you could sit there and see and be aware that thousands of people were at that moment being killed as a result of the terrorist attacks that struck the United States. – Dick Cheney • We’ve gotten a long way on missile defense. We know how to do it. We know how to take down incoming warheads, but we need to do a lot more work in order to be – to deploy a system that’ll defend the United States against those kinds of limited strikes that might be possible by a nuclear armed North Korea or Iran. – Dick Cheney • What I found when I became Secretary of State was a lot of doubts and a lot of concerns and fears from friends, allies, around the world. – Hillary Clinton • What the United States has to do is send a clear message to Iran that they will not be able to develop nuclear weapons. Why endure the difficulty of sanctions if they are not going to be able to develop nuclear weapons anyway? – Alan Dershowitz • When a population saves a lot, the funds are invested outside the country as well as inside. If the Japanese invest in the United States, it pushes their exchange rate down and makes their manufacturing more competitive. – Evan Davis • When I decide who to vote for as President, I ask myself who will be best for America and for the world. An important component of my answer involves my assessment of the candidate’s willingness and ability to protect Israel’s security, since I strongly believe that a strong Israel serves the interests of the United States and of world peace. – Alan Dershowitz • When Marcus Garvey died in 1940, the role of the British Empire was already being challenged by India and the rising expectations of her African colonies. Marcus Garvey’s avocation of African redemption and the restoration of the African state’s sovereign political entity in world affairs was still a dream without fulfillment. – John Henrik Clarke • When you listen to Christian radio stations – and there are thousands of them now in the United States – and when you listen to Christian television networks – and there are thousands of Christian television shows across the country – they are all politically right. – Tony Campolo • Why should a city be mandated to do something by the federal government or state government without the money to do it? – Richard M. Daley • Yesterday, December 7, 1941 a date which will live in infamy the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan… We will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God. – Franklin D. Roosevelt • You can go into neighborhoods in the United States where people dress a certain way because they don’t want to be out of touch, where boys wear pants down to their knees, which nobody has compelled them to do but they pick up the cultural norms, or where girls are improperly dressed by my eyes, but that’s what they see in the media. – Hillary Clinton • You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life. – Bob Dylan • You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too. – John Kenneth Galbraith [clickbank-storefront-bestselling]

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