Nation Founding

...a nation can be born in a day if the ideals of the people can be changed.

Source: Vachel Lindsay, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan Collected Works, 1925
Taken From: Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning, 1997 pg231

Temporally Temporary

The worship of comfort, then, is only another aspect of our decision to live wholly in this world.  Yet here man encounters an anomaly: the very policy of living wholly in this world, of having no traffic with that other world which cannot be "proved," turns one's attention wholly to the temporary and so actually impairs his effectiveness.

 Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

The Prophet

...the mark of the prophet is to speak the truth in love with courage - come what may.

Source: Cornel West, The American evasion of philosophy: a genealogy of pragmatism, 1989
Taken From: Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning, 1997 pg231

Poetic Life

From a biological standpoint, human life almost reads like a poem.  It has its own rhythm and beat, its internal cycles of growth and decay.

Source: Lin Yutang, Unsourced
Taken From: Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning, 1997

Plato's Cave

Seen from another point of view, the "monopoly of mainstream media" is a translation into actuality of Plato's celebrated figure of the cave.  The defect of the prisoners, let us recall, is that they cannot perceive the truth.  The wall before them, on which the shadows play, is the screen on which press, motion picture, and radio project their account of life.  The chains which keep the prisoners from turning their heads are the physical monopoly which the engines of publicity naturally possess.  And is it not pathetically true that these victims, with their limited vision, are "in the habit of conferring honors among themselves to those who are the quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before and which followed after, and which were together"?

 Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

Primitive Religions and Environmentalism

Is there a primitive religion that can match 'environmentalism' for attributing natural calamity to the transgressions of man?

Source: Charls Krauthammer, Jan 22nd, 1996; Environmentalists Testing The Limits Of Our Credulity Chicago Tribune
Taken From: Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning, 1997 pg231