Who said it XI

I was sitting in my chair (well, not actually mine, but I sit on it a lot) and I realized I had to do another Who said it? - America's favorite quotation game (counting only those games found on deisenberg.blogspot.com).  I have a lot of fun making these things and in truth they are really always just excuses for me to rummage among my books and notes and talk about things I find interesting.  For the first time it occurred to me that at the end of the questions I could list all the answers summarily in a row for the sake of convenience and then have a talkier discussion section to make me happy. I can't fix the spacing between the first and second questions and am tired of trying. I'd refer it to my tech department but . . . .

1.    [High official] "When will the Russians be able to build the bomb?

        Oppenheimer "I don't know."

       [High official] "I know."

       Oppenheimer "When?"

       [High official] "Never."

 a. Sen. Goldwater b. Pres. Truman c. Gen. Eisenhower d. Justice Felix Frankfurter

2.         Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

a. Steven Crane       b. C.S. Lewis       c. Samuel Coleridge       d.  Mary Shelley           

 

3.         For at least I know, with certainty, that a man’s work is nothing but the long journeying to recover, through the detours of art, the two or three simple and great images which first gained access to his heart.

a. Albert Camus       b. Jean Paul Sartre      c. Sigmund Freud       d. Carl Jung

 

4.         The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other men?—if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle? Does Wisdom work in a treadmill? Is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life?

a. John Greenleaf Whittier  b. Jack LaLanne  c. Louisa May Alcott d. Henry David Thoreau           

5.         Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness -

a. Captain John Smith     b. Abraham      c. St. Paul        d. Captain Sir Richard Burton

 

6.         You will have no need to lead the opposition, for I repeat that there will be no debate, for the reason that the project which has not the fortune to meet your approval, conceived by me, negotiated by me, shall be ratified and executed by me alone, do you comprehend?--by me, who laugh at your opposition.

a. Adolf Hitler to former chancellor Franz von Papen  b. Josef Stalin to Leon Trotsky

c. Thomas Jefferson to John Marshall    d. Napoleon Bonaparte to his brother Lucien

 

7.         [Regarding the federal government coercing South Carolina by force] But if we possessed this power, would it be wise to exercise it under existing circumstances? The object would doubtless be to preserve the Union. War would not only present the most effectual means of destroying it, but would vanish all hope of its peaceable reconstruction. Besides, in the fraternal conflict a vast amount of blood and treasure would be expended, rendering future reconciliation between the States impossible. In the meantime, who can foretell what would be the sufferings and privations of the people during its existence?

a. James Buchanan      b. Abraham Lincoln       c. Robert E. Lee      d. Jefferson Davis

 

8.        The Constitution invests the President with certain important political powers, in the exercise of which he is to use his own discretion, and is accountable only to his country in his political character, and to his own conscience.      

a. Abraham Lincoln      b. Andrew Jackson      c. John Marshall      d. FDR

 

9.         I have announced time and time again  that I will never be guilty of any kind of action that can be interpreted as war until Congress, which has the constitutional authority, says so . . . and I am not going to order any troops into anything that can be interpreted as war until Congress directs it.

a. Harry Truman      b. Dwight Eisenhower      c. Jimmy Carter      d. Barack Obama

 

10.      I, too, am religious; that is, religious deep inside, and I believe that Providence weighs us human beings, and that he who is unable to pass the test of Providence but is destroyed by it has not been destined for greater things.

a. Adolph Hitler       b. Houdini       c. Joan d'Arc      d. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

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Here's the short answer list: 1-b, 2-b, 3-a, 4-d, 5-c, 6-d, 7-a, 8-c, 9-b, 10-a

1.         [High Official] : "When will the Russians be able to build the bomb?"

            . . . .
 

The answer is Truman. Timing wise it pretty much had to be. But Oppenheimer is by far the more interesting of the two on almost every level for me and I'd rather write about him. After the bomb was dropped, he told Truman that he felt he had blood on his hands. Truman was not amused and reputedly retorted that there was more on his own but that they shouldn't whine about it. He also supposedly made it clear that Oppenheimer was never to get in his office again. His intellect was legendary. He was once invited to give a lecture to a mineral society to which he had written a letter, but whose leaders had no idea until he showed up that he was still a child. He was considered by many other physicists to be one of the greatest geniuses among them in a field you pretty much had to be a genius in to succeed at all, but he was also known to be pretentious and arrogant, although not intentionally unkind. Somehow he managed to supervise the creation of the atomic bomb, never having run anything in his life before - not even his university department. He was also well known for flaws which led to his downfall, including a prediliction for troubled communist women. The character of Sheldon on the television show The Big Bang Theory is clearly at least in part drawn from him. I do think that the conventional wisdom among even scientists that he never really came up with anything new is unfair - he was a theoretician, not an experimenter - and his work in that regard was exceptional, unless the standard set for him is so high that a only revolutionary theory on the level of relativity is required for him to be deemed a success. Professionally, he seemed omni-competent, except on the political level, where he was incapable of combatting the secretive, manipulative and jealous men who destroyed him. But, all this is just scratching the surface. Not sure what it is yet I have to say about him, but that's okay. It'll come.

     

2.         Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

The use of the word "courage" in the quote led me to use Stephen Crane, whose Red Badge of Courage I actually read and admired when young, but cannot conceive reading again. Ironically, though not as famous for his poetry, he is one of the few poets I like. The quote is not his though. There is no reason that it couldn't have been Coleridge or Mary Shelly, I guess, but neither is particularly associated with the issue of courage. The writer was C. S. Lewis, who interests me more for his non-fiction and some generally sensible thinking than his more famous fantasy fiction to the degree that I have even considered of reading some of his religious works (never quite pulled the trigger though). He was a fierce arguer, loved to debate and some thought a bit of an intellectual bully. And, of course, it doesn't hurt my interest level that he was long a close friend of Tolkien. They did sort of fall out over what some think was a literary dispute involving Tolkien's great dislike of Lewis' Narnia creation. I don't think so.  They remained friends, if not quite the same, until Lewis' end and he was a great supporter of The Lord of the Rings. I think that he and Tolkien understood each others literary preferences and fierceness, and usually they agreed. But, I don't think it is so mysterious as all that.  Tolkien has written to others that it was due to Lewis' coming under the influence of Charles Williams many years earlier (Williams, almost forgotten today, died before either of them) and then his (Lewis') marriage to a divorcee, which disturbed the emotional Tolkien a great deal. Actually, Tolkien died nearly 40 years ago. If anyone but his most wild-eyed fans cares (though there are a lot of us), I'd be surprised.

3.         For at least I know, with certainty, that a man’s work is nothing but the long journeying to recover, through the detours of art, the two or three simple and great images which first gained access to his heart.

It is easy to see how you might think Freud or even more so, Jung, but this quote is from Camus. I loved his fiction when I was young, perhaps though in part because they were mercifully short. I read The Stranger first in high school French class. When I say "I read," I mean that the class read it and I kind of listened. I doubt I could have done so myself, poor high school French student that I was. I might like to try a shot at it now, but there's only so much time. I don't know if his statement quoted here is true for everyone, but I think it is true for me, though perhaps there are more than two or three images to consider. What those are I will save for another day, but I can't help but imagine that for Camus, they were dark ones as he seemed to me drawn to controversy and death. Sartre is the more famous and perhaps the more interesting of the two. I neither understood nor got far with Being and Nothingness but appreciated some of his fiction, particularly his novel Nausea of which I now remember absolutely NOTHING but the title and his play No Exit, of which I most remember the last line. My favorite work by him was actually a longish essay on an artist who I probably would not have otherwise thought much about by the name Tintoretto and to some degree started me on a few years interest in learning about renaissance art.  

 

4.         The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. . . . Does Wisdom work in a treadmill? Is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life?

So, there's a clue there in the word "treadmill" - c'mon, c'mon - but it's a false clue and why would I be quoting Jack LaLanne here anyway? Here's a Lalanne quote from Brainyquote.com - "I only eat fish - no chicken, no turkey, just fish. I get all my protein from fish and egg whites." I don't think so. I do though still remember my mother quoting John Greenleaf Whittier when I was growing up - "'Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag,' she said," from his poem Barbara Frietche, recalling a moment from the Civil War which never actually happened, but seems like it should have. I actually prefer a line from Whittier's poem Maud Muller - “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'”  I have never read Louisa May Alcott and am a little more interested in her unconventional father, Alcott, though only biographically in relation to other transcendantalists.  I've read that his own writings were chaotic, incoherent or unintelligible - something like that. The above quote though is from their friend and sometimes neighbor Thoreau, and I have spent quite a lot of time with him in my life. The older I get the more I realize how much we have in common. I have written about my thoughts on him before a few times (among them, Thoreau meet me - 7/31/08).  One post I've written on him, Death Match: Socrates v. Thoreau - 3/28/10) is the #4 most viewed post I've written, according to Google.  I can't say I really care all that much, but I admit I am curious why some few certain posts attract significantly more attention than the others. For all I know, they are just spam magnets. That would be embarrassing.

5.         Three times I was beaten with rods . . .

The choice is among four travelers, three of whom wrote about it quite a bit.  Abraham you can throw out because if he ever even existed (and I very much doubt it) he left us nothing of his own to read and the quote is in the first person.  Captain John Smith was a great adventurer and character who suffered mightily on his travels and wrote about it in detail.  Sir Richard Burton I have written a bit about here before and I think one of the great men of the 19th century. He dealt with his suffering in very stereotypical English stoical manner, once even surviving a spear through the cheek. If you aren't familiar with him but want to read about someone almost impossibly cool, creative, talented, brave, tough, learned, mischievous and unorthodox, take a look at The Amazing Richard Burton (But not the one you are thinking about) - 3/15/07. The above quote though is from St. Paul, who suffered quite a bit as well. It's from his second letter to the Corinthians and he says it is from him and "brother" Timothy, who was also later made a saint in the eastern church. Paul is so important in our western civilization history and I've spent more time than will ever possibly do me any good looking at the long standing debate over his words in his letter to the Romans on justification by faith (see Eating paninis in the 16th century - free will and justification - 4/10/13).

 

6.         You will have no need to lead the opposition, for I   . . .  laugh at your opposition.

I know someone somewhere is sweating it out hoping this wasn't Jefferson, but of course not. Direct confrontation and overt threats was not at all Jefferson's way as he was the master of of behind the scenes machinations and manipulations, using allies and pawns to weave his webs of deceit. It could easily have been any of the other dictators, but it was Napoleon, mocking his enraged brother who had surprised him in his bath.

 

7.  But if we possessed this power, would it be wise to exercise it under existing circumstances. .   . In the meantime, who can foretell what would be the sufferings and privations of the people during its existence?

Which Civil War era character was so sure that Civil War would forever break the bonds of union? He was hardly alone in making wrong predictions about whether war would come or what would be the outcome. Buchanan was not, by our lights, a very distinguished president. Though he sought compromise, he was undoubtedly on the side of the south in the great debate. And unless you are one of the few today who believe that Lincoln was a tyrant and the union was more important than slavery, that was the wrong side.

 

8.         The Constitution invests the President with certain important political powers, in the exercise of which he is to use his own discretion . . . .

All four of the choices were certainly were convinced of this, but the quote is from the most seminal of all seminal U.S. Supreme Court cases, Marbury v. Madison, which if nothing else had, made Marshall's reputation forever.  Ironically, he was not only the chief justice but also the person who should have been the most essential witness in the case. Even then that should have been seen as THE MOST OBVIOUS CONFLICT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. But he never seemed to even think about it and made the decision which has steered the course of American politics as much or more than any presidential act. If  you just have to know more about it take a look at One Wacky Case - Marbury v. Madison - 10/29/10.

 

9.         I have announced time and time again  that I will never be guilty of any kind of action that can be interpreted as war until Congress, which has the constitutional authority, says so . . . .

Obama. No, just kidding. How could that be? Truman. Kidding again. There was that "police action"" in Korea. It was Eisenhower. But, despite this nod to congress's supremacy in the war making power, Eisenhower was no stranger to covert actions in which the CIA attempted to take down various regimes and usually succeeded. Wins were in Iran, Guatemala, The Congo and The Dominican Republic and losses in Syria and Indonesia. Certainly many people believe that presidents have inherent power much like stated in 7, above, but, nevertheless, his record makes his above statement look completely hypocritical.

        

10.      I, too, am religious; that is, religious deep inside, and I believe that Providence weighs us human beings. . . .

Houdini? That's just crazy, though I suppose anything is possible.  Doesn't sound like King either. That leaves Joan of Arc and Hitler, either one of whom works. For some unknown reason I like to stick a strange Hitler quote in here pretty much every time. He made many religious references in his speeches, though many probably deliberately deceitful and manipulative. Whether any of it was genuine is hard to say. I usually like to stick a Jefferson quote in these quizzes too, but not today.