James > James's Quotes

“We, or at least I, can have no conception of human life and human thought in a hundred years or fifty years. Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know. The sad ones are those who waste their energy in trying to hold it back, for thy can only feel bitterness in loss and no joy in gain.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?”
― Robert Browning, Men and Women and Other Poems

“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”
― Walt Whitman

“You’re totally wrong!” Rakoff cried. He explained that the rule against split infinitives was just a bizarre invention by some pedants in the late nineteenth century to have English mimic Latin, in which infinitives are one word. All the great authors—Shakespeare! Faulkner!—split the infinitive.”
― Jesse Eisinger, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives

“In the mid-1980s, Congress authorized the creation of the US Sentencing Commission to examine prison terms and codify norms to correct the arbitrary punishments meted out by unaccountable judges. First, in 1989 the commission’s guidelines for individuals went into effect, establishing a point system for how many years of prison a convicted criminal might get, based on the seriousness of the misconduct and a person’s criminal history. In 1991, amid public and congressional outrage that sentences for white-collar criminals were too light and fines and sanctions for corporations too lenient, the Sentencing Commission expanded the concept to cover organizations. It formalized the Sporkin-era regime of offering leniency in exchange for cooperation and reform. The new rules delineated factors that could earn a culprit mercy. In levying a fine, the court should consider, the sentencing guidelines said, “any collateral consequences of conviction.” 1 “Collateral consequences” was, and remains, an ill-defined concept. How worried should the government be if a punishment causes a company to go out of business? Should regulators worry about the cashiering of innocent employees? What about customers, suppliers, or competitors? Should they fret about financial crises? From this rather innocuous mention, the little notion of collateral consequences would blossom into the great strangling vine that came to be known after the financial crisis of 2008 by its shorthand: “too big to jail.” Prosecutors and regulators were crippled by the idea that the government could not criminally sanction some companies—particularly giant banks—for fear that they would collapse, causing serious problems for financial markets or the economy.”
― Jesse Eisinger, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives

“Today’s Department of Justice has lost the will and indeed the ability to go after the highest-ranking corporate wrongdoers.”
― Jesse Eisinger, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives

“White wasn’t enthusiastic, but she couldn’t see any other option. She approved the deferred prosecution agreement, the first with a large company. In late October 1994 the Department of Justice filed criminal charges against Prudential Securities but then held off on pressing them on the condition that the firm adhere to reforming itself. The Department of Justice made the company put $ 330 million into a fund for the investors, doubling the fund that the SEC had set up the previous year. White said that she and her office made the decision not to indict formally out of fear for what would happen to Prudential’s eighteen thousand employees and to its clients.”
― Jesse Eisinger, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
― Anne Frank, Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
― Margaret Mead

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”
― Pablo Neruda

“Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.”
― Carl Sandburg

“I've written some poetry I don't understand myself”
― Carl Sandburg

“Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today.
Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction.
See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.”
― Carl Sandburg, Honey And Salt: Seventy-Seven American Poems on Life, Love, Death, and Nature

“Revolt and terror pay a price.
Order and law have a cost.”
― Carl Sandburg

“Have I, have you, been too silent? Is there an easy crime of silence?”
― Carl Sandburg

“The Lawyers Know Too Much

THE LAWYERS, Bob, know too much.
They are chums of the books of old John Marshall.
They know it all, what a dead hand wrote,
A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling,
The bones of the fingers a thin white ash.
The lawyers know
a dead man’s thoughts too well.

In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob,
Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers,
Too much hereinbefore provided whereas,
Too many doors to go in and out of.

When the lawyers are through
What is there left, Bob?
Can a mouse nibble at it
And find enough to fasten a tooth in?

Why is there always a secret singing
When a lawyer cashes in?
Why does a hearse horse snicker
Hauling a lawyer away?
The work of a bricklayer goes to the blue.
The knack of a mason outlasts a moon.
The hands of a plasterer hold a room together.
The land of a farmer wishes him back again.
Singers of songs and dreamers of plays
Build a house no wind blows over.
The lawyers—tell me why a hearse horse snickers hauling a lawyer’s bones.”
― Carl Sandburg, Anthology of magazine verse for 1920

“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
― Howard Zinn

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“I will prepare and some day my chance will come.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry”
― Abraham Lincoln

“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.”
― Abraham Lincoln