My critics feel there was a lack of fairness in the opera, because the Palestinians are treated with romantic harmonies and choruses of longing, and the Jews are treated unfairly because all we hear about them are their bodily ailments. And, yes, you do hear about Marilyn and Leon Klinghoffer's bodily problems, like their hip replacements, because that's exactly the sort of thing that a retired person on a cruise would talk about.
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My critics feel there was a lack of fairness in the opera, because the Palestinians are treated with romantic harmonies and choruses of longing, and the Jews are treated unfairly because all we hear about them are their bodily ailments, ... And, yes, you do hear about Marilyn and Leon Klinghoffer's bodily problems, like their hip replacements, because that's exactly the sort of thing that a retired person on a cruise would talk about.
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The slanders poured down like Niagara. If you take into consideration the setting -- the war and the revolution -- and the character of the accused -- revolutionary leaders of millions who were conducting their party to the sovereign power -- you can say without exaggeration that July 1917 was the month of the most gigantic slander in world history.
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Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain -- at least in a poor country like Russia -- and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.
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In inner-party politics, these methods lead, as we shall yet see, to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a dictator substitutes himself for the central committee.
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If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.
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There are no illegitimate children - only illegitimate parents.
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Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement.
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There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.
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I extract what I consider the best material from different sources. But often the material I perform comes from a very strange location in history, which are minstrel shows.
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Any biographer must of necessity become a pilgrim a peripatetic, obsessed literary pilgrim, a traveler with four eyes.
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If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
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At best, most college presidents are running something that is somewhere between a faltering corporation and a hotel.
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Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.
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The secret of biography resides in finding the link between talent and achievement. A biography seems irrelevant if it doesn't discover the overlap between what the individual did and the life that made this possible. Without discovering that, you have shapeless happenings and gossip.
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The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.
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If we had more time for discussion, we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
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Almost everybody is enthusiastic about the promise of biotechnology to cure disease and to relieve suffering.
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Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
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Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.
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Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.
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If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any t...
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You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on -- into the dustbin of history!
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Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction.
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Marriage is the wastepaper basket of the emotions.
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Revolutions are always verbose.
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Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man.
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From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one - absolutely no one - is above the law.
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A sailor without a destination cannot hope for a favorable wind.
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Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.
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