Movie Quote of the Day (‘Almost Famous,’ on ‘The Only True Currency in This Bankrupt World’)

Lester Bangs [played by Philip Seymour Hoffman]: “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.”— Almost Famous (2000), written and directed by Cameron Crowe

Quote of the Day (Vaclav Havel, on ‘A New Moral Effort’ vs. ‘The Dictatorship of Money’)

“The dictatorship of money, of profit, of constant economic growth, and the necessity, flowing from all that, of plundering the earth without regard for what will be left in a few decades, along with everything else related to the materialistic obsessions of this world, from the flourishing of selfishness to the need to evade personal responsibility by becoming part of the herd, and the general inability of human conscience to keep pace with the inventions of reason, right up to the alienation created by the sheer size of modern institutions—all of these are phenomena that cannot effectively be confronted except through a new moral effort, that is, through a transformation of the spirit and the human relationship to life and the world.” — Playwright, essayist, dissident, and first President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel (1936-2011), “Paying Back the West,” The New York Review of Books, Sept. 23, 1999

Quote of the Day (Shirley Chisholm, on Morality and Profit)

“When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.”—Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005), U.S. Representative (D-NY), Presidential candidate and civil-rights activist, in Unbought and Unbossed (1970)

The image accompanying this post, of Rep. Shirley Chisholm announcing her Presidential candidacy, was taken Jan. 25, 1972, by Thomas J. O'Halloran of U.S. News and World Reports.

Quote of the Day (Marilynne Robinson, on ‘Unhappy Societies’)

“Unhappy societies tend to blame and punish the weakest among them.” — Novelist-essayist Marilynne Robinson, “Modern Victorians,” Harper’s Magazine, July 1995

Quote of the Day (Lionel Trilling, on ‘Moral Realism’)

“[M]oral realism [is] …the perception of the dangers of the moral life itself. Perhaps at no other time has the enterprise of moral realism ever been so much needed, for at no other time have so many people committed themselves to moral righteousness. We have the books that point out the bad conditions, that praise us for taking progressive attitudes. We have no books that raise questions in our minds not only about conditions but about ourselves, that lead us to refine our motives and ask what might lie behind our good impulses.”— American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and Columbia University professor Lionel Trilling (1905-1975), “Manners, Morals, and The Novel,” in The Liberal Imagination (1950)

Quote of the Day (Martin Luther King Jr., on God’s Laws ‘Planted in the Fiber of the Universe’)

“God has planted in the fiber of the universe certain eternal laws which forever confront every man. They are absolute and not relative. There is an eternal and absolute distinction between right and wrong.” — American civil-rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), qualifying examination answers, “Theology of the Bible,” quoted in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume II: Rediscovering Precious Values, July 1951-November 1955 (Senior Editor: Clayborne Carson; Volume Editors: Ralph E. Luker, Penny A. Russell, and Pete Holloran), 1994

Quote of the Day (Philip Roth, on Morality and Literature)

“Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts. The question to ask about the writer isn’t ‘Why does he behave so badly?’ but “What does he gain by wearing this mask?” — American novelist Philip Roth (1933-2018), interview with Hermione Lee, “Philip Roth, The Art of Fiction No. 84,” The Paris Review, Issue 93, Fall 1984

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Sopranos,’ on Carmela’s Relationship with Her ‘Good Man’ Tony)

Carmela Soprano [played by Edie Falco, pictures]: “He's a good man. He's a good father.”
 
Dr. Krakower [played by Sully Boyar]: “You tell me he's a depressed criminal, prone to anger, serially unfaithful. Is that your definition of a good man?... You must trust your initial impulse and consider leaving him. You'll never be able to feel good about yourself. You'll never be able to quell the feelings of guilt and shame that you talked about, so long as you're his accomplice.”
 
Carmela: “You're wrong about the accomplice part, though.”
 
Dr. Krakower: “You sure?”
 
Carmela: “All I did was make sure he's got clean clothes in his closet and dinner on his table.”
 
Dr. Krakower: “So ‘enable’ would be a more accurate job description for what you do than ‘accomplice.’ My apologies... Take only the children—what's left of them - and go.”
 
Carmela: “My priest said I should work with him, help him to become a better man.”
 
Dr. Krakower: “How's that going?”— The Sopranos, Season 3, Episode 7, “Second Opinion,” original air date Apr. 8, 2001, teleplay by Lawrence Konner, directed by Timothy Van Patten
 
I have not yet seen The Many Saints of Newark and am not sure when I will. But it is hard for me to imagine the prequel to The Sopranos matching the original in quality. The above dialogue, in its emotional anguish and clear-headed moral insight, illustrates why.
 
The aging Dr. Krakower is one of the few mental-health professionals who recognize early on that it is not possible—certainly not at this stage—to “work with” Tony. 

Carmela is right in only the most limited sense: her husband is capable of love, both towards herself and their children. But that only proves that he is human, not that he can be changed.
 
Dispensing with the jargon of the latest edition of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Dr. Krakower speaks in old-fashioned terms about guilt, shame, and, without explicitly using the words, “fidelity,” “responsibility” and “complicity.”  
 
He does not say what viewers increasingly recognize as the series goes on: that, for all her anger at her husband, Carmela will not make the irrevocable decision to leave her husband because, with her beautiful house and the implicit power he gives her to harm others to cross her, she benefits materially from her association with him.

"Blood money," the phrase that the psychiatrist uses to explain that advantage—as well as his own refusal to accept her money from this session—inverts the label used by the faith Carmela cites as her thin fig-leaf for sticking with Tony.

 
There are no monsters as frightening as those that exist in our reality. This Halloween weekend, with geysers of blood spurting on TV sets and across screens, it is worth bearing in mind that Tony Soprano and his kind walk among us.
 
They might not have been concocted from the lab of a mad scientist, but—through whatever combination of genetics, culture or personality experience—they have become sociopaths, with enormous potential to spread their infection throughout society. (To see the characteristics of this type and how Tony fits it, turn to Alex Li San's 2020 post from Medium, “Are You a Psychopath?”)

In fact, Tony’s longtime therapist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi, finally breaks with him when she realizes he not only fits the definition of “sociopath” but also that his very sessions with her have—to borrow Krakower’s term—“enabled” her client.

 
As a mobster, Tony can wield power unavailable to Dracula, Frankenstein or the Wolf Man: he can direct the resources of a criminal enterprise as far-reaching and populated as any business to affect how people work and even whether they live. But his status only makes him the ultimate example of a particular form of sickness.
 
Consider that description by Dr. Krakower: “depressed criminal, prone to anger, serially unfaithful.” That describes a brand of toxic masculinity found far more often than just in the netherworld of organized crime. It is also shorthand for the domestic abusers in every socioeconomic niche in American culture.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Bill Bradley, on the Moral Questions That Politics Avoids)

“How can a people that wages war on nature reflect God? How can a society with grating poverty amidst great wealth remain just? What is it that guides one through life? What is it that one yearns and strives for? Politics shrinks from even acknowledging these basic questions. It is easier to give a response based on a poll than one that flows from your heart.”—Former U.S. Senator from New Jersey, Presidential candidate, and New York Knicks basketball player Bill Bradley, Time Present, Time Past: A Memoir (1996)

Quote of the Day (David Brooks, on How the Social Fabric is Ripped or Woven)

“Whenever I treat another person as if he were an object, I’ve ripped the social fabric. When I treat another person as an infinite soul, I have woven the social fabric. Whenever I lie, abuse, stereotype, or traumatize a person, I have ripped the fabric. Whenever I see someone truly, and make them feel known, I have woven the fabric. Whenever I accuse someone of corruption without evidence, I have ripped the social fabric. Whenever I disagree without maligning motives, I have woven it. The social fabric is created through an infinity of small moral acts, and it can be destroyed by a series of immoral ones.”—New York Times columnist and broadcast commentator David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life (2019)

Quote of the Day (Fulton Sheen, On Intellectual and Moral Preparation for the Faith)

“The moral preparation for the Faith or for making Divine Truth dynamic in us is as important as the intellectual; both kinds of readying should go together, the Wisdom and the Love of God, the Son and the Holy Spirit are equal in the Trinity. If the reason is neglected, a different sort of error follows. Those whom the moral development outstrips the intellectual generally end in a religion that is negative, critical, and pharisaical, or else in. a vague, emotional piety without content—as those who have intellectual without no growth become skeptics, cynics, and doubters. We can never love until we know; but once we love, then it can increase knowledge.”—Venerable Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979), Lift Up Your Heart: A Guide to Spiritual Peace

(1950)

Quote of the Day (Britain’s Clement Attlee, on Material Discoveries and Morality)

“Man’s material discoveries have outpaced his moral progress.”—British Prime Minister Clement Attlee (1883-1967), address to the U.S. Congress, Nov. 13, 1945, quoted in Richard M. Crowder, Aftermath: The Makers of the Postwar World (2015)

Quote of the Day (Aldous Huxley, on Thinking Correctly as a ‘Moral Act’)

"To think correctly is the condition of behaving well. It is also in itself a moral act; those who would think correctly must resist considerable temptations." —English novelist/essayist Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), Collected Essays (1959)

Quote of the Day (Montesquieu, on How States Perish)

“More states have perished by the violation of their moral customs than by the violation of their laws.” — French political theorist Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline (1734), translated by David Lowenthal

This year, if we’re unlucky, we may elect a President who might commit both violations.