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.
It's a lucky man, a very lucky man, who is committed to what he believes, who has stifled intellectual detachment and can relax in the luxury of his emotions - like a tipsy traveller resting for the night at wayside inn.
All life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich; the betterment of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our brother's keeper because we are our brother's brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!
I am not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
The age of Chivalry is gone. An age of Humanity has come.
Personal growth can be painful, because it can make us feel ashamed and humiliated to face our own darkness. But our spiritual goal is the journey out of fear-based, painful mental habit patterns, to those of love and peace.
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