#liz

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

I suddenly realized that the fellow who didn't show up was getting about fifty-times more money than I was getting. So I thought, 'this is silly,' and became an actor. I certainly never thought I'd wind up in motion pictures. That was far beyond anything I'd ever dreamed of. ↗

— Glenn Ford

#actor #anything #became #beyond #certainly

The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#cannot #civilization #dramatic #emotional #fact

When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future. ↗

— Dian Fossey

#dwell #future #less #life #more

I have, in some ways, saved characters that have been marginalized by society by playing them - and having them still have dignity and still survive, still get through it. ↗

— Jodie Foster

#characters #dignity #get #having #i

In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters. ↗

— John Fowles

#end #essence #green #hardest #renaissance

I'm kind of private and I keep things inside a lot, but it's been so wonderful to realize that people care about you in a very deep way and that there is some bond between an actor and his audience. I don't even know how to describe that feeling. ↗

— Michael J. Fox

#actor #audience #been #between #bond

Also, I think having that comic gene kind of makes you look at things in a different way. If you take yourself so seriously, eventually you end up one of those people having a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on their lives. You see them drawing the curtains and they don't even realize that they've kind of drifted off somewhere. ↗

— Jamie Foxx

#comic #curtains #different #different way #disturb

I do personal attacks only on people who specialize in personal attacks. ↗

— Al Franken

#i #i do #only #people #personal

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock. ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#angry person #began #cast #civilization #first