Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.
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Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
Sports
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For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application -- why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again.
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Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.
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He does have, underneath a sort of serious exterior, a really wonderful sense of humor, ... It rarely shows itself in the trial lawyer mode, but it certainly does in personal relationships.
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I like the bad-boy types. Generally the guy I'm attracted to is the guy in the club with all the tattoos and nail polish. He's usually the lead singer in a punk band and plays guitar. But my serious boyfriends are relatively clean-cut, nice guys. So it's strange.
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I have a suggestion that I think would help fight serious crime. Signs. There are lots of signs for minor infractions: No Smoking, Stay Off the Grass, Keep Out, and they seem to work fairly well. I think we should also have signs for major crimes: Murder Strictly Prohibited, NO Raping People, Thank You for Not Kidnapping Anyone. It's certainly worth a try. I'm convinced Watergate would never have happened if there had just been a sign in the Oval Office that said, Malfeasance of Office Is Strictly Against the Law, or Thank You for Not Undermining the Constitution.
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The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own.
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Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
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The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
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A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.
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Mobile broadband, which recently entered the U.S. market, is rapidly becoming the 'must have' technology in an industry already accelerating its shift away from desktop computers. This high-speed, broad-reach wireless technology opens up a serious set of future possibilities for both business and entertainment markets, creating one of the most powerful growth opportunities we have ever seen.
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Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic.
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To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life.
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Jargon is the verbal sleight of hand that makes the old hat seem newly fashionable; it gives an air of novelty and specious profundity to ideas that, if stated directly, would seem superficial, stale, frivolous, or false. The line between serious and spurious scholarship is an easy one to blur, with jargon on your side.
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My conception of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he thinks is an anxiety, or a hope, or a preoccupation which is his alone and isolates him from mankind; and in this respect at least the function of a play is to reveal him to himself so that he may touch others by virtue of the revelation of his mutuality with them. If only for this reason I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.
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A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.
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The adherents of the old order have a powerful ally in the natural law of inertia inherent in humanity which is, as it were, a natural defense against change. Thus pacifism faces no easy struggle. The question of whether violence or law shall prevail between states is the most vital of the problems of our eventful era, and the most serious in its repercussions. The beneficial results of a secure world peace are almost inconceivable, but even more inconceivable are the consequences of the threatening world war which many misguided people are prepared to precipitate. The advocates of pacifism are well aware how meager are their resources of personal influence and power. They know that they are still few in number and weak in authority, but when they realistically consider themselves and the ideal they serve, they see themselves as the servants of the greatest of all causes.
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The most serious charge that can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.
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It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed. It was once considered foolish to suppose that black men were really human beings and ought to be treated as such. What was once foolish has now become a recognized truth. Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life.
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Great use they have, when in the hands Of one like me, who understands, Who understands the time and place, The person, manner, and the grace, Which fools neglect; so that we find, If all the requisites are join'd, From whence a perfect joke must spring, A joke's a very serious thing.
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There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.
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The person who can be only serious or only cheerful, is but half a man.
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In most communities it is illegal to cry 'fire' in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
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Caution has its place, no doubt, but we cannot refuse our support to a serious venture which challenges the whole of the personality. If we oppose it, we are trying to suppress what is best in man --his daring and his aspirations. And should we succeed, we should only have stood in the way of that invaluable experience which might have given a meaning to life. What would have happened if Paul had allowed himself to be talked out of his journey to Damascus?
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The common dogma of fundamentalists is fear of modern knowledge, inability to cope with the fast change in a scientific-technological society, and the real breakdown in apparent moral order in recent years.... That is why hate is the major fuel, fear is the cement of the movement, and superstitious ignorance is the best defence against the dangerous new knowledge. ... When you bring up arguments that cast serious doubts on their cherished beliefs you are not simply making a rhetorical point, you are threatening their whole Universe and their immortality. That provokes anger and quite frequently violence. ... Unfortunately you cannot reason with them and you even risk violence in confronting them. Their numbers will decline only when society stabilizes, and adapts to modernity.
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It is suggested that, in domestic violence at least, the presence or absence of a firearm, or of any other type of weapon, is of far less importance to the outcome than the passion generated in the attacker. The man who has lost control will cause serious injuries in many cases, quite irrespective of the weapon he uses and regardless of the certainty of detection and punishment.
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AIDS is such a scary thing and it's also the kind of thing that you think won't happen to you. It can happen to you and it's deadly serious.
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The brakes were useless, the car was wandering. The rear end was coming around. I jammed it down into Low, but it made no difference so I straightened it out and braced for a serious impact, a crash that would probably kill me.
'My heart was full of joy as I took the first hit, which was oddly soft and painless. No real shock at all...
Yes. These huge white lumps were not boulders. They were sheep.
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I say in my book that a lot of the music our forebears created was written for rich, snotty, snobby people who had enough money to buy theatre tickets. There was a great deal of trivia, a shallow quality to things ... ... You know, that 'I've got rhythm, I've got ...', there's something about it that's not very serious, and at least popular music during our generation began crossing over into an area where it was saying something about the conditions that prevailed.
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