Twenty Pithy Philosophy Quotes

Twenty Pithy Philosophy Quotes: 1.) "Existence precedes essence." 2.) "I am, therefore, I'll think." 3.) "Doubt is the origin of wisdom." 4.) "Hell is other people." 5.) "There are no facts, only interpretations." 6.) "The last Christian died on the Cross." 7.) "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth." 8.) "Irony is a qualification of subjectivity." 9.) "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." 10.) "I must find a truth that is true for me." 11.) "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." 12.) "Can an eternal happiness be built on historical knowledge?" 13.) "When not prompted by vanity, we say little." 14.) "It is a great folly to wish to be wise alone." 15.) "The horror makes the thrill." 16.) "From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step." 17.) "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." 18.) "A specter is haunting Europe; the specter of Communism." 19.) "There is but one coward on Earth, and that is the one who dare not know." 20.) "Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it - that is what you must do."

McCarthyism and Television

McCarthyism and Television: In the early 1950s, the U.S. government embarked on a witch hunt to cleanse itself and American society of potential communists. Led by Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the witch hunt developed into a full-fledged ideology, as the -ism that bore his last name became a culture war (Second Red Scare). And it's important not to divorce McCarthyism from its impact on television. For cultural historian Thomas Doherty, television signaled a "cool medium" in the midst of an emerging Cold War, as it was largely a passive activity that required little interaction. But the first televised hearings of the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which should not be confused with Senator McCarthy, had enormous ramifications for the entertainment industry. Suspected communists in Hollywood were often brought before the Committee to testify about their political beliefs. And HUAC had help, especially from the anti-communist pamphlet Red Channels, which in 1950 published the names of 151 suspected communists in the entertainment industry. McCarthy, however, focused his attention on identifying potential communists in the U.S. government, particularly in the Army and State Departments. In what became the most famous televised exchange of the McCarthy era (June 9, 1954), he was publicly rebuked by the Army's lead attorney Joseph Welch with the question, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

Railroads: America's First Big Businesses

Railroads: America's First Big Businesses: According to business historian Alfred Chandler, railroads became America's first big businesses in the latter half of the 19th century. In general, there were four major socioeconomic outcomes that grew from the emerging American railroad industry, and they included eminent domain for corporations, massive organizational bureaucracies for data collection, the selling of a service instead of a product, and lastly, the standardization of time. Perhaps more than any other industry in the 19th century, railroads proved the most difficult to manage precisely because they required a vast amount of debt financing. With high fixed costs for servicing the debt, determining a fair price for customers became nearly impossible, at times. Railroad managers had to figure out ways to control the operations of a business which they could not always observe in action. Even though Samuel Morse's electric telegraph greatly enhanced communication between railroad employees, the need for large-scale data collection still remained. With hundreds of thousands of workers in the American railroad industry by the 19th century's end, a company like the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) had bigger budgets and more employees than the entire U.S. government.

John Brown and Anti-Slavery

John Brown and Anti-Slavery: Although the above video is largely unrelated to the antebellum history of John Brown the abolitionist, its anti-war message resonates powerfully. Bob Dylan's lyrical talents are unique, as he articulates poignant views on socio-political events in the form of folk poetry. Similarly, the story of radical abolitionist John Brown has undergone a kind of folk transformation. Beginning with his three-day raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, (West) Virginia in October 1859, Brown epitomized the growing intensity of the American anti-slavery movement. The raid's main purpose was to acquire weapons (rifles and pikes) for African-American slaves in the surrounding communities. In fact, Brown believed the raid would be a quick stop followed by a strong push southward along the Appalachian Mountains. He also believed that hundreds of slaves would join. He was wrong. Before Harper's Ferry, however, Brown's interest in abolition had developed over many years. Having been inspired by notions of religious equality and anti-slavery, which emerged in the Second Great Awakening of the 1820s and 1830s, he wanted to be a Congregationalist minister and preach about abolition. But the 1837 murder of abolitionist Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy pushed Brown to radicalize his anti-slavery views. And by 1854, Brown was ready to clash with pro-slavery forces in Bleeding Kansas, which served as a dress rehearsal for Harper's Ferry.

On the Poetry of Phillis Wheatley

On the Poetry of Phillis Wheatley: With the publication of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), Phillis Wheatley became one of the first published African Americans. Prominent political figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were even aware of her poetry in the succeeding decades. But what made Wheatley's poetry particularly intriguing was the passion she exhibited for memorializing the dead. Perhaps this passion grew from her conversion to Christianity as a young slave learning to read from the Bible. In effect, Wheatley's "sincere" Protestant beliefs helped legitimize her poetry in the eyes of a potentially skeptical white audience. One example of Wheatley's passion for memorializing the dead included the poem On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, 1770. Since Whitefield was one of the primary preachers in the First Great Awakening, a time of heightened religious fervor during the 1730s and 1740s, Wheatley praised him as a "prophet." Whitefield's central message encouraged a self-driven religious experience, without regard one's position in society, and Wheatley embraced it as such. She ultimately understood his sermons to be theologically liberating (even though Whitefield advocated slavery), which helped assuage the spiritual needs of Christianized African-American slaves (like herself).