Black students have the lowest grade point average of any student group. If whites were not so preoccupied with escaping their own guilt, they would see that the real problem is not racism; it is that black students are failing in tragic numbers. They don’t need separate dorms and yearbooks. They need basic academic skills. But instead they are taught that extra entitlements are their due and that the greatest power of all is the power that comes to them as victims. If they want to get anywhere in American life, they had better wear their victimization on their sleeve, they had better tap into white guilt, making whites want to escape by offering money, status, racial preferences — something, anything–in return. Is this the way for a race that has been oppressed to come into its own? is this the way to achieve independence? Shelby Steele
Shelby Steele, 1992
Category Archives: Quotations Freedom
The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it …
The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again. Thomas Paine
Age of Reason. Part ii. note. (Probably this is the original of Napoleon’s celebrated mot, ‘Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas’ (From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step).) 1737-1809.
Money is preferable to politics. It is the difference between being free …
Money is preferable to politics. It is the difference between being free to be anybody you want and to vote for anybody you want. And money is more effective than politics both in solving problems and in providing individual independence. To rid ourselves of all the trouble in the world, we need to make money. And to make money, we need to be free. P. J. O’Rourke
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[Election day] you will not be electing masters, you will be choosing employees, servants of your will, guardians of your rights. Tom Clancy
Executive Orders, 1996
The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be …
The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit. Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910)
Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man’s character …
Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man’s character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism, the idea that one must never pass moral judgment on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good consists of never distinguishing good from evil. It is obvious who profits and who loses by such a precept. It is not justice or equal treatment that you grant to men when you abstain equally from praising men’s virtues and from condemning men’s vices. When your impartial attitude declares, in effect, that neither the good nor the evil may expect anything from you – whom do you betray and whom do you encourage? Ayn Rand
VOS, (1905-1982)
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, its …
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog. Mark Twain
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835-1910)
The election of Hoover … should result in continued prosperity for 1929. Roger …
The election of Hoover … should result in continued prosperity for 1929. Roger W. Babson
Roger W. Babson addressing Wellesley College, 9/17/29 (financial statistician and founder of the Babson Institute)
A free people ought..to be armed… George Washington speech of January …
A free people ought..to be armed…
George Washington
speech of January 7, 1790, in the Boston Independent Chronicle, January 14, 1790, 1732-1799.
The purpose of a tax cut is to leave more money where …
The purpose of a tax cut is to leave more money where it belongs — in the hands of the working men and working women who earned it in the first place. Robert Dole
Robert Dole, Barron’s August 12, 1996