Quote of the Day (Anne Perry, on the Need for ‘The Voice of Dissent’)

“Let us hear the voice of dissent, because the person who asks you why you think what you do and expects you to explain is your best friend. They are clarifying your view, and if you don’t really think what you do, it’s a good time to change. And if you do think what you do, it can make you realize that, well, it’s because of so-and-so. No friend lets you walk over the cliff. They give you the voice of warning.” — British historical mystery novelist and convicted teen murderer Anne Perry (1938-2023), in conversation with Andrew F. Gulli, “Interview: Anne Perry,” The Strand Magazine, Issue 13 (June/September 2004)

Quote of the Day (John F. Kennedy, on ‘The Comfort of Opinion’)

"As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality. For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." — President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), Yale University Commencement Address, June 11, 1962

Though I understand the impulse perfectly, it’s too bad that some people don’t recall more about John F. Kennedy than his assassination 62 years ago today and the trauma it inflicted on this nation. That goes as well for his deeply imperfect private life (which, as I noted in this prior blog post, on at least one occasion left him potentially subject to manipulation by J. Edgar Hoover).

As constant and, yes, as reckless as Kennedy’s philandering was, an awful lot of people today—including many whose evangelical faith would once have scorned adulterers in high places—overlook a later occupant of the Oval Office with such a propensity as bad, if not worse. And that later President has rarely if ever sounded the grace notes in public discourse that Kennedy consistently did.

JFK belonged to an era when statesmen and politicians didn’t communicate by cable TV or podcast soundbites, tweets, or memes. He addressed audiences that paid relatively prolonged attention, with words that sought to reason with, and, ultimately, persuade and even inspire them.

I wish more people wouldn’t blindly accept everything they read on social media. The Internet allows you to go right to original, primary sources—speeches, diaries, extended TV interviews, sometimes even court transcripts, even more—to see what a politician said or wrote. And with a bit more curiosity and digging, you can discover the context in which it was expressed.

So it is with the speech I’m quoting from today. The excerpt here has something to recommend (or dispute) about “a prefabricated set of interpretations” or even whether such preconceptions are more dangerous these days than lies.

But reading the context of the quote—the speech in full—reveals that JFK was making larger points, about the size and distribution of government, public fiscal policy, and public confidence in business and America. The conditions that held sway when he discussed all of this might have changed, but the issues endure. In fact, they go back to the creation of the Constitution.

All of this is in keeping with the fact that JFK was not afraid of public debate. Faced with challenges to his policies, he could deflect rather than denigrate. Asked at a press conference about a Republican National Committee resolution calling his administration a failure, for instance, he chuckled, “I assume it passed unanimously.”

Notice that he didn’t say, “You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter,” as the current Oval Office occupant (hilariously hailed as a great communicator by many in the media) told an ABC reporter in the last week. Nor would JFK have chided a female Bloomberg News journalist, with two words that deserve their own corner in infamy, “Quiet, Piggy.”

These exchanges sum up how much we lost in this country since that terrible day in Dallas six decades ago: respect for differences of opinion and basic Presidential dignity. On my worst days, I fear that we may never recover them.

Quote of the Day (Vaclav Havel, on ‘The Moment of Most Profound Doubt’)

“Isn’t it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourished human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.”— Czech President, dramatist and dissident Vaclav Havel (1936-2011), Speech at the Salzburg Festival, July 26, 1990 

Quote of the Day (Jimmy Carter, on Criticism and Scrutiny of Government Officials)

“Thoughtful criticism and close scrutiny of all government officials by the press and the public are an important part of our democratic society. Now, as in the past, only the understanding and involvement of the people through full and open debate can help to avoid serious mistakes and assure the continued dignity and safety of the Nation.”—Jimmy Carter, 39^th President of the United States (1924-2024), “Farewell Address to the Nation,” Jan. 14, 1981

Quote of the Day (James Bryant Conant, on Diversity of Opinion in Higher Ed)

“Diversity of opinion is not only basic for the welfare of our universities but for that of the entire nation.” —American chemist, educator and diplomat James Bryant Conant (1893-1978), “Education in a Divided World” (1949), in American Higher Education Transformed, 1940–2005: Documenting the National Discourse, edited by Wilson Smith and Thomas Bender (2008)

Quote of the Day (Theodore Roosevelt, on a Republic’s ‘Wide Differences of Opinion’)

“In a republic, to be successful we must learn to combine intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction. Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth. Bitter internecine hatreds, based on such differences, are signs, not of earnestness of belief, but of that fanaticism which, whether religious or anti-religious, democratic or anti-democratic, is itself but a manifestation of the gloomy bigotry which has been the chief factor in the downfall of so many, many nations.”— U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), “Citizenship in a Republic” speech delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris, Apr. 23, 1910, reprinted in The Man in the Arena: Speeches andEssays by Theodore Roosevelt, edited by John Allen Gable (1990)

Quote of the Day (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, on Truth and Our Mistakes)

"It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones."— Russian novelist and Nobel Literature laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), “Peace and Violence" (letter nominating Andrei Sakharov for the Nobel Peace Prize), in “Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn” (op-ed article in The New York Times), Sept. 15, 1973

Quote of the Day (Walter Lippmann, on Opposition in a Democracy)

"In a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable." —Columnist Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), “The Indispensable Opposition,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1939, from The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy, edited by Clinton Rossiter and James Lare (1982)

Quote of the Day (Louis Brandeis, Foreseeing Intrusions Into Privacy)

“The progress of science in furnishing the Government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire-tapping. Ways may someday be developed by which the Government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home. Advances in the psychic and related sciences may bring means of exploring unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions…. Can it be that the Constitution affords no protection against such invasions of individual security?”—Louis Brandeis,  Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, dissenting opinion in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)

(The accompanying photograph of Justice Brandeis, ca. 1916, by Harris & Ewing, comes from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)