Defining Empty Sums

Famous quotes containing the words defining, empty and/or sums:

    The U.S. is becoming an increasingly fatherless society. A generation ago, an American child could reasonably expect to grow up with his or her father. Today an American child can reasonably expect not to. Fatherlessness is now approaching a rough parity with fatherhood as a defining feature of American childhood.
    David Blankenhorn (20th century)

    Come hither, all ye empty things,
    Ye bubbles rais’d by breath of Kings;
    Who float upon the tide of state,
    Come hither, and behold your fate.
    Let pride be taught by this rebuke,
    How very mean a thing’s a Duke;
    From all his ill-got honours flung,
    Turn’d to that dirt from whence he sprung.
    Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)

    If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.
    Jewish proverb, quoted in Claud Cockburn, Cockburn Sums Up, epigraph (1981)