#conventions

When distinction of any kind, even intellectual distinction, is somehow resented as a betrayal of the American spirit of equal opportunity for all, the result must be just this terror of individualistic impulses setting us apart, either above or below our neighbours; just this determination to obey without questioning and to subscribe with passion to the conventions and traditions. The dilemma becomes a very real one: How can this sense of democratic equality be made compatible with respect for exceptional personalities or great minds? How can democracy, as we understand it today, with its iron repression of the free spirit, its monotonous standardisation of everything, learn to cherish an intellectual aristocracy without which any nation runs the risk of becoming a civilisation of the commonplace and the second-rate? ↗

— Harold Edmund Stearns

#civilization #conventions #distinction #equality #individualism

Listen to advice. You don't know how many writer's conferences I've taught at where at least half the audience fights all the conventions of the field. ↗

— Jane Haddam

#audience #conferences #conventions #field #fights

Let's give the conventions back to the politicians. If we think there's any news, we can tack it on afterward as commentary. But the conventions should be their show, not ours. ↗

— Don Hewitt

#back #commentary #conventions #give #news

Military police know what to do, they know the Geneva Conventions, and their objective is to provide a safe, secure, fair environment for prisoners under their control. ↗

— Janis Karpinski

#conventions #environment #fair #geneva #know

I think it is probably more important to attend specialized conventions for a journeyman writer than any other, but it's useful at all stages of a career, if for nothing else, to find out how the industry is working at any given time. ↗

— Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

#attend #career #conventions #else #find

Providing a writer isn't put off by conventions - and some are - attending them can be a nice break from the necessary isolation of writing. ↗

— Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

#break #conventions #isolation #necessary #nice

A lot was happening, plus there were an enormous number of people in the industry that were going to conventions, so it was a pretty fun time. Also there was a lot of controversy and I was at the forefront of some of that. ↗

— Todd McFarlane

#controversy #conventions #enormous #forefront #fun

Do we want an Attorney General who will play politics with the law, play politics with the court and just play politics with international conventions designed to protect our troops? I do not want to play that kind of politics. I am going to vote against Alberto Gonzales. ↗

— Barbara Mikulski

#am #attorney #attorney general #conventions #court

Anyway, in the mid 80's I was spending a fortune buying old Golden Age books from the late 30's and 40's and I was making personal appearances at a lot of sci fi and comic book conventions all around the country here so that I could find books for my collection. ↗

— Bill Mumy

#anyway #appearances #around #book #books

I try to live the moment and not obey laws, rules, conventions, or norms; to react to a sensation, a feeling, or an emotion. You can't program emotion. ↗

— Anne Parillaud

#emotion #feeling #i #laws #live