20th century

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We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave-to the ancient enemies of man-half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival for us all.

Adlai E. Stevenson

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Stevenson, Adlai. Speech in Switzerland. Economic and Social Council of United Nations meeting. 9 July 1965, Geneva, Switzerland.

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Growth was seen as an endless series of daily choices and decisions in each of which one can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

Abraham Maslow

The Psychology of Science

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Maslow, Abraham. The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance. Harper & Row, 1966, ch. 3.

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The attitude above all others which I feel sure is no longer valid is the arrogance of power, the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission.

J. William Fulbright

The Arrogance of Power

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Fulbright, J. William. The Arrogance of Power. Random House, 1966, introduction.

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Birds do it, bees do it,
Even educated fleas do it.
Let's do it, let's fall in love.

Cole Porter

Let's Do It

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Porter, Cole. "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love." Paris. Performed by Irene Bordoni. 1928, Music Box Theatre, New York City, NY, USA.

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A man who lies, thinking it is the truth, is an honest man, and a man who tells the truth, believing it to be a lie, is a liar.

William Safire

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Safire, William. Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House. Doubleday, 1975, prologue.

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It's not pining, it's passed on. This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot.

John Cleese

Monty Python's Flying Circus

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"Full Frontal Nudity." Monty Python's Flying Circus, written by Graham Chapman and John Cleese and Eric Idle, directed by Ian MacNaughton, season 1, episode 8, BBC, 1969.

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How about a positive LSD story, that would be newsworthy, don’t you think? Anybody think that? Just once to hear a positive LSD story; “Today a young man on acid…realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves…Here’s Tom with the weather.

Bill Hicks

Relentless

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Read the full transcript of this special at scrapsfromtheloft.com

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Hicks, Bill. Relentless. July 1991, Centaur Theatre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

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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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Original Citation

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

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Current Citation

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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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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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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