#lost

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

It would be nice to travel if you knew where you were going and where you would live at the end or do we ever know, do we ever live where we live, we're always in other places, lost, like sheep. ↗

— Janet Frame

#be nice #end #ever #going #knew

I just can't think how I would go on without children having lost Edith already... It's too upsetting for me to write about them. Naturally, I still hope, and wait, wait, wait. ↗

— Otto Frank

#already #children #edith #go #having

And most of these pilots were lost during the first five flights. ↗

— Adolf Galland

#first #five #flights #lost #most

Of course, the outcome of the war would not have been changed. The war was lost perhaps, when it was started. At least it was lost in the winter of '42, in Russia. ↗

— Adolf Galland

#changed #course #least #lost #outcome

You do not defend a world that is already lost. ↗

— Garet Garrett

#defend #lost #world #you

A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#appreciated #battle #described #easily #great

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#free #free people #liberty #lost #maxim

The Academy Awards was an amazing night. I know I kind of lost my mind a little bit. I apologize for that. That night went so fast; I can't remember what I said or what happened. ↗

— Cuba Gooding, Jr.

#academy awards #amazing #apologize #awards #bit

Something must be radically wrong with a culture and a civilisation when its youth begins to desert it. Youth is the natural time for revolt, for experiment, for a generous idealism that is eager for action. Any civilisation which has the wisdom of self-preservation will allow a certain margin of freedom for the expression of this youthful mood. But the plain, unpalatable fact is that in America today that margin of freedom has been reduced to the vanishing point. Rebellious youth is not wanted here. In our environment there is nothing to challenge our young men; there is no flexibility, no colour, no possibility for adventure, no chance to shape events more generously than is permitted under the rules of highly organised looting. All our institutional life combines for the common purpose of blackjacking our youth into the acceptance of the status quo; and not acceptance of it merely, but rather its glorification. ↗

— Harold Edmund Stearns

#adventure #america #civilization #desertion #emigration