A Quote by Harry A. Blackmun

Who is to say that 5 men 10 years ago were right whereas 5 men looking the other direction today are wrong. — © Harry A. Blackmun
Who is to say that 5 men 10 years ago were right whereas 5 men looking the other direction today are wrong.
War, I thought, was the most negative aspect of male heterosexuality. If more men were homosexual, there would be no wars, because homosexual men would never kill other men, whereas heterosexual men love killing other men.
There is a greater fatigue concerning the African problem today than five or 10 years ago. The situation now in Africa is worse today than it was 10 years ago.
If you look at Hollywood today, compared to five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago or 30 years ago, the change from moment to moment has always been extraordinary. It never stops moving.
Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave OTHERS is a "sacred right of self-government." These principles can not stand together. They are as opposite as God and mammon; and whoever holds to the one, must despise the other.
Without any extraordinary effort of genius, I have discovered that nature was the same three thousand years ago as at present; that men were but men then as well as now; that modes and customs vary often, but that human nature is always the same. And I can no more suppose, that men were better, braver, or wiser, fifteen hundred or three thousand years ago, than I can suppose that the animals or vegetables were better than they are now.
Yes, business really does change. 400 years ago, corporations were formed by royal decree. 300 years ago, many countries were powered by slave labour, or its closest moral equivalent. 200 years ago, debtors didn't go bankrupt, they went to prison. 100 years ago - well, business is largely the same as it was a century ago. And that's exactly the problem. Business hasn't changed, but today's array of tectonic global shocks demands a different, radically better kind of business. Yesterday's corporations visibly cannot meet today's economic challenges.
Men can be men and still get excited about other men kicking a ball around and they're never mocked, whereas it's easy for women to take mocking on board, to be belittled. Because we're used to it.
I'm going to get controversial here and say that monogamy isn't natural, especially not for men. It's a concept society birthed a few hundred years ago, even though men's DNA is busy telling them to spread the seed.
If the principal smokers of cocaine were affluent older white men and the principal consumers of Viagra were poor young black men, then...selling Viagra would get you five to 10 years behind bars.
We are moving in exactly the wrong direction in higher education. Forty years ago, tuition in some of the great American public universities and colleges was virtually free. Today, the cost is unaffordable for many working class families. Higher education must be a right for all - not just wealthy families.
Well, I think life is politics anyway. You can't ignore it, but you can go very wrong in politics. You can say what you thought 50 years ago, but maybe you're wrong today.
What we think is ethical today, we may not have thought ethical five or 10 years ago. Cloning, stem cell research? However we feel about those things today, we may feel differently 10 years from now.
At every stage since World War II, people have assumed that what's happening today will happen forever. Universally, that's been wrong. I can't say in which direction but I do think that what we expect today won't be what we'll get in 15 years.
Not only is the Napoleonic dream stronger today in our imaginations than it has ever been, but one can already feel the slow falling away of moral opprobrium from our memory of Hitler. In another fifty years we may well find ourselves weighed down by a second monstrous dream of pure grandeur to match that of the Emperor. Two men who dared. Two men who were adored. Two men who led with brilliance. Two men who administered fairly and efficiently. Two men who were modest in their own needs but surrounded by lesser beings who profited from their situation and came between the Hero and the people.
Fifty years ago people believed, accurately, that they were entitled to seek the blue bird, whereas today they believe, mistakenly, that they're entitled to find it and take it home, in a complimentary cage with a month's supply of birdseed....Those who think they've a right to catch whatever they are free to chase, are doomed to disappointment. That's our generation in a nutshell.
Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.
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