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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 32f9148 | Andrew Jackson did just that. In justifying his use of the veto against Congressional majorities, as the only national official who had been elected by all the people and not just by a small fraction, as were Senators and Representatives, Jackson insisted that he alone could claim to represent all the people. Thus Jackson began what I have called the myth of the presidential mandate: that by winning a majority of popular (and presumably ele.. | Robert A. Dahl | ||
| 15ece84 | In short, just as happens in American presidential elections, majoritarianism often fails to produce a government that reflects the choices of a majority of voters. Second, the distortion between seats and votes in majoritarian systems sometimes creates a majority of seats for a party that has failed to win even a plurality of votes and thus has actually come in second. In these cases, the minority party among voters becomes the majority pa.. | Robert A. Dahl | ||
| 4e42f62 | The American constitutional system is not majoritarian. | Robert A. Dahl | ||
| e7f0f68 | Thrasymachus's hypothesis that people deliberately seek to rule for reasons of self-interest has been restated many times. Hobbes, for example, held that people were impelled by their passions and guided by their reason. Passion is the wind that fills the sails, reason the hand on the rudder. A human being, to use another metaphor, is a chariot pulled by the wild horses of passion and steered by reason. Human desires are insatiable, but rea.. | Robert A. Dahl | ||
| 899069e | Among the most influential of these was George Mason, who wrote the Virginia constitution and its Declaration of Rights. Responding to the insistent demands of Mason and several others, as well as to similar voices outside the Convention, Mason's fellow Virginian, James Madison, drafted ten amendments that were ratified in 1789-90 by eleven states, more than a sufficient number for their adoption. | Robert A. Dahl | ||
| 80fb3d5 | Both Caligula and Abraham Lincoln sought power, yet it is highly implausible to suppose that Caligula and Lincoln were driven by the same motives. | Robert A. Dahl | ||
| a3069ce | I'd actually rather not have you thinking about that stuff every time you look at me, OK?" There's more tears rolling down Grandma. "Sweetie," she says, "all I think when I look at you is hallelujah." | Emma Donoghue | ||
| 0ecc61a | To keep the five guys who hate you away from the other five guys who are undecided. | Billy Martin | ||
| 167de95 | It is difficult, indeed impossible, to fit the presidency into the simple categories of consensual or majoritarian. One obstacle to straightforward classification is the president's combination of roles. Most notably, whereas in the other older democracies the roles of prime minister and ceremonial head of state are separated, in our system they are blended, not only constitutionally but also in popular expectations. We expect our president.. | Robert A. Dahl | ||
| e9bf6ae | The Framers feared and detested factions, a view famously expressed by Madison in Federalist No. 10.31 Probably no statement has been so often cited to explain and justify the checks against popular majorities that the Framers attempted to build into the constitution. It is supremely ironic, therefore, that more than anyone except Jefferson, it was Madison who helped to create the Republican Party in order to defeat the Federalists. | Robert A. Dahl | ||
| f02ce0c | I'm going to invite you to contemplate a fictional scenario. Say that we are all citizens in a New England town with a traditional town meeting. As usual, a modest proportion of the citizens eligible to attend have actually turned out, let's say four or five hundred. After calling the meeting to order, the moderator announces: "We have established the following rules for this evening's discussion. After a motion has been properly made and s.. | Robert A. Dahl | ||
| c5f2904 | Yet among the countries most comparable to the United States and where democratic institutions have long existed without breakdown, not one has adopted our American constitutional system. It would be fair to say that without a single exception they have all rejected it. | Robert A. Dahl | ||
| 1f660ec | Why should we feel bound today by a document produced more than two centuries ago by a group of fifty-five mortal men, actually signed by only thirty-nine, a fair number of whom were slaveholders, and adopted in only thirteen states by the votes of fewer than two thousand men, all of whom are long since dead and mainly forgotten?2 | Robert A. Dahl | ||
| 4c1d4f0 | I may not have been the greatest Yankee to put on the uniform, but I was the proudest. | Billy Martin | ||
| 6cffa1c | I didn't throw the first punch. I threw the second four. | Billy Martin | ||
| 7e01508 | I laugh at the drug tests. I don't even eat meat. | Billy Simmonds | ||
| b6c642f | I have no interest in a God who does not smite. | Billy Sunday | ||
| 38d6d49 | I just made pictures I would've liked to see. | Billy Wilder | ||
| ce5747b | People thought me bad before, but if ever I should get free, I'll let them know what bad means. | Billy the Kid | ||
| 8bf1ad5 | Have you ever eaten something appalling for breakfast, something really bad for you, a chocolate cake, and just thought, "Fuck it, this is bad, I'd better keep going? Christ, this is making me feel horrible, I'd better have more?" | Emma Forrest | ||
| 031d368 | People can only do what they can do. | Emma Forrest | ||
| db915c8 | Poets pledge allegiance to a country I don't believe in. | Billy-Ray Belcourt | ||
| 0926ceb | I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, 'Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?' This type of question is a way of silencing a person's specific experiences. Of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happen to me in the world because I am a woman. | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | ||
| ca7e4ee | And that is part of the problem. That many men do not actively think about gender or notice gender. | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | ||
| 03453fc | He was the only musician who ever lived, who can't be replaced by someone. | Bing Crosby | ||
| b9eaa84 | Forget whatever should be forgotten, so that you can remember what should be remembered. | Bing Xin | ||
| fc842ce | When my first love affair came to an end I wrote this poem: I didn't know I didn't know I didn't know. | Jean Rhys | ||
| 61a6846 | And there I lie in these damned bandages for a week. And there he lies, swathed up too, like a little mummy. And never crying. But now I like raking him in my arms and looking at him. A lovely forehead, incredibly white, the eyebrows drawn very faintly in gold dust... Well, this was a funny time. (The big bowl of coffee in the morning with a pattern of red and blue flowers. I was always so thirsty.) But uneasy, uneasy... Ought a baby to be .. | baby birth death grief grief-and-loss hospital mother motherhood nurse | Jean Rhys | |
| a6d47eb | The house was burning, the yellow-red sky was like sunset and I knew that I would never see Coulibri again. Nothing would be left, the golden ferns and the silver ferns, the orchids, the ginger lilies and the roses, the rocking-chairs and the blue sofa, the jasmine and the honeysuckle, and the picture of the Miller's Daughter. When they had finished, there would be nothing left but blackened walls and the mounting stone. That was always lef.. | Jean Rhys | ||
| dec35fe | When trouble comes, close ranks | Jean Rhys | ||
| 5e80284 | Why are you sad? | Jean Rhys | ||
| a7a06f5 | With you, I don't want to do bad things.' 'There's always the one that you don't want to do bad things with, isn't there?' | Jean Rhys | ||
| c60ddd9 | She was certainly rather drunk. Her eyes were fixed as if upon some far-off point. She seemed to be contemplating a future at once monotonous and insecure with an indifference which was after all a sort of hard-won courage. | Jean Rhys | ||
| 59c765e | Eso es lo que mas recuerdo. Ethel hablando y el reloj haciendo tic tac. Y su voz cuando me hablaba de Madame Fernande o sobre su padre, que tenia una farmacia, y de que ella era toda una senora. Una senora... algunas palabras tienen un cuello largo y delgado que te gustaria estrangular. | Jean Rhys | ||
| ca67b08 | An anxious expression spread over his face as he thought to himself that the time was coming when he would have to give up this comfort, and then that comfort, until God knew what would be the end of it all. In this way he was an imaginative man, and when these fits of foreboding overcame him he genuinely forgot that only a succession of highly improbable catastrophes could reduce him to the penury he so feared. | Jean Rhys | ||
| b3a7f6b | I am weak and therefore I am strong. | Bing Xin | ||
| 9a94074 | There is a porter at the door and at the reception-desk a grey-haired woman and a sleek young man. 'I want a room for tonight.' 'A room? A room with bath?' I am still feeling ill and giddy. I say confidentially, leaning forward: 'I want a light room.' The young man lifts his eyebrows and stares at me. I try again. 'I don't want a room looking on the courtyard. I want a light room.' 'A light room?' the lady says pensively. She turns over the.. | hotel | Jean Rhys | |
| 96a8bf0 | She found pleasure in memories, as an old woman might have done. | pleasure | Jean Rhys | |
| 22b1d7a | She had a sweet voice, a voice with a warm and tender quality. This was strange, because her face was cold, as though warmth and tenderness were dead in her. | voice warmth | Jean Rhys | |
| d0486e0 | But I went on thinking about false teeth, and then about piano-keys and about that time the blind man from Martinique came to tune the piano and then he played and we listened to him sitting in the dark with the jalousies shut because it was pouring with rain and my father said, 'You are a real musician.' He had a red moustache, my father. And Hester was always saying, 'Poor Gerald, poor Gerald.' But if you'd seen him walking up Market Stre.. | Jean Rhys | ||
| 9e099a1 | Does this mean that men evolve faster than women do, would we ever live in an integrated society where the sexes would be equal? The bewildered self is unchanging. Men are unchanging when it comes top sex. Inertia. That would be the first word to describe my personality. Frightened and confused when it comes to sex, sensuality and the sexual transaction. Men will give you money to go away. Men do not want you to make trouble for them. I pou.. | Abigail George | ||
| c93f240 | Norah herself was labelled for all to see. She was labelled 'Middle class, no money.' Hardly enough to keep herself in clean linen. And yet, scrupulously, fiercly clean, but with all the daintiness and prettiness perforce cut out. Everything about her betrayed the woman who has been brought up to certain tastes, then left without the money to gratify them; trained to certain opinions which forbid her even the relief of rebellion against her.. | middle-class-values | Jean Rhys | |
| db3d1f2 | She picked up her glove and hit his cheek with it, but so lightly he did not even blink. "I despise you," she said. "Quite," said Mr. Mackenzie. Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie" | Abigail Trafford | ||
| 19bf737 | 'The fact is,' said Norah, 'that there's something wrong with our family. We're soft, or lazy, or something.' | family-faults lazy soft | Jean Rhys |