“Never had I understood that I command, with absolute authority, the ship of my life! I decide its mission and rules and discipline, at my word waits every tool and sail, every cannon, the strength of every soul on board. I’m master of a team of passionate skills to sail me through hell’s own jaws the second I nod the direction to steer.””
“The sound of a kiss is not as strong as that of a cannon, but its echo endures much longer.””
“The interpenetration of chance and determination bears on the problem of how there can be a scientific approach to society when individual human behavior and consciousness seem unpredictable. Those who despair to point out that people are not machines, that there are subjective processes in the making of decisions, that it is not 'classes' but individuals who make choices. Terms such as "the human factor" or "subjective factors" with their implication of chance and unpredictability are invoked as the negation of regularity and lawfulness. And indeed it is true that individual behavior and consciousness are the consequences of intersection of a large number of weakly determining factors. But it does not follow that where there is choice, subjectivity, and individuality there cannon also be predictability. The error to take the individual as causally prior to the whole and not to appreciate that the social has causal properties within which individual consciousness and action are formed. While the consciousness of an individual is not determined by his/her class position but is influenced by idiosyncratic factors that appear as random, those random factors operate within a domain and with probabilities that are constrained and directed by social forces.””
“George Q. Cannon and an apostle himself, said his father told him “that he understood when he had his endowments in Nauvoo that he took an oath against the murderers of the Prophet Joseph as well as other prophets, and if he had ever met any of those who had taken a hand in that massacre he would undoubtedly have attempted to avenge the blood of the martyrs.””
Richard Cannon was a notable compiler of regimental records for the British Army, whose work significantly contributed to the preservation of military history in the United Kingdom. His most recognize...
“Once I’ve dumped the trash, I head back to the bedroom and drop onto the mattress. Allegra is waiting and gives me a what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you look. She comes over and pokes at the kpinga wound in my back. “Ow, goddammit,” I say. She ignores my whining and says, “Flip over. I want to get a look at that bullet wound.” I roll onto my back and she lets out a sigh. “Jesus, Stark. What, did you get hit by a cannon?” “A gold .45. If you’re going to get shot, a gold .45 is the classy way to do it.””
“Greene wrote about this sortie in The Quiet American: ‘Down we went again, away from the gnarled and fissured forest towards the river, flattening out over the neglected ricefields, aimed like a bullet at one small sampan on the yellow stream. The cannon gave a single burst of tracer, and the sampan blew apart in a shower of sparks; we didn’t even wait to see our victims struggling to survive, but climbed and made for home . . . There had been something so shocking in our sudden fortuitous choice of a prey – we had just happened to be passing, one burst only was required, there was no one to return our fire, we were gone again, adding our little quota to the world’s dead.’31””
“They say, “How are you feeling?” “Like I got gored by a water buffalo shot out of one of those circus cannons they use for clowns. You know the ones?” They smile. “Yeah. I’ve seen them.” “How is that even a job? What do you put on your taxes? ‘Clown gunner’?” Janet laughs a little. “It’s good to see you your own ridiculous self again.””
“Obama was far more conservative than Richard Nixon, for example, and this has been the Democratic story since Boomers started voting en masse. The initial deregulatory impulse began under Carter, not Reagan; it was Clinton, not Bush I, who promised to “end welfare as we know it” and declared that the “era of big government is over”; it was Obama who made most of the Bush tax cuts permanent, and so on. But there have also been some odd spectacles on the Right: the provision of prescription drug benefits to seniors under Bush II (Medicare Part D; apparently the era of big government was not quite over), and substantial increases to Medicare and Social Security taxes under Reagan and that president’s decidedly statist salvation of the savings and loan industry. What accounts for these odd paradoxes? Shouldn’t Bush II have been the one taking an ax to welfare and Clinton been pushing Medicare Part D?””
“O sirs, how many souls, then, have every one of us been guilty of damning! What a number of our neighbours and acquaintance are dead, in whom we discerned no signs of sanctification, and never did once plainly tell them of it, or how to be recovered! If you had been the cause but of burning a man's house through your negligence, or of undoing him in the world, or of destroying his body, how would it trouble you as long as you lived! If you had but killed a man unadvisedly, it would much disquiet you. We have known those that have been guilty of murder, that could never sleep quietly after, nor have one comfortable day, their own consciences did so vex and torment them. O, then, what a heart mayst thou have, that hast been builty of murdering such a multitude of precious souls! Remember this when thou lookest thy friend or carnal neighbour in the face, and think with thyself, Can I find in my heart, through my silence and negligence, to be guilty of his everlasting burning in hell? Methinks such a thought should even untie the tongue of the dumb. . . . [H]e that is guilty of a man's continuing unregenerate, is also guilty of the sins of his unregeneracy. . . . Eli did not commit the sin himself, and yet he speaketh so coldly against it that he also must bear the punishment . Guns and cannons spake against sin in England, because the inhabitants would not speak. God pleadeth with us with fire and sword, because we would not plead with sinners with our tongues (410-11).””