Quotes by James Lileks - Page 1

Calculus destroys self-esteem on contact.
James Lileks / Journalist
Calculus
Contact
Self Esteem
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The newspaper is a lecture. The Web is a conversation.
James Lileks / Journalist
Conversation
Lectures
Newspapers
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The mind forever turns on the lathe of its own contradictions.
James Lileks / Journalist
Contradiction
Forever
Mind
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Genius flames and dies, but amiable competence can live forever.
James Lileks / Journalist
Flames
Forever
Genius
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We always ask where the time went. We never ask where it's coming from.
James Lileks / Journalist
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Ah, if only the best place for storing embryonic stem cells was Yucca Flat.
James Lileks / Journalist
Politics
Best Place
Cells
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Contempt for the things people choose of their own free will is, at its heart, contempt for free will.
James Lileks / Journalist
Free Will
Heart
People
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If you think the ’80s were dumber than the ’70s, either you weren’t there or you weren’t paying attention.
James Lileks / Journalist
80s
Attention
Thinking
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From Day One the very existence of [Camp Bravo] has been a popcorn hull in the tender gums of the hard left.
James Lileks / Journalist
Politics
Gum
Hull
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I'll start drinking tea over coffee when the big hand is on Never and the little hand is on Ain't Gonna Happen.
James Lileks / Journalist
Coffee
Drinking
Hands
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I don't believe in the very concept of "first thing in the morning." I'm a "third thing in the afternoon" fellow.
James Lileks / Journalist
Morning
Afternoon
Believe
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I want to believe in intelligent design, and hence I am suspicious of anything that seems to confirm my desire to believe.
James Lileks / Journalist
Design
Believe
Intelligent
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The same people who accuse America of coddling dictators are sputtering with bilious fury because we actually deposed one.
James Lileks / Journalist
America
Dictator
People
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Yay Condi Rice. I want her to go to Saudi Arabia, and I want her first words upon getting off the plane to be 'I'll drive.'
James Lileks / Journalist
Arabia
Want
Yay
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I've always wondered if there was a Hezbollah version of minesweeper where you get points for blowing up on your first move.
James Lileks / Journalist
Firsts
Hezbollah
Moving
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If Mother had to be told not to shove the entire brick of Ivory up Junior's hindquarters, constipation is the least of his problems.
James Lileks / Journalist
Ivory
Juniors
Mother
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The popular Arab imagination is a pliant and inventive thing; it can explain any defeat. It is a compass that always points toward the Jew.
James Lileks / Journalist
Imagination
Compass
Defeat
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It takes a particularly rarified variety of idiot to look at a Jew-hating fascist with a small mustache - and decide that his opponent is the Nazi.
James Lileks / Journalist
Hate
Looks
Mustache
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A Children’s Museum, however, is more of a Funatorium. You are encouraged to touch things, which is poor training for subsequent museum visitation.
James Lileks / Journalist
Children
Museums
Training
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There are three stages to a man's life. 1. He laughs at Clark Griswold. 2. He sympathizes deeply with Clark Griswold. 3. He laughs at Clark Griswold.
James Lileks / Journalist
Men
Laughing
Three
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When your opponent sets up a straw man, set it on fire and kick the cinders around the stage. Don't worry about losing the Strawperson- American community vote.
James Lileks / Journalist
Men
Fire
Worry
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I’ll feel that horrible feeling in my stomach you get when you’ve gone over to the Dark Side. But I’ll be fine. That’s the good thing about the Dark Side. Eventually, your eyes adjust.
James Lileks / Journalist
Dark
Eye
Feelings
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All you need to know about Arafat was that he insisted on wearing a pistol when he addressed the UN General Assembly. And all you need to know about the UN, I suppose, is that they let him.
James Lileks / Journalist
Politics
Needs
Pistols
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And I don't want posture lessons from a country that spent the last 20 years flopping on its back and grabbing its ankles when Saddam showed up waving stacks of Francs in exchange for bang-sticks.
James Lileks / Journalist
Bangs
Country
Years
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Quietly scuttling Columbus Day sales doesn't mean they are opposed to 15th century Iberian seafarers; it just means They don't want protestors on the sales floor throwing blood on the Calvin Klein hosiery in the name of the anti-imperialistic cause.
James Lileks / Journalist
Blood
Mean
Names
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So now we're after a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a guy-and-gal thing. To the founders, this would have been like an amendment requiring the sun to rise in the east; it would fall under the category of obvious truths that the Constitution need not address.
James Lileks / Journalist
East
Fall
Guy
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Look. Every partisan in every party has to learn one thing: Sometimes your people are wrong. To paraphrase an old retort, saying "My party, right or wrong" is like saying "My Kennedy, drunk or sober." Credibility is earned, and standing up and saying "Fie!" now and then reinforces your truthfulness.
James Lileks / Journalist
Drunk
Party
People
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The worst thing about depression isn't the sense that you're accentuating the negative, it's that you're seeing things the way they really are, stripped of the illusions you use every day to divert yourself from the Yawning Maw of Futility. It's the wind that blows off the snow and reveals the stone.
James Lileks / Journalist
Blow
Wind
Yawning
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What unnerves so many liberals about talk radio? Simple: It's the unapologetic nature of the conversation, the unwavering sense of certainty. Where's the nuance? The shades of gray? We all know truth is a fragile butterfly dancing in and out of shadow and light, and these guys act as though truth is a rhino charging across a sunlit veldt.
James Lileks / Journalist
Butterfly
Rhinos
Simple
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You can imagine what the advisers are telling Junior Assad: "Your statues are much stronger than Saddam's. His were hollow, and bolted in place with inferior metal; yours are solid, and are anchored to a depth of three feet. Let the American tanks come! Their gears will strip and their engines whine in defeat as they attempt to pull down your statues!
James Lileks / Journalist
Feet
Stronger
Tanks
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The International Criminal Court, like most international institutions, is a wonderful idea. A noble idea. All it needs to work is planetary government, worldwide democracy and the triumph of reason over tribal loyalties, political doctrines and individual ambition. In other words, it requires that we all live in the world described by the "Star Trek" television shows.
James Lileks / Journalist
Loyalty
Government
Ambition
Stars
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Wait until France gets a hard shot in the nose. Wait until France reacts with some nasty work. They'll get a golf-clap from the chattering class over here and a you-go-girl from Red America. France could nuke an Algerian terrorist camp and the rest of the world would tut-tut for a day, then ask if the missiles France used were for sale. And of course the answer would be oui.
James Lileks / Journalist
Girl
Class
Golf
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If the "rich" were swarming into poor neighborhoods and beating the poor until they coughed up the dimes they swallowed for safekeeping, yes, this would be a transfer of income from the poor to the rich. But allowing taxpayers to keep more of their money does not qualify as taking it from the poor - unless you believe that the poor have a moral claim to the money other people earn.
James Lileks / Journalist
Believe
People
Poor Neighborhoods
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The (campaign) ads all have the same tone - the voice is hushed and amazed when talking about The Enemy, as if you should worry how this amoral, power-mad, extremist puppy-strangler clawed his way out of hell and landed in your district. And the voice is happy and relieved when talking about The Most Noble Candidate, as though he's Santa, Will Rogers and Lincoln all rolled into one.
James Lileks / Journalist
Mad
Talking
Voice
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When liberal celebs stammer out a litany of shopworn bleats about the administration's attempt to turn America into a theocratic prison state, people can't help but notice that these buskers and mummers seem unmoved by the horrors of actual prison states. (Saddam commissioned a copy of the Quran written in his own blood - but John Ashcroft is the real religious nut, don't you know.)
James Lileks / Journalist
Blood
Real
Religious
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I regret that after 30 years of writing columns in this market, including ten with this newspaper that I love very much, this local conversation has come to an end. However, I believe that if the newspapers of the country pool their resources, we can send an Arnold-Schwartzenegger-style robot back in time to kill the inventor of the Internet, and then our future will be much brighter.
James Lileks / Journalist
Believe
Country
Regret
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The not-quite-sort-of lie works here too - often an ad will announce that "Congressman Johnson voted for a bill that gave tax breaks to companies like Enron." True - although the bill allowed all companies to accelerate depreciation of copying machines. Yes, Enron benefited, but Enron also benefited from the revolution of the Earth around the sun. Hardly an argument to freeze the planet in one spot.
James Lileks / Journalist
Copying
Lying
Machines
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The al-Qaida cell broken up near Buffalo, N.Y., contains some citizens who also found themselves in Afghanistan, training for the Great All-Around Satan Smiting. Treason? Oh, of course not. They were on a religious pilgrimage and got lost. Happens all the time. I knew a kid who went to Lutheran Bible Camp and turned up six years later in a Christian Identity compound with a shaved head and a Hitler mustache.
James Lileks / Journalist
Kids
Christian
Religious
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Modern death is a matter of bright rooms and hard machines. Live long enough, and you might be filed away in a nursing home, your history scoured away, your life winnowed down to a few items on the table and some pictures of people who don't come around enough. When you are about to pass on, there is no quiet to attend you: busy fuss and professional zeal strive to bring you back, nail you to the soft cross of the rented bed.
James Lileks / Journalist
Death
Home
Nursing
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There's too much political hay to be made undercutting the war, and the consequences be damned. If they want to defeat the war to defeat Bush, well, noted. If they truly believe that the United States is in the same group as the Nazis, the Soviets and Pol Pot, then they've shown they have no perspective, no judgment, no sense of nuance, shall we say. And the idea that such comparisons might be picked up in the Middle East and broadcast with glee is irrelevant; they're parochial to a fault, and care little for anything beyond their reputation and power in Washington.
James Lileks / Journalist
War
Believe
Ideas
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