Backing Quotes - page 4
Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. And this debasement of our vision, the retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters into safe crannies, the desperate instinct that our life passes unlived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the earth and air and water from which we came.
Peter Matthiessen
McCain would go on to trounce Hayworth in the August primary, by 24 points, but not before turning himself into an off-putting, almost unrecognizable political creature. In the face of Hayworth's challenge, McCain flipped his position on repealing the military's "Don't ask, don't tell” policy for gay service members; soft-pedaled his backing of climate-change legislation; and abandoned his longtime support for comprehensive immigration reform that would recognize reality and provide an eventual path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal aliens already living in the country. Instead, he offered full-throated backing for the border fence he once mocked-"Complete the danged fence!,” he demanded in an ad-and sought political cover in the form of an endorsement by his former running mate, Sarah Palin, whose selection was surely the single most cynical decision he ever made in nearly 30 years in public life.
John McCain
We stole countries with the cunning use of flags. Just sail around the world and stick a flag in. "I claim India for Britain!" They're going, "You can't claim us, we live here! Five hundred million of us!" "Do you have a flag...? "What? We don't need a bloody flag. This is our country, you bastards!" "No flag, no country, you can't have one! Those are the rules ... that I just made up! And I'm backing it up with this gun that was lent from the National Rifle Association."
Eddie Izzard
On many issues - naming Scalia-like judges and backing Reagan-like tax cuts - President Trump is a conventional Republican. Where he was exceptional in 2016, where he stood out starkly from his GOP rivals, where he won decisive states like Pennsylvania, was on his uniquely Trumpian agenda to put America and Americans first-from which the Bush Republicans recoiled. Trump alone pledged to kill amnesty and secure the border with a 30-foot wall to halt the invasion of our country. Trump alone pledged to end the de-industrialization of America and bring back our lost factories and lost jobs. Trump alone pledged to end the democracy-crusading and extricate us from the endless Mideast wars into which George Bush, Barack Obama and the War Party had plunged the nation. And, upon how he delivers on these three uniquely Trumpian issues will hang his political fate and history's assessment of whether he was a good, great or failed president.
Pat Buchanan
Come the recording day, a group of male choristers, more accustomed to singing church services than backing vocals, descended on Bush's home, which was equipped with its own studio. Doubtless they were imagining that they were about to meet a wild-eyed rock babe, but Kate, quiet and unassuming - the kind of sympathetic, slightly shy girl who greets you from behind the counter at the local chemist - introduced us to her friend the bass player Del Palmer, who engineered the session. None of the singers or Richard had ever gone over and over four or five phrases so exactingly. No measure of Bach or Mozart had, in their experience, been subjected to such surgical scrutiny, and I began to worry that their voices might begin to tire. But Bush knew and got what she wanted and "Hello Earth" is, I think, a remarkable track on the album that finally broke the American market and established her as an iconic and hugely influential figure. I can't wait to hear what she has been up to now.
Kate Bush
McGraw was an improviser, a teacher. He brought much to the game that keeps baseball fresh and suspenseful today-the hit-and-run play, the steal, the squeeze play, the uses of the bunt and the defenses against it. He helped turn the game into a thing of fluid beauty, infielders charging the plate or roaming far from their bases, outfielders moving with each pitch, racing in for base hits before them, backing each other in the outfield, entering the infield itself on rundown plays. Yet when the game changed radically, with the introduction of the livelier baseball, McGraw naturally shifted to a power emphasis, founding his team about such men as George Kelly, Bill Terry, Mel Ott. He knew, too, that the old pitching style of permitting a man to hit a deadened ball because it would then be caught in the big fields had to be changed, and his staffs led the league year after year in strikeouts, in earned-runs.
John McGraw
I consider the saga of no lord of the Silver Stallion to be worth squabbling over. Your sagas in the end must all be perverted and engulfed by the great legend about Manuel. No matter how you strive against that legend, it will conquer: no matter what you may do or suffer, my doomed Guivric, your saga will be recast until it conforms in everything to the legend begotten by the terrified imaginings of a lost child. For men dare not face the universe with no better backing than their own resources; all men that live, and that go perforce about this world like blundering lost children whose rescuer is not yet in sight, have a vital need to believe in this sustaining legend about the Redeemer: and the wickedness and the foolishness of no man can avail against the fond optimism of mankind.
James Branch Cabell