Putnam Quotes & Sayings

Consider, too, the matter of display, the claims of "specialness" implicit in attack by witchcraft. Such claims were most vividly dramatized in full-blown "fits," but, in a lesser measure, they may be imputed to all self-described victims: "The forces of evil have chosen me as their target. And you - the standers-by - must attend to me in my hour of affliction." This — John Putnam Demos

TV-based politics is to political action as watching ER is to saving someone in distress. — Robert D. Putnam

Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,
not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us
the Irish! — Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

The physicist who states a law of nature with the aid of a mathematical formula is abstracting a real feature of a real material world, even if he has to speak of numbers, vectors, tensors, state-functions, or whatever to make the abstraction. — Hilary Putnam

University of Hawaii Press, 1983; The Happiest Man: The Life of Louis Borgenicht (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1942). Used by permission of Lindy Friedman Sobel and Alice Friedman Holzman. The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. ISBN 978-0-316-04034-1 E3 — Malcolm Gladwell

Most Americans watch Friends rather than having friends. — Robert Putnam

Once we know how observant a person is in terms of church attendance, nothing that we can discover about the content of her religious faith adds anything to our understanding or prediction of her good neighborliness ... In fact, the statistics suggest that even an atheist who happened to become involved in the social life of the congregation (perhaps through a spouse) is much more likely to volunteer in a soup kitchen than the most fervent believer who prays alone. It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing. — Robert Putnam

Archipelago was created with the vision of making markets better for all investors, a vision that we share with the NYSE and has led us to this historic day. I am extremely proud of the innovation, the technology and the value Archipelago has brought to its customers and shareholders and am excited about combining our strengths with those of the NYSE. — Robert D. Putnam

It is one thing to say, "Some men shall rule," quite another to declare, "All men shall rule," and that in virtue of the most primitive, the most rudimentary attribute they possess, that namely of sex. — Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

From the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard came a note from Professor F. W. Putnam, rapturous in his commendation of "your great work. — Timothy Egan

Pathological dissociation is characterized by profound, functional amnesias and significant alterations in identity; normal dissociation is expressed primarily in the form of intense absorption with internal stimuli (e.g., daydreams) or external stimuli (e.g., a fascinating book or television program). — Frank W. Putnam

Nearly half of all associational memberships are church-religious context. Religious worshipers and people who say religion is very important to them are much more likely than other persons to visit friends, to entertain at home, to attend club meetings, and to belong to sports groups; professional and academic societies; school service groups; youth groups; service clubs; hobby or garden clubs; literary, art, discussion, and study groups; school fraternities and sororities; farm organization; political clubs; nationality groups; and other miscellaneous groups. — Robert Putnam

The lady ... is an anomaly to which the western nations of this planet have grown accustomed but which would require a great deal of explanation before a Martian could understand her. — Emily James Smith Putnam

The differences in alter personality states' self-concepts can be striking, but authorities routinely stress that these are more apparent than real (e.g., Putnam, 1989a; Kluft, 1991). Various typologies have been offered, but few systematic data exist. Types of MPD alters, such as child-like personality states, angry alters, protectors, and persecutors, are found often enough to warrant further investigation. — Frank W. Putnam

Work on causal theories of knowledge - early work by Armstrong, and Dretske, and Goldman - seemed far more satisfying. As I started to see the ways in which work in the cognitive sciences could inform our understanding of central epistemological issues, my whole idea of what the philosophical enterprise is all about began to change. Quine certainly played a role here, as did Putnam's (pre-1975) work in philosophy of science, and the exciting developments that went on in that time in philosophy of mind. — Hilary Kornblith

The term "exobiology," sometimes interchanged with astrobiology, is actually much more specific - it covers the search for life beyond Earth and the effects of extraterrestrial environments on living things. Today, it is considered a subdiscipline within astrobiology. — Cris Putnam

John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. — George Haven Putnam

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is, that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. — George Haven Putnam

No matter how well-born, how intelligent, how highly educated, how virtuous, how rich, how refined, the women of to-day constitutea political class below that of every man, no matter how base-born, how stupid, how ignorant, how vicious, how poverty-stricken, how brutal. The pauper in the almshouse may vote; the lady who devotes her philanthropic thought to making that almshouse habitable, may not. The tramp who begs cold victuals in the kitchen may vote; the heiress who feeds him and endows universities may not. — Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

It was Rudolf Carnap's dream for the last three decades of his life to show that science proceeds by a formal syntactic method; today no one to my knowledge holds out any hope for that project. — Hilary Putnam

No sane person should believe that something is subjective merely because it cannot be settled beyond controversy. — Hilary Putnam

Thou mutters, Miss Putnam. Speak up."
Like she couldn't hear. She'd hear Chess if Chess ran to the other end of the room, covered her mouth with her hands, and whispered "Fuck you," but she couldn't hear Chess standing four feet away from her. — Stacia Kane

During the long ages of class rule, which are just beginning to cease, only one form of sovereignty has been assigned to all men
that, namely, over all women. Upon these feeble and inferior companions all men were permitted to avenge the indignities they suffered from so many men to whom they were forced to submit. — Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

More plausible suspects in our mystery are the things that students collectively bring with them to school, ranging from(on the positive side of the ledger) academic encouragement at home and private funding for "extras" to (on the negative side) crime, drugs, and disorder. Whom you go to school with matters a lot. — Robert D. Putnam

I had been offered fellowships to enter as a graduate student at either Harvard or Princeton. But the Princeton fellowship was somewhat more generous, since I had not actually won the Putnam competition ... Thus Princeton became the choice for my graduate study location. — John Forbes Nash Jr.

This language implies the covenant is unique to Earth, exclusive to humans, and universally unprecedented. — Cris Putnam

clinical literature is virtually unanimous that full MPD [Multiple Personality Disorder] cannot be created iatrogenically. There is no evidence that such a case has been demonstrated; clinicians of widely different orientations have studied the available information and arrived at similar conclusions (e.g., Braun, 1984; Gruenewald, 1984; Kernberg, in press; Kluft, 1982; Putnam, 1989). Nonetheless, most of these observers have noted that many of the phenomena of MPD can be created quite readily, and that phenomena with striking superficial resemblance to MPD can be generated with relatively little effort. In fact, I noted in passing (Kluft, 1986a) that I had replicated the interventions of Harriman (1942,1943), Leavitt (1947), and Kampman (1976), and found the resultant phenomena clearly distinguishable from clinical MPD.
(from Kluft, R. P. (1989). Dissociation: Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 083-091: Iatrongenic creation of new alter personalities) — Richard P. Kluft

I think part of the appeal of mathematical logic is that the formulas look mysterious - You write backward Es! — Hilary Putnam

I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them.
[Letter to Herbert Putnam; in: Waters, Edward N.: Herbert Putnam: the tallest little man in the world; Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 33:2 (April 1976), p. 171] — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Upper-class parents enable their kids to form weak ties by exposing them more often to organized activities, professionals, and other adults. Working-class children, on the other hand, are more likely to interact regularly only with kin and neighborhood children, which limits their formation of valuable weak ties. — Robert D. Putnam

If we think of politics as an industry, we might delight in its new "labour-saving efficiency", but if we think of politics as democratic deliberation, to leave people out is to miss the whole point of the exercise. — Robert D. Putnam

Every console, I don't give a damn if it's analog or digital-hell, every mixing situation today-is the brainchild of Bill Putnam. — Bruce Swedien

School performance, public health, crime rates, clinical depression, tax compliance, philanthropy, race relations, community development, census returns, teen suicide, economic productivity, campaign finance, even simple human happiness - all are demonstrably affected by how (and whether) we connect with our family and friends and neighbours and co-workers. — Robert D. Putnam

Community connectedness is not just about warm fuzzy tales of civic triumph. In measurable and well-documented ways, social capital makes an enormous difference in our lives ... Social capital makes us smarter, healthier, safer, richer, and better able to govern a just and stable democracy. — Robert D. Putnam

Sure. Focused. Let's totally ignore any possible other avenues and just tunnel-vision our way along. Maybe we'll get lucky and blunder into a Lamaru hangout, right? — Stacia Kane

The true lady is in theory either a virgin or a lawful wife. — Emily James Smith Putnam

The lady ... is not a producer; in most communities productive labor is by consent unladylike. On the other hand she is the heaviest of consumers, and theorists have not been wanting to maintain that the more she spends the better off society is. — Emily James Smith Putnam

Generally speaking, lower-tier grandparents mostly donate time, replacing parental resources, whereas upper-tier grandparents mostly donate money, supplementing parental resources — Robert D. Putnam

We all know that the way to get something done is to give it to a busy person. — Robert D. Putnam

In contemporary society [the typical lady] is an archaism, and can't hardly understand herself unless she knows her own history. — Emily James Smith Putnam

The lady is proverbial for her skill in eluding definition ... she may be described merely as the female of the favored social class. — Emily James Smith Putnam

Look, we ought to do this for our kids ... We ought to have a high school so that every kid who grows up here - they're all our kids - gets a good high school education. — Robert D. Putnam

We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. — George Haven Putnam

Some people have the experience of being accused of lying when they do not think that they have lied. Circle a number to show what percentage of the time this happens to you.
[question from the Dissociative Experiences Scale] — Frank W. Putnam

Poor kids, through no fault of their own, are less prepared by their families, their schools, and their communities to develop their God-given talents as fully as rich kids. For economic productivity and growth, our country needs as much talent as we can find, and we certainly can't afford to waste it. The opportunity gap imposes on all of us both real costs and what economists term opportunity costs. — Robert D. Putnam

I beam back at her. Fuck the surgery, fuck the kids, fuck the men in our lives or no longer in our lives. This is sweet. When she catches up with me, I say, How many, just how many forty-plus women would do that?
We gaze back up at the face bleeding into the chute we've just skied. We *did* that, I crow. Someone should love us just for that.
Hangfire — Claudia Putnam

{The Progressives] outlook was activist and optimistic, not fatalist and despondent. The distinctive characteristic of the Progressives was their conviction that social evils would not remedy themselves and that it was foolhardy to wait passively for time's cure. As Herbert Croly put it, they did not believe that the future would take care of itself. Neither should we. — Robert D. Putnam

Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in the position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position-and no end to it is in sight-is that of having to philosophise without 'foundations'. — Hilary Putnam

Men, accustomed to think of men as possessing sex attributes and other things besides, are accustomed to think of women as having sex, and nothing else. — Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

A society that relies on generalized reciprocity is more efficient than a distrustful society, for the same reason that money is more efficient than barter. Trust lubricates social life. Networks of civic engagement also facilitate coordination and communication and amplify information about the trustworthiness of other individuals. — Robert D. Putnam

THE most important divide in America today is class, not race, and the place where it matters most is in the home. Conservatives have been banging on about family breakdown for decades. Now one of the nation's most prominent liberal scholars has joined the chorus. Robert Putnam is a former dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the author of "Bowling Alone" (2000), an influential work that lamented the decline of social capital in America. In his new book, "Our Kids", he describes the growing gulf between how the rich and the poor raise their children. Anyone who has read "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray will be familiar with the trend, but Mr Putnam adds striking detail and some excellent graphs (pictured). This is a thoughtful and — Anonymous

What really matters from the point of view of social capital and civic engagement is not merely nominal membership, but active and involved membership. — Robert D. Putnam

Do you want to know what General Putnam is thinking? It's this. He's thinking that he can't win the war if he doesn't keep the people on his side. He's thinking that he can't keep the people on his side if the troops are running amok among the civilian population - raping the women, stealing cattle, burning houses. He is determined to scare the wits out of the troops to keep them in line. And he's thinking that it doesn't matter very much who he executes to do it. So many men have died, so many mothers have wept, so many brothers and sisters have cried. He is thinking that in the long run if he executes somebody, he'll shorten the war and save more lives. It doesn't matter to him very much who he executes; one man's agony is like another's, one mother's tears are no wetter than anybody else's. And that's why he's going to have Sam shot. — James Lincoln Collier

Maternity is on the face of it an unsociable experience. The selfishness that a woman has learned to stifle or to dissemble where she alone is concerned, blooms freely and unashamed on behalf of her offspring. — Emily James Smith Putnam

A good horse is a man's best friend in time of danger. — Israel Putnam

Parental wealth is especially important for social mobility, because it can provide informal insurance that allows kids to take more risks in search of more reward. — Robert D. Putnam

But you say you are conservative - eminently conservative - while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? — George Haven Putnam

Our national myths often exaggerate the role of the individual heroes and understate the importance of collective effort. — Robert D. Putnam

Cut the pie any way you like, "meanings" just ain't in the head! — Hilary Putnam

I have read that long ago there was a land of glass castles that sank beneath the sea. It was not called Atlantis, but Lyonesse. This happened before history and across the ocean, but when I was little I wondered about that place, how it could be so beautiful and so lost. Sometimes it seemed that the land around my New England home was like that flooded country, with mud where the streets of gold should be and mayflies swarming where there should be lovely fishes, but here and there a shard of crystal to call the heart to beauty.
"Wetlands," in Phoebe. — Claudia Putnam

As the gentleman decays, the lady survives as the strongest evidence of his former predominance. — Emily James Smith Putnam

[the] special relation of women to children, in which the heart of the world has always felt there was something sacred, serves to impress upon women certain tendencies, to endow them with certain virtueswhich will render them of special value in public affairs. — Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

Basically for everything that comes out of Five Four, I've come up with the idea or changed it in some way. I'm also working with Putnam Accessory Group, a private label hat manufacturer. I'm in the process of re-branding a line they have called Chuck. It was mostly hats and bags, but I'm adding apparel and eyewear and whatever I feel like adding to turn it more into a brand. I'm supposed to be working with Pharrell on Billionaire Boys Club, but that's on hold. — Mark McNairy

An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. — George Haven Putnam

Many people have a stereotype of what it means to be poor. And it may be somebody they see on the street corner with a sign: "Will work for food." And what they don't think about is that person who's struggling every day. Could be the person who waited on us, took our bank deposit, works in retail, but who is barely above the poverty line. — Robert D. Putnam

Stressful conditions from outside school are much more likely to intrude into the classroom in high poverty schools. Every one of ten stressors is two to three times more common in high poverty schools
Student hunger, unstable housing, lack of medical and dental care, caring for family members, immigration issues, community violence and safety issues. — Robert D. Putnam

The lady is almost the only picturesque survival in a social order which tends less and less to tolerate the exceptional ... In the age-long war between men and women, she is a hostage in the enemy's camp. Her fortunes do not rise and fall with those of women but with those of men. — Emily James Smith Putnam

Positive people have more friends which is a key factor of happiness and longevity. — Robert D. Putnam

People may go to the library looking mainly for information, but they find each other there. — Robert D. Putnam

Social capital may turn out to be a prerequisite for, rather than a consequence of, effective computer-mediated communication. — Robert D. Putnam

My favorite Broadway show day-to-day, just for the experience, was 'The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.' The people were so much fun. It was a great show. — Barrett Foa

1. Institutions shape politics. The rules and standard operating procedures that make up institutions leave their imprint on political outcomes by structuring political behavior. Outcomes are not simply reducible to the billiard-ball interaction of individuals nor to the intersection of broad social forces. Institutions influence outcomes because they shape actors' identities, power, and strategies. 2. Institutions are shaped by history. Whatever other factors may affect their form, institutions have inertia and "robustness." They therefore embody historical trajectories and turning points. History matters because it is "path dependent": what comes first (even if it was in some sense "accidental") conditions what comes later. Individuals may "choose" their institutions, but they do not choose them under circumstances of their own making, and their choices in turn influence the rules within which their successors choose. — Robert D. Putnam

The mass media stereotype of an MPD patient is a woman harboring an internal collection of delightfully different people ranging from wide-eyed little kids to kung fu masters and nuclear physicists. Skeptics tend to focus concretely on the impossibility of there being 10 or 20 or 100 separate people inside that woman's body (e.g., Sarbin, 1995). By and large, this stereotype will not go away.

Alter personalities are real. They do exist - not as separate, individuals, but as discrete dissociative states of consciousness. When considered from this perspective, they are not nearly so amazing to behold or so difficult to accept. A fair reading of the MPD literature shows that authorities have long subscribed to this thesis: "Only when taken together can all of the personality states be considered a whole personality" (Coons, 1984, p. 53). Paradoxically, it is the critics who implicitly accept the view that the alter personalities are separate people. — Frank W. Putnam

Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes! Then fire low! — Israel Putnam

Schools themselves aren't creating the opportunity gap: the gap is already large by the time children enter kindergarten and does not grow as children progress through school. The gaps in cognitive achievement by level of maternal education that we observe at age 18-powerful predictors of who goes to college and who does not - are mostly present at age 6when children enter school. Schooling plays only a minor role in alleviating or creating test score gaps. — Robert D. Putnam

Social dislocation can easily breed a reactionary form of nostalgia. — Robert D. Putnam

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. — George Haven Putnam

The enemy advances and you tremble. They've better numbers, you say. Better weapons. Better training. But I do not fear, and neither should you. For what they have in material, they lack in conviction and care. But not us. We have discipline. We have order. And most importantly, we have passion. We believe! So maintain vigilance. Conserve your ammo. Ensure a proper line of sight. And above all else, men, do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes. — Israel Putnam

A century ago mainstream science was still quite happy to countenance vital and mental powers which had a 'downwards' causal influence on the physical realm in a straightforwardly interactionist way. It was only in the middle of the last century that science finally concluded that there are no such non-physical forces. At which point a whole pile of smart philosophers (Feigl, Smart, Putnam, Davidson, Lewis) quickly pointed out that mental, biological and social phenomena must themselves be physical, in order to produce the physical effects that they do. — David Papineau

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. — George Haven Putnam

Cairn Stone
This is the rock he lifted
to lay upon a cairn
in a high place.
This rock, warmed by the near sun,
felt right, somehow, in his hand.
He decided to carry it down
to his mother, who lay in bed,
recovering.
It is so easy to please
a mother. Just to think of her
for a moment, from a high place,
and to carry that thought to her
in the form of a stone. — Claudia Putnam

I'm sure Putnam is right that there's been a decline in certain kinds of organizations like bowling leagues. But people participate in communities in other ways. — Peter L. Berger

My whole existence is governed by abstract ideas ... the ideal must be preserved regardless of fact. — Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

Unequal Democracy is the sort of book to which every political scientist should aspire
it is methodologically rigorous, conceptually serious, and above all, it addresses urgent concerns of our fellow citizens. As Bartels shows, much of what we think we know about the politics of economic inequality is dead wrong. Bartels's perplexing and often unexpected discoveries should help refocus the gathering public debate about inequality and what to do about it. — Robert D. Putnam

While there is such a thing as correctness in ethics, in interpretation, in mathematics, the way to understand that is not by trying to model it on the ways in which we get things right in physics ... — Hilary Putnam

Undiagnosed DID patients received incorrect diagnoses of schizophrenia in 25% to 40% of cases in two large series (Putnam, 1989; Ross, 1989), while in one stores 12% and in the other 16% had received electroconvulsive therapy. — Colin A. Ross

It was the yearning she related to. Shriver seemed to understand the specific human pain of wanting and pushing away at the same time. It left her with a gorgeous ache, and when she turned the last page of the book and closed the cover, Norah's connection to the writer felt absolute. It was a breathless, consuming rapture.... — Ellen Meister

How well you do in life shouldn't depend on how well your parents did. — Robert D. Putnam

And it is only after seeing man as his unconscious, revealed by his dreams, presents him to us that we shall understand him fully. For as Freud said to Putnam: We are what we are because we have been what we have been. — Sigmund Freud

People divorced from community, occupation, and association are first and foremost among the supporters of extremism. — Robert D. Putnam

The reported numbers of MPD alter personality states are given great play by critics. As usual, these critics rarely consult the research. Although cases with dozens or scores of alters have been reported, the mode is 3 and the median typically 8-10 (see, e.g., Putnam et al., 1986; Coons et al., 1988; Ross, Norton, and Wozney, 1989f; Kluft, 1991). — Frank W. Putnam

I will not surrender my profession simply because men throughout history have been unduly enamored of their penises!" - Dr. Christine Putnam — Jordan L. Hawk

To-day women constitute the only class of sane people excluded from the franchise ... — Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

It appears that the picture of DID as the ongoing clash of polarized personality types (e.g., good girl-bad girl, upright citizen-sociopath) is hard to sustain, although such clashes, when they occur, arrest attention and at times become a concern of the forensic psychiatrist. Most patients have personalities that are named, but there may be those who are nameless or whose appellations are not proper names (i.e.. "the slut," "rage," etc.).
Child personalities, those who retain long periods of continuous awareness, those who claim to know about all of the others, and depressed personalities are the most frequent types enumerated (Putnam et al.. 1986). — Richard P. Kluft

Busy people tend to forgo the one activity - TV watching _ that is most lethal to community involvement — Robert D. Putnam

Causes (pains) are not logical constructions out of their effects (behaviour). — Hilary Putnam

Slavery was, in fact, a social system designed to destroy social capital among slaves and between slaves and freemen. — Robert D. Putnam

In his play depicting the Salem Witch Trials, the author illustrates profound psychological bullying. The ringleader of young girls suspected of unsavory conduct, frightens her friends into silence by warning: Now, look you; All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam's dead sisters, and that was all ... Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night, and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. — Arthur Miller

None of the people watching 'Big Brother' will bring you chicken soup if you get sick. — Robert D. Putnam

Until changing economic conditions made the thing actually happen, struggling early society would hardly have guessed that woman's road to gentility would lie through doing nothing at all. — Emily James Smith Putnam