Elshtain Quotes & Sayings

In most of my campaigns, I find it is best not to mention my opponent by name because, by doing so, it just gives him a chance to get into the headlines. — Harry Truman

Give me life, with its struggles and victories, with its failures and hatreds, with its deep moral meaning and its unknown goal! — E. M. Forster

Dependence is misery. Independence is happiness. — Swami Vivekananda

There is much: recognition of the fact that human beings live indeterminate and incomplete lives; recognition of the power exerted over and upon us by our own habits and memories; recognition of the ways in which the world presses in on all of us, for it is an intractable place where many things go awry and go astray, where one may all-too-easily lose one's very self. The epistemological argument is framed by faith, but it stands on its own as an account of willing, nilling, memory, language, signs, affections, delight, the power and the limits of minds and bodies. To the extent that a prideful philosophy refuses to accept these, Augustine would argue, to that extent philosophy hates the human condition itself. — Jean Bethke Elshtain

We must never lose the language of justice, for it reminds us of what is at stake and of the importance of keeping justice itself alive in how we fight. — Jean Bethke Elshtain

The dualistic presuppositions of the revisionist position are fully on display in the frequent references by Macedo and others to sexual organs as "equipment." 60 Neither sperm nor eggs, neither penises nor vaginas, are properly discussed in ethical discourse in such terms. Nor are reproductive and other bodily organs "used" by persons considered as somehow standing over and apart from these and other aspects of their personal reality. In fact, where a person treats his body as mere equipment, a mere means to extrinsic ends, the existential sundering of the bodily and conscious dimensions of the self that he effects by his choices and actions brings with it a certain self-alienation, a damaging of the good of personal self-integration. — Jean Bethke Elshtain

There is no allusion to marriage or family in the Constitution. It is barely mentioned in the Federalist Papers or elsewhere in the ratification debates. The reason why the founders "ignored" the family was that it was not an issue for them. It was not a social problem. On the contrary, the family was the accepted substratum of society. It — Jean Bethke Elshtain

I think it is serious to have good sales. As I learned belatedly, the more you sell, the more publishers pay attention to you, and it took me a very long time to figure that out because I never thought that way. — Cynthia Ozick

Poor people are not by definition perfect. They and their communities are responsible for their own sins and failings, as are all God's children. But the evil that perpetuates their poverty is an evil for which we are all responsible. That evil is a demon to be exorcised. — Chad Myers

Marriage does not serve primarily to accommodate or to mitigate social tragedy of this sort. Its principal function is to prevent or limit the occurrence of such tragedies in the first place. — Jean Bethke Elshtain

I heard someone else in the hallway with her speaking, but there voice was so low I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. — Cynthia Tart

There's a lot of maintenance that goes into being a professional singer. — Betty Buckley

It was either bluster or look weak and Thorn reckoned that no choice at all, so she puffed herself up and snapped out, "How did you get the scar?"
"How did you get the scar?"
Thorn frowned. "What scar?"
"That's the face the gods gave you?" And with the faintest of smiles the Vansterman went back to coiling rope. — Joe Abercrombie

Just punishment, which observes restraints, is different from revenge, which knows no limits. — Jean Bethke Elshtain

The particular aspect of time that I'm interested in is the arrow of time: the fact that the past is different from the future. We remember the past but we don't remember the future. There are irreversible processes. There are things that happen, like you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can't turn an omelet into an egg. — Sean M. Carroll

The problem with becoming a public intellectual is that over time you grow more and more public but less and less intellectual. — Jean Bethke Elshtain

To this, it is countered that the same-sex conception of marriage and family is, and must be, parasitic upon the demise of conjugal society, wherein biological parents are not taking responsibility for the rearing and education of their own children. Having no natural justification, the dominion of two adults of the same sex over children in their custody is crucially dependent upon the state to enforce their claim to these children as against the claims of the biological parent(s). Same-sex marriage is necessarily a political form of social order, invoking the power of the state to make it so. — Jean Bethke Elshtain

In a time of dislocation, the Manichean view- we, the "good versus them, the "bad" -is, though comfortable, also false and dangerous. False, as I myself know remembering a little girl who wanted a gun and a brother who did not[...]. Dangerous because this simplistic view depends on rigid notions of what men and women are in relation to war and of war itself as an absolute contrast to peace. — Jean Bethke Elshtain

To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to be master of a technique. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Etymologically, "compassion" means to suffer together. "Together," however, is different from "identically." Compassion is not the same as selflessness, and not really the opposite of selfishness. Rather, it provides a basis for helping other people that is materially disinterested but emotionally self-regarding. As Rousseau wrote in Emile, "When the strength of an expansive soul makes me identify myself with my fellow, and I feel that I am, so to speak, in him, it is in order not to suffer that I do not want him to suffer. I am interested in him for love of myself ... " Or, as Jean Bethke Elshtain has said, "Pity is about how deeply I can feel. And in order to feel this way, to experience the rush of my own pious reaction, I need victims the way an addict needs drugs. — William Voegeli

Moreover, the attempt by advocates of same-sex marriage to sever marriage from procreation is more chimerical than real.35 One would be hard-pressed to find an advocate of same-sex marriage who would accept the proposition that same-sex couples should be given the right to marry but that right does not entail a right to procreate and rear children. Were marriage and family truly severable, as the contractual view suggests, the one would not entail the other. However, advocates of same-sex marriage want it both ways. They want the contractual view of marriage plus the option of raising children. — Jean Bethke Elshtain

He was smiling again, his face alight, and Ivy knew her own expression was a mirror to his. Ivoleyn, he said, softly now, as if testing the word. And she replied, Dashton. Then their hands parted, but only so they might come closer, like two trees twining together to stand as one in a forest of green. — Galen Beckett

Eternity! How know we but we stand
On the precipitous and crumbling verge
Of Time e'en now, Eternity below? — Abraham Coles

I love having beautiful furniture and things, but I don't want my space to look like a showroom. — Brad Goreski

Like the market, conjugal society, consisting of marriage and family, is not the creation of the state. It is a pre-political institution, rooted in sex difference and procreation. Given the pre-political nature of conjugal society, the state regulates it rightly by recognizing it as a natural fact with its own norms and purposes. The state ought not treat conjugal society as its own creation. Where there is evidence that parents are failing in their duties to each other or to their children, the state may intervene. Absent this, however, the state ought to leave conjugal society, rooted in the union of one man and one woman, alone. — Jean Bethke Elshtain

Nonetheless, by the time we arrive at the eighteenth century and the time of the founders, marriage and the family came to look very much as Aristotle had pictured it. In the previous centuries, Lutheran reforms had lodged marriage into the civil structure of society and made it more a concern of civil law,11 but, joined by Calvin, Protestantism retained parental control over the right of children to marry. John Locke, however, saw marriage as contracted political society, and thus his image of the family as a commonwealth made up of combined individuals parallel his image of the formation of the larger political commonwealth as well.12 Furthermore, Locke declares that parents are, "by the law of nature, under an obligation to preserve, nourish and educate" their children.13 Since government is instituted to enforce the laws of nature, Locke states that government should make laws that enforce "the security of the marriage bed.'14 What — Jean Bethke Elshtain

The only limitations man has are the ones he sets for himself. — Ralph Waldo Trine