1421) It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever.

This Is Spinal Tap (film, 1984)
written by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Rob Reiner,
directed by Rob Reiner,
spoken by the character "David St. Hubbins"
played by Michael McKean
posted by Sara Miller [IQM] (10/11/1995)

1422) If you're going to make a mistake, you might as well make it going 100 miles an hour.

Rick Lantz
Virginia football defensive coordinator (attributed)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (10/11/1995)

1423) A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

Mitch Ratcliffe
Technology Review (4/1992)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (10/11/1995)

1424) When you have a choice in voting between a crook and an idiot, take the crook. It's easier to reform a crook than it is to inform an idiot.

Inside-the-Beltway maxim
invoked in the Senate gallery by a senior aide
to Sen. Dan Quayle sometime in late 1986
Cynthia Price, personal e-mail (10/11/1995)

1425) A man should never be ashamed to own that he is wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

Alexander Pope
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
Pope and Swift's Miscellanies (1727) [WQ]
posted by George Osner [ISQ] (10/11/1995)

1426) Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money to do it right.

Kurt Herbert Adler (widely attributed)
posted by Jim Speirs [ISQ] (10/11/1995)

1427) The ability to think rationally is pretty rare, even in prestigious universities.

Neal Stephenson
Zodiac (1988)

1428) Tact is the art of convincing people that they know more than you do.

Raymond Mortimer (attributed)
posted by Jim Speirs [ISQ] (10/11/1995)

1429) [I]t is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.

Adlai Stevenson
speech to the American Legion Convention
in New York City (8/27/1952) [WQ]

[Note: Often attributed to Alfred Adler.]

1430) In Cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance.

John Perry Barlow
founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
keynote address to the Winter 1994
USENIX Conference (1/17/1994)
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (10/11/1995)

1415) The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

James Baldwin
"The Negro Child - His Self-Image" in
Saturday Review (12/21/1963)
reprinted as "A Talk to Teachers" in
The Price of the Tickets (1985) [CQ]

1416) Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.

Lord Brougham
speech to the House of Commons (1/29/1828) [CQ]

1417) The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to make a new insight.

Harold Rosenberg
"The Cultural Situation Today" in
Partisan Review (Summer 1972)
reprinted as the Introduction to
Discovering the Present (1973) [CQ]

1418) It is an axiom in political science that unless a people are educated and enlightened it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty or the capacity for self-government.

Texas Declaration of Independence (3/2/1836) [CQ]

1419) Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

H.G. Wells
The Outline of History (1920) [CQ]

1420) True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, in inequality of success, the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world.

Felix E. Schelling
Pedagogically Speaking (1929) [CQ]

1396) The great lawyer who employs his talent and his learning in the highly remunerative task of enabling a very wealthy client to override or circumvent the law is doing all that in him lies to encourage the growth in the country of a spirit of dumb anger against all laws and of disbelief in their efficacy.

Theodore Roosevelt
quoted in
Book of Proverbs and Epigrams (1954)
posted by Cyrus Wolfman [IQM] (10/10/1995)

1387) I hold it to be one of the distinguishing excellences of elective over hereditary successions, that the talents which nature has provided in sufficient proportion, should be selected by the society for the government of their affairs, rather than that this should be be transmitted through the loins of knaves and fools passing from the debauches of the table to those of the bed.

Thomas Jefferson
letter to George Washington (9/9/1792)
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1853-54)
Henry A. Washington, ed.
posted by Tim Vorce [IQM] (10/10/1995)

Tax reduction has an almost irresistible appeal to the politician, and it is no doubt also gratifying to the citizen. It means more dollars in his pocket, dollars that he can spend if inflation doesn't consume them first. But dollars in his pocket won't buy him clean streets or an adequate police force or good schools or clear air and water. Handing money back to the private sector in tax cuts and starving the public sector is a formula for producing richer and richer consumers in filthier and filthier communities. If we stick to that formula we shall end up in affluent misery.

John W. Gardner
The Recovery of Confidence (1970) [RQ]

We get richer and richer in filthier and filtheir communities until we reach a final state of affluent misery—crocus on a garbage heap. [SCQ]

1386) Ain't no sense worrying about things you got control over, 'cause if you got control over 'em, ain't no sense worrying. And ain't no sense worrying about things you got no control over 'cause if you got no control over 'em, ain't no sense worrying.

Mickey Rivers
Major League outfielder
(1970-1984, Angels, Yankees, Rangers)
quoted by Daniel Okrent and Steve Wulf in
Baseball Anecdotes (1989)
Kaykes, personal e-mail (10/9/1995)

1382) There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?

W. Somerset Maugham
quoted by Thomas A. Harris in
I'm OK - You're OK (1976)
posted by D. Edmonds [IQM] (10/8/1995)

1383) The highest activities of consciousness have their origins in physical occurrences of the brain just as the loveliest melodies are not too sublime to be expressed by notes.

W. Somerset Maugham
A Writer's Notebook (1949)
posted by D. Edmonds [IQM] (10/8/1995)

1384) Impropriety is the soul of wit.

W. Somerset Maugham
The Moon and Sixpence (1919) [WQ]
posted by D. Edmonds [IQM] (10/8/1995)

1385) People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.

W. Somerset Maugham
Of Human Bondage (1915) [WQ]
posted by D. Edmonds [IQM] (10/8/1995)

1368) I think what this jury did is give the middle finger to justice.

Dominick Dunne
referring to the jury in the
O.J. Simpson criminal trial
posted by AJ Boodles on the Court TV
OJ Simpson discussion board (10/6/1995)

1369) If you are rich you can get away with murder.

GoldNCobra
posted on the Court TV OJ Simpson
discussion board (10/4/1995)

1370) Written laws are like spiders' webs; they hold the weak and delicate who might be caught in their meshes, but are torn to pieces by the rich and powerful.

Anacharsis
to Solon, who was compiling his laws
reported by Plutarch in
Lives: Solon [MAC]

[Note: This remark is widely and incorrectly attributed to Solon, whereas it was actually a criticism of Solon. Similar remarks have been made by Terence, Francis Bacon, Jonathan Swift and Benjamin Franklin, among others.]

1371) The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted.

Publius Syrus
Sententiae #296 (c. 48 BC) [MAC]

[Note: Incorrectly attributed to Horace.]

1372) The administration of justice is no more designed to elicit the truth than the scientific approach is designed to extract justice from the atom.

Charles P. Curtis (attributed)
probably from "The Ethics of Advocacy"
Stanford Law Review (12/1951)
MaryellenD, personal e-mail (7/5/1995)

1373) The fact that the world ain't fair, ain't news.

unknown
Ron Robertson, personal communication (10/3/1995)

[Note: Sometimes attributed to H.L. Mencken.]

1374) [W]hen the majority disagrees with a verdict, they don't riot. They change the laws.

Comandante
posted by the CourtTV O.J. Simpson
discussion board (10/1/1995)

[Note: Paraphrased by mkgdiver as: "When the majority riots, they don't do it in the street, they do it in the legislatures and the courts." personal email (10/3/1995)]

1375) Juries invest each citizen with a sort of magisterial office; they make all [...] feel that they have duties toward society and that they take a share in its government. By making men pay attention to things other than their own affairs, they combat that individual selfishness which is like rust in society.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America (1833)
quoted by Jeffrey Abramson in
We, The Jury (1994)

1376) [Juries in America are] a political institution [that is] [...] as direct and as extreme a consequence of the sovereignty of the people as universal suffrage.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America (1833)
quoted by Stephen J. Adler in
The Jury (1994)

1377) [T]he institution of the jury raises the people itself [...] to the bench of judges [and] [...] consequently invests the people [...] with the direction of society.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America (1833)

[Note: For more on juries and the jury system, see "Juries - Part 1" and "Juries - Part 2", #552-563.]

Woman Who Died in Airport Was a Mother
By Karen Matthews

NEW YORK (AP) — A traveler who may have accidentally choked herself to death while handcuffed in an airport holding cell was a "wonderful" woman and mother, according to New York City's public advocate, who is her relative.

Carol Anne Gotbaum, 45, was arrested Friday at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix after she became irate when gate crews refused to let her board a flight for which she was late, officials said.

"She was a wonderful mother; she was sweet and kind and loving," said public advocate Betsy Gotbaum, the woman's stepmother-in-law. "It's obviously very, very difficult for us; we are dealing with it as best we can. My No. 1 focus is those children and my stepson."

She also pleaded with the press for privacy.

The events that led to Gotbaum's death began when she became irate over not being allowed on a US Airways flight, though she was rebooked on a later flight, officials said.

Officers handcuffed her and took her to the holding room, where she kept screaming, authorities said. They checked on her when she became quiet and found her unresponsive, said Phoenix police Sgt. Andy Hill.

It appears Gotbaum may have tried to get out of her handcuffs, which ended up around her neck, Hill said. A medical examiner will determine the cause of death.

Neither a stun gun nor pepper spray was used on the woman, authorities said.

The New York City public advocate helps solve residents' problems with government and acts as a watchdog over city agencies.

When Ms. Gotbaum was arrested and handcuffed with her hands behind her back she was taken to the holding office in Terminal 4 and placed in a holding room. There she was searched but was continuing to be vocally and physically disruptive in the holding room. Ms. Gotbaum was additionally restrained as follows: In the holding room there is a bench with an “eyehook” attached to it. The officers took a “shackle”, which is described as a metal chain, approximately 16 inches long, with a large “handcuff” on each side. The total length of the chain with handcuffs is approximately 24 inches. One of the handcuffs on the “shackle” was attached to the “eyehook” on the bench. The other handcuff of the shackle was attached to the chain of the handcuffs that were already on Ms. Gotbaum’s hands. So Ms. Gotbaum was handcuffed with her hands behind her back, and additionally those handcuffs were attached to a shackle that kept her attached to the bench.

This is the best we can describe the situation at that point. All of the previous information is still the same with the addition of the information of the shackle. We still do not know how Ms. Gotbaum was able to manipulate the handcuffs to the position she was in. But when she was found her handcuffs were in front and the shackle was still attached to her handcuffs. The chain was not wrapped around her neck. It was pulled against the front of her neck area. [NY Times City Room blog]

The Mets and Phillies would play in Philly on Monday to crown the East champ.

The loser would then enter a three-game mini-tournament for which the Rockies, based on head-to-head records during the regular season, would have the option of trying to win at home and then on the road or just once on the road to advance.

If the Rockies choose to stay home, their opponent would be determined by the wishes of the team with the second-best combined head-to-head record; it'd be the Phillies if they're involved, but the Padres if the Mets drop into the three-way. That team could choose to play at the Rockies on Tuesday, but it's more likely that it would opt for a single game and travel to play the winner of Tuesday's game on Wednesday.

If the Rockies opt for the one road game, Tuesday's game would feature New York at San Diego, or San Diego at Philly, with the winner hosting Colorado on Wednesday.