“It is through their not being full of themselves that they can afford to seem worn and not appear new and complete.”

“The partial becomes complete; the crooked, straight; the empty, full; the worn out, new.”

“A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers, strong and brave and rather childlike. They can take care of themselves in a wilderness, but they are naive and helpless against men, and perhaps that is why they went out in the first place. When the rough edges are worn off the new land, businessmen and lawyers come in to help with the development---to solve problems of ownership, usually by removing the temptations to themselves. And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living. And culture can be on any level, and is.The Church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously.”

“But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.”

“If nature has composed the human body so that in its proportions the seperate individual elements answer to the total form, then the Ancients seem to have had reason to decide that bringing their creations to full completion likewise required a correspondence bewteen the measure of individual elements and the appearance of the work as a whole.”

“Some teachers genuinely seem to believe that the politically correct nonsense that the kids should not be punished. Others are simpleminded and have allowed themselves to be brainwashed until they believe this.Most,I suspect, are simply worn down by years watching standards slide while being told there was they could,or should, do about it.”