My own participation in the campaign was delayed by the death of my son Calvin, which occurred on the seventh of July. He was a boy of much promise, proficient in his studies, with a scholarly mind, who had just turned sixteen. He had a remarkable insight into things. The day I became President he had just started to work in a tobacco field. When one of his fellow laborers said to him, if my father was President I would not work in a tobacco field, Calvin replied, If my father were your father, you would.... We do not know what might have happened to him under other circumstances, but if I had not been President, he would not have raised a blister on his toe, which resulted in blood poisoning, playing lawn tennis in the South Grounds.In his suffering he was asking me to make him well. I could not. When he went the power and the glory of the Presidency went with him. The ways of Providence are often beyond our understanding. It seemed to me that the world had need of the work that it was probable he could do. I do not know why such a price was exacted for occupying the White House.
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Nun: You don't believe in God because of Alice in Wonderland? Loki: No, 'Through the Looking Glass.' That poem, 'The Walrus and the Carpenter,' that's an indictment of organized religion. The walrus, with his girth and his good nature, he obviously represents either Buddha, or...or with his tusk, the Hindu elephant god, Lord Ganesha. That takes care of your Eastern religions. Now the carpenter, which is an obvious reference to Jesus Christ, who was raised a carpenter's son, he represents the Western religions. Now in the poem, what do they do...what do they do? They...they dupe all these oysters into following them and then proceed to shuck and devour the helpless creatures en masse. I don't know what that says to you, but to me it says that following these faiths based on mythological figures ensure the destruction of one's inner being. Organized religion destroys who we are by inhibiting our actions...by inhibiting our decisions, out of...out of fear of some...some intangible parent figure who...who shakes a finger at us from thousands of years ago and says...and says, 'Do it-do it and I'll fuckin' spank you!'
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Because our children had had the privilege of growing up where they'd raised a lot of food. They were never hungry. They could share their food with people. And so, you share your lives with people.
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I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.
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We had a chance to all rejoice a little bit at Mr. Greenspan's aggressive actions here at lunch. We raised a glass of water to Mr. Greenspan for taking that action, and we all think it's in the right direction,
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Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
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