They say you can't study Kabbalah until you are at least 40 years old. You know why? You have to have experienced at least one generation making the same mistakes as the previous one.
David MametRead
The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that individuals are solely responsible for their own defense, a right protected by the Constitution.
David Mamet's quote underscores the belief that personal responsibility and self-defense are intrinsic rights of individuals enshrined in the Constitution. It suggests that while external support may exist, ultimately, it is the individual who is best suited to ensure their own safety and well-being, and this right is fundamentally protected by law.
In practice
In a legal debate about personal rights and self-defense laws.
They say you can't study Kabbalah until you are at least 40 years old. You know why? You have to have experienced at least one generation making the same mistakes as the previous one.
My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign.
You know, young actors say all the time, 'Should I use my own life experience?' And my response is, 'What choice do you have?'
It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.
You can't write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. 'What is criminality and what is government' is a theme that runs through every history.
Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.
To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance.
No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.
Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.
The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.
The spoken word vanished with the wind. Likewise, the unrecorded life disappears as if it never existed.
There is no easy way to create a world where men and women can live together... But if such a world is created in our lifetime, it will be done by rejecting the racism, materialism, and violence that has characterized Western civilization and especially by working toward a world of brotherhood, cooperation, and peace.
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