#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

One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#conventions #duty #gustave-flaubert #life #madame-bovary

Thus, anybody who follows this nature and gives way its states will be led into quarrels and conflicts, and go against the conventions and rules of society, and will end up a criminal. ↗

— Xun Zi

#anybody #conflicts #conventions #criminal #end

The personal things should be left out of platforms at conventions. You can argue yourself blue in the face, and you're not going to change each other's minds. It's a waste of your time and my time. ↗

— Barbara Bush

#blue #change #conventions #each #face

The personal things should be left out of, in my opinion, out of platforms and conventions. ↗

— Barbara Bush

#in my opinion #left #opinion #out #personal

I really do the conventions now for two reasons. ↗

— Rene Auberjonois

#i #now #really #reasons #two

What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous. ↗

— Carlos Fuentes

#conventions #geneva #ghraib #happened #human

We need the UN, to deal with the threats to our common security from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, not only in the case of Iraq. They must be tackled by the international community together, by strengthening conventions, treaties and agreements. ↗

— Anna Lindh

#biological #biological weapons #case #chemical #common

The point is that these decisions they've made are partly for your convenience and partly for theirs and partly out of stereotypes that they carry with them from the conventions of the computer field. ↗

— Ted Nelson

#computer #convenience #conventions #decisions #field

Mystery writers' conventions are usually good, and this one has been excellent and extremely well prepared and thought out in advance. A lot of people have given their time and their skill, and a good deal of wit, and Anchorage has made us extraordinarily welcome. ↗

— Anne Perry

#been #conventions #deal #excellent #extraordinarily