Ethical maxims are bandied about as a sort of current coin of discourse, and, being never melted down for use, those that are of base metal are never detected.
It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable.
I definitely talk about my love of metal to audiences, and I sort of realized it was always natural and never, 'Well, I'm going to be the heavy-metal comedian.'
Flattery is a base coin which is current only through our vanity.
Gossip is the currency of the discourse, so you should shut up about yourself. Never confess, never explain, never apologize, and never complain.
I feel like I turned down a lot of things that I wish I hadn't. But you never know when you're younger. I don't have regrets about certain things I turned down. Those films would have required things of me that would have been challenging, and they ended up being really good movies. But I was never a careerist, I never thought in those terms. I'd be like, "Oh, I'm tired. I don't want to work."
I would fain coin wisdom,—mould it, I mean, into maxims, proverbs, sentences, that can easily be retained and transmitted. Would that I could denounce and banish from the language of men—as base money—the words by which they cheat and are cheated!
My mother had all these maxims - like, classy girls never chew gum, never read comic books, never get their ears pierced, never get their hair dyed.
My mother had all these maxims-like, classy girls never chew gum, never read comic books, never get their ears pierced, never get their hair dyed.
Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use.
The public discourse on global warming has little in common with the standards of scientific discourse. Rather, it is part of political discourse where comments are made to secure the political base and frighten the opposition rather than to illuminate issues. In political discourse, information is to be 'spun' to reinforce pre-existing beliefs, and to discourage opposition.
I teach art at a famous art school, and yet I don't have really the least notion what post-modernism means, but we have people in the letters and science department that understand it quite well and the students go there if they want to understand what this term that is being bandied about is all about, but I've never understood it.
Bands like Metallica never sat around and said, 'We're speed metal,' or 'We're thrash metal.' If it feels good at the end of the day, to me, that's metal.
Because the Republicans are never going to turn on Trump so long as he still has his base, and he will continue to have his base so long as this idea that he is standing up for workers, it remains intact. And the only way that that gets eroded is if it isn't just about Russia all the time, but is also about those economic betrayals.
I remember someone said to me, "Never stand up when you can sit down, never sit down when you can lie down, never lie down when you can be asleep." Those are bits of advice that I haven't taken, really. I've done the opposite of them, but they have stayed with me.
And I never thought about how the lights don't go out, so you never really rest, in that way. I never really thought about the intensity of being watched, all the time. Those are some things that I didn't know about prison.
I never once dreamed of sort of being able to be in an American TV series, you know? It was all about theater and touring and sort of being an actor around Scottish theater.