Norman Podhoretz Quotes

Like the medieval heretics that Norm Cohn wrote about in The Pursuit of the Millennium, the Beats cultivated an extreme narcissism that bordered on self-deification and that 'liberated them from all restraints' and allowed them to experience every impulse as a 'divine command'. What Norman Podhoretz observed of Ginsberg was also true of the Beats generally: they 'conjured up a world of complete freedom from the limits imposed by [bourgeois] responsibilities'. Podhoretz added, 'It was a world that promised endless erotic possibility together with the excitements of an expanded consciousness constantly open to new dimensions of being: more adventure, more sex, more intensity, more life'. Alas, the promise was illusory. Instead of an 'expanded consciousness', the Beats purchased madness, ruination, and, for many, an early death. Their attack on bourgeois responsibility led not to greater freedom but to greater chaos. The erotic paradise they envisioned turned out to be rife with misery. ~ Roger Kimball

Ginsberg turned out to be depressingly prescient when, after a heated argument with Norman Podhoretz in 1958, he yelled, 'We'll get you through your children!' For countless American families, that turned out to be only too true. ~ Roger Kimball

Our culture is ill-equipped to assert the bourgeois values which would be the salvation of the under-class, because we have lost those values ourselves. ~ Norman Podhoretz

The fear of blacks has become the dirty little secret of our political culture. ~ Norman Podhoretz

The role of Jews who write in both the Jewish and [American] general press is to defend Israel. ~ Norman Podhoretz

Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence. ~ Norman Podhoretz

"World War III, was the Cold War, and the U.S. won it". ~ Norman Podhoretz

I watch The Walking Dead because I like Norman Reedus. He's beyond hot. ~ Lily Harper Hart

We find the library world, like the real world, impossible to understand on a rational basis. We turn then to the outer reaches of our mind and treat librarianship with the irrationality that it deserves. While we most often turn to humour merely to enjoy ourselves, we do sometimes do so to make a point. That point is simply that the world of librarianship is ridiculous and that we should all take a far less serious view of our work. What we accomplish as librarians is not, after all, likely to change the world."
~ Norman D. Stevens ~ Peter Gellatly

Conventional dogmas, even if endowed with the authority of an Aristotle - ancient or modern - must be tested vigorously. If they are found wanting, we need not bother with them. But if they are found to be substantially correct, we may not overlook them. ~ Norman Lamm

Meaning is not in things but in between them. ~ Norman O. Brown

I was wholeheartedly attracted to the conservative atmosphere that permeated the city of Washington. ~ John Podhoretz

If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed ... nothing shall be impossible unto you. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

When Khrushchev asked whether his brass hats would guarantee that keeping the missiles in Cuba would not bring about nuclear war, they looked at him, he later told Norman Cousins of the Saturday Review, an informal emissary between Kennedy and Khrushchev, "as though I were out of my mind or, what was worse, a traitor. So I said to myself, 'To hell with these maniacs.'"6 ~ Robert F. Kennedy

There is a lot of propaganda about opera singers not being able to act. That's not necessarily true and hasn't been true for a very long time. And certainly there were those instances when singers were told they need to fit into a certain size dress. Of course, women. Men? They just make the costume bigger. ~ Jessye Norman

Robots have a rich and storied history in movies. ~ John Podhoretz

The elves had a coalition agreement with the school, the head elf had said. It almost sounded like they'd unionized, and that an essential rule of the elf union was that only elves did elf work. Perhaps they viewed it as job security. James wasn't sure if Aunt Hermione would view this as an improvement or a setback. ~ G. Norman Lippert

There is no room on the golf course for anger or self-pity. ~ Greg Norman

Growth, in some curious way, I suspect, depends on being always in motion just a little bit, one way or another. ~ Norman Mailer

History of America, Part I (1776-1966): Declaration of Independence, Constitutional Convention, Louisiana Purchase, Civil War, Reconstruction, World War I, Great Depression, New Deal, World War II, TV, Cold war, civil-rights movement, Vietnam. History of America, Part II (1967-present): the Super Bowl era. The Super Bowl has become Main Street's Mardi Gras. ~ Norman Chad

Seagulls dove among corpses and survivors alike. Turner later told his son, Norman, that he found himself fending off attacks by the birds, which swooped from the sky and pecked at the eyes of floating corpses. Rescuers later reported that wherever they saw spirals of gulls, they knew they would find bodies. Turner's experience left him with such a deep hatred of seagulls, according to Norman, that until his retirement he used to carry a .22 rifle and shoot every seagull he could. ~ Erik Larson

I've been thinking about your Father a lot lately, and I've realized something. I married Gary specifically for the fact that he wasn't Curtis. If your Father has an opposite, it's Gary. I just need to decide if I want to spend the rest of my life with someone I married by default. ~ Matthew Norman

Retaining the phrases was a treacherous enterprise, however. His greatest problem these days had been boredom. Now he had discovered its loyal assistant - poor memory! ~ Norman Mailer

Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments. ~ Norman Mailer

Probably most catastrophes end this way without an ending, the dead not even knowing how they died ... ,those who loved them forever questioning "this unnecessary death," and the rest of us tiring of this inconsolable catastrophe and turning to the next one. ~ Norman Maclean

What I do know, is that I refused to compromise with the system and I was obsessed with preventing my work from being manipulated for their propaganda. Even stories about the Holocaust could have been promoted as anti-fascist stories, which they were in a way, but I didn't want them to be taken only as such. I remember I had a reading in Berlin in the '80s and a man in the audience, asked me: 'Sir, I read your book, I read the stories, you didn't say who the oppressors were nor who are the people who are suffering.' And I said, 'No, I didn't.' It was important to me that a Vietnamese reader reading a story about a young boy who is in a camp, can recognize himself, without me saying: the boy is a Jew, the oppressor is a Romanian, or a Nazi, and so on. I wanted to have a more universal approach. ~ Norman Manea

I don't think - I begin, but then I stop there. Strangely enough, this sounds like a full, declarative sentence, as if I'm standing in a bar shouting out one of my most obvious character flaws. I don't think! ~ Matthew Norman

Flowers knew how to preach divinity before men knew how to dissect and botanize them. ~ Henry Norman Hudson

Writers don't have lifestyles. They just sit in little rooms and write. ~ Norman Mailer

There are 6.6 billion people on the planet today. With organic farming we could only feed four billion of them. Which two billion would volunteer to die? ~ Norman Borlaug

The thematic, psychological, and cultural concerns of a writer are more relevant than whatever literary mode he or she chooses to deal with in any given novel. ~ Norman Spinrad

You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but you want to get rid of the bathwater so the baby can swim the next couple of days and be OK. ~ Greg Norman

I think that, certainly, most of my operatic roles are in German. I think it happened because, of course, I was lucky in that I was invited to sing, first of all, my operatic debut in Berlin at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, which was West Berlin at the time. ~ Jessye Norman

When you are afraid, do the thing you are afraid of and soon you will lose your fear of it. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives - the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself. ~ Norman Cousins

He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work. ~ Norman Tebbit

Every time a story about me appears in a newspaper, I am injured professionally. ~ Norman Mailer

The question of the stranger in a society which estranges everybody from it
while forcing everybody to assimilate their own alienation
takes cover under dubious and sinister masks. ~ Norman Manea

White Christian America had its golden age in the 1950s, after the hardships and victories of World War Ii and before the cultural upheavals of the 1960s. June Cleaver was its mother, Andy Griffith was its sheriff, Norman Rockwell was its artist. and Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale were its ministers. ~ Robert P. Jones

I walk into office, which is the casting office for CBS in New York. Mainly what they cast out of this office was the CBS daytime shows. I go in and walk into this room which every seat is filled with young African-American boys and girls and they were in their teens. I went, "I'm in the wrong place. Why am I here? What's going on?"So I go in and meet Norman [Lear]. ~ Richard Masur

I'm not interested at all in playing more than 12, 15 tournaments a year on an annual basis because like all the old guys out here on this Tour, we've played golf for nearly 30 years of our lives. ~ Greg Norman

I always start a book for money. If you're married five times you have to. ~ Norman Mailer

Although the rival cereals of rye, barley,oats, buckwheat and millet have continued to exist in Europe, the triumphal march of king wheat was uncontestable ~ Norman Davies

Only by providing leading-edge human capital and knowledge capital can American continue to maintain a high standard of living, including providing national security for its citizens. ~ Norman Ralph Augustine

You are the belle of the ball tonight." He said as he moved in closer. "How can you be so sinfully beautiful Mrs. Norman? ~ Barry Gray

In response to [the Philistine] threat [in the ninth century B.C.], the Hebrews could no longer rely on the leadership of 'judges,' ad hoc military leaders (some of them, peculiarly, women; perhaps reflecting as feminists claim, and earlier matriarchal society). ~ Norman F. Cantor

Plant diseases, drought, desolation, despair were recurrent catastrophes during the ages - and the ancient remedies: supplications to supernatural spirits or gods. ~ Norman Borlaug

Creeping featurism is a disease, fatal if not treated promptly. There are some cures, but, as usual, the best approach is to practice preventative medicine. ~ Donald A. Norman

The empty tomb stands, a veritable rock, as an essential element in the evidence for the resurrection. To suggest that it was not in fact empty at all, as some have done, seems to me ridiculous. ~ Norman Anderson

To be seen is the ambition of ghosts, and to be remembered is the ambition of the dead. ~ Norman O. Brown

I don't have a mullet, but going into season one on 'The Walking Dead,' I asked to have a mullet, and everybody talked me out of it. Because I'd have to wear a mullet when we were not shooting every day. I have that motorcycle, wings on my vest, the crossbow ... Maybe a mullet would've thrown me over the edge. ~ Norman Reedus

Remember that string of movies when we were younger, like mid '90s? The ones where the nerdy girl finally puts on makeup and a Wonderbra and everyone realizes how totally boneable she is?" "Yeah." "Well, that's you," she says. "We're in one of those movies. You're my hopeless teenage girl, all stuck in your shell, and I'm here to give you a fresh coat of makeup and a slutty dress. Push those boobies up, Andy Carter, it's go time." "Do ~ Matthew Norman

The evidence seems clear that those business which actively serve their many constitutencies in creative, morally thoughtful ways also, over the long run, serve their shareholders best. Companies do, infact, do well by doing good. ~ Norman Lear