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Whether, to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest.

William J. Brennan, Jr.

Establishing the American legal standard for obscenity, which does not receive First Amendment protection.

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Brennan, William J, Jr. United States, Supreme Court. Roth v. United States. United States Reports, vol. 354, 24 June 1957, pp. 476-514. supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/354/476/.

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Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.

Rupert Brooke

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Brooke, Rupert. "The Hill." Collected Poems. John Lane, 1916, I. 1.

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Brooke, Rupert. "The Hill." The Poems of Rupert Brooke. Dover Publications, 2020, I. 1.

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The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

Sir Edward Grey

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Remark just before the beginning of World War I.

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Grey, Edward. Twenty-Five Years, 1892-1916. Vo1. 2, Frederick A. Stokes, 1925, ch. 18.

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You've got to be taught
Before it's too late
Before you are six, or seven, or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught.

Rodgers and Hammerstein

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Hammerstein, Oscar, II. "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught." South Pacific. Composted by Richard Rodgers. 1949, Majestic Theatre, New York City, New York, USA.

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There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and shame the devil.

Walter Lippmann

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Lippmann, Walter. "Journalism and the Higher Law." Liberty and the News. Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920.

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All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance—unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion—have the full protection of the guaranties... But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance... We hold that obscenity is not within the area of constitutionally protected speech or press.

William J. Brennan, Jr.

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Brennan, William J, Jr. United States, Supreme Court. Roth v. United States. United States Reports, vol. 354, 24 June 1957, pp. 476-514. supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/354/476/.

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I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

James Arlington Wright

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Wright, James. "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota." The Paris Review, 1961.

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It came to him that he had turned away from the buffalo not because of a womanish nausea at blood and stench and spilling gut; it came to him that he had sickened and turned away because of his shock at seeing the buffalo, a few moments before proud and noble and full of the dignity of life, now stark and helpless, a length of inert meat, divested of itself, or his notion of its self, swinging grotesquely, mockingly, before him. It was not itself; or it was not that self that he had imagined it to be. That self was murdered; and in that murder he had felt the destruction of something within him, and he had not been able to face it. So he had turned away.

John Williams (novelist)

Butcher's Crossing

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Williams, John. Butcher's Crossing. Macmillan, 1960, pt. 2, ch. 5.

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That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Richard Henry Lee

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Lee Resolution

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Lee, Richard Henry. Lee Resolution. 2 July 1776.

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The best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future.

Stephen Hawking

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Hawking, Stephen. "The Future of the Universe." Jan. 1991, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, UK. Lecture.

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You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound. A dimension of sight. A dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into... The Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling

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"A Thing About Machines." The Twilight Zone, directed by David Orrick McDearmon, written by Rod Serling, season 2, episode 4, Cayuga Productions/CBS Productions, 1960.

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There is no doubt that, if there were a super-Supreme Court, a substantial proportion of our reversals of state courts would also be reversed. We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.

Robert H. Jackson

Brown v. Allen

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Read this opinion at supreme.justia.com.

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Jackson, Robert H. United States, Supreme Court. Brown v. Allen. United States Reports, vol. 344, 9 Feb. 1953, pp. 443. Justia, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/344/443/.

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There are seasons, in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. These are periods when... To dare is the highest wisdom.

William Ellery Channing

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Channing, William Ellery. "The Union." May 1829, Boston, MA, USA. Speech.

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I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air.

Alan Seeger

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Seeger, Alan. "I Have a Rendezvous with Death." Poems. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916.

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We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth Century Americans. We look into the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But, the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time. For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but it's in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.

William J. Brennan, Jr.

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Brennan, William J, Jr. "The Constitution of the United States: Contemporary Ratification." Text and Teaching Symposium. 12 Oct. 1985, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA. Speech.

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All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.

T. E. Lawrence

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The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

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Lawrence, T. E. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. 1926, introductory chapter.

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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw

Man and Superman

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Shaw, George Bernard. "Man and Superman: Maxims for Revolutionists." Man and Superman, John Bull's Other Island, and Major Barbara. Oxford University Press, 2021. Originally published by Archibald and Constable Co., Ltd., 1903.

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Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them.

Jonathan Franzen

Read this essay at harpers.org

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Franzen, Jonathan. "Perchance to Dream: In the Age of Images, a Reason to Write Novels." Harper's Magazine, Apr. 1996.

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Current Citation

Franzen, Jonathan. "Why Bother?" How to Be Alone. Picador, 2002.

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A gay Vietnam veteran... They gave me a medal for killing two men-and a discharge for loving one.

Leonard Matlovich

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Inscription on his tombstone.

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Matlovich, Leonard. Inscription on tombstone. 1988.

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All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

Havelock Ellis

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Ellis, Havelock. Little Essays of Love and Virtue. George H. Doran Company/A & C Black, 1922, ch. 7.

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