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)

“History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
...
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody’s place in line.”
—Wislawa Szymborska (b. 1923)

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