Halberstam The Fifties Quotes & Sayings

When he combs his hair that is the colour of dead leaves, dead leaves fall out of it; they rustle and drift to the ground as though he were a tree and he can stand as still as a tree, when he wants the doves to flutter softly, crooning as they come, down upon his shoulders, those silly, fat, trusting woodies with the pretty wedding rings round their necks. He makes his whistles out of an elder twig and that is what he uses to call the birds out of the air--all the birds come; and the sweetest singers he will keep in cages. — Angela Carter

One reason that Americans as a people became nostalgic about the fifties more than twenty-five years later was not so much that life was better in the fifties (though in some ways it was), but because at the time it had been portrayed so idyllically on television. — David Halberstam

He hated House members who longed only to run for the Senate, and senators who longed only to run for the presidency. He was appalled by what he felt television had done to the Senate by the mid-fifties. It had become a major launching platform for presidential campaigns. He thought television had ruined the Senate as a serious body. All they do there is preen and comb their hair and run for President. It's like a presidential primary over there, — David Halberstam

Whenever things sound easy, it turns out there's one part you didn't hear. — Donald E. Westlake

Many share my views with me. But I don't share them with them. — Karl Kraus

You must dare greatly, to receive the grace for greatness. — Lailah Gifty Akita

What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what is a theatre? are they two and not one? Can they exist separate? Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion. O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride! — William Blake

In the late fifties Romney had been a forceful advocate of breaking up GM. That, he believed, would make everyone leaner and more competitive. In 1957 he went before the Kefauver Senate committee on monopolies. Before he testified he was summoned to the Ford headquarters by Henry Ford and Ernie Breech, the chairman of the company, who were nervous about what he was going to say and wanted to get some idea of his thrust. Romney explained what he wanted: the breaking up of GM and perhaps even Ford. "But that would just make the competition tougher," Ford had said. "If you broke up GM the rest of us would suffer." "That's exactly what I mean," Romney had said. "Listen, I think it's tough enough the way it is - it's a damn hard dollar," Ford had answered. — David Halberstam

What is lofty can be said in any language. What is mean should be said in none. — Maimonides